Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.anglia.ac.uk>]

Hi Yitzhak,

YS: There were no scribes in the ancient world that were deaf from birth.  All
learned the language from birth by speech.  Deaf education is a modern
concept.  Even so, in any language, the deaf person will have to realize
the range of meanings and words including the different vocalizations.
He will have to understand that a consonantal spelling of "rd" (in English)
could be "raid", "red", "reed", "road", "ride", "rode", "rude", "rid", "rod",
"rad".  Some of these are homonyms; some would be spelled the same
even with "mater lectionis" ("raid", "reed", "rid").  Ten different readings 
for
one consonantal spelling.  He may not need to associate different sounds
but he will need to have some kind of understanding of the missing vowels.


JCR: That's a good example of the difficulties that 
any reader would face on reading an unpointed text but 
please answer this question:

Given the sentence 'He rd his bike for 10 miles without stop' just how many 
of these homonyms would fit the
context?

Or for that matter the following sentences:

'They left Moses in a basket in the river between the rds'

'They beat him with a rd 50 times for his disobedience'

'That boy is so rd. He never says thank you for anything'

James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew       -  thesis1: concept driven machine 
translation using the Aleppo codex
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc  -  thesis2: language acquisition simulation
http://www.lamie.org/ngelta