Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

Yakov,

We will need to keep the dot, the "dagesh qal", in the letters bet,  
kaf, pe to distinguish between their "hard" and "soft" manifestation.  
Otherwise, the dagesh is redundant in plain speech.
Here is the first few verses of Genesis sans dagesh [I hope you see  
the Hebrew].
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת  
הַשָׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ. וְהָאָרֶץ  
הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ  
עַל פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים  
מְרַחֶפֶת עַל פְּנֵי הַמָיִם.  
וַיֹאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי  
אוֹר. וַיַרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת הָאוֹר  
כִּי טוֹב וַיַבְדֵל אֱלֹהִים בֵּין  
הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ. וַיִקְרָא  
אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ  
קָרָא לָיְלָה וַיְהִי עֶרֶב וַיְהִי  
בֹקֶר יוֹם אֶחָד.
Are you missing anything? Does this sound to you like Esperanto? We  
can not do it to the sacred text, but secular writing can do well  
without the extra dots.
If you want all to read your post put b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org in  
the Cc: field of the address.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Jun 16, 2008, at 6:54 PM, Yakov Hadash wrote:

> On Jun 16, 2008, at 5:56 PM, Isaac Fried wrote:
>
> > As I said, Remove all the dgeshim and no one will miss one of them.
>
> How would you then explain all of the intricacies of the "pay" and  
> "ayin" vowel in hitpa'el and pi'el binyanim? I feel like it all  
> goes back to the dagesh in the ayin hapoal, since that's what  
> decides that the first vowel is short.
> Unless you're advocating a wholesale abandonment of standard Hebrew  
> grammar...? Which isn't a bad idea, but if you're going to do that,  
> why not just finish the job and abandon Hebrew altogether, and  
> switch to, whatever, Esparanto?
>
> -YH.