Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Could you send me a .wav file of a b_ syllable? I'm pretty sure that we'll
find a schwa at the end of it.

James Christian

2010/1/22 Joel C. Salomon <joelcsalomon AT gmail.com>

> On 1/20/2010 6:07 AM, James Christian wrote:
> > The answers to these questions can largely be answered by considering
> what
> > the ancients who developed this alphabet considered to be the reusable
> > phonetic unit. They evidently considered the syllable to be the reusable
> > phonetic unit and grouped 'allosyllables' into one reusable symbol. That
> is
> > to say that syllables ba be bi bo etc were all represented by the house
> > logograph. There are pros and cons to this system.The con is the level of
> > ambiguity it introduces. The pro is the increased reusability with a
> reduced
> > graph set.
> <snip>
> > And so it is this sequence of logic which leads many people to the
> intuitive
> > conclusion that Hebrew (or whatever it evolved from) was originally a CV
> > language.
>
> The counter-argument runs very similarly:
>
> “That is to say that syllables ba be bi bo etc., _as well as the
> consonant b_, were all represented by the house logograph.”
>
> —Joel C. Salomon
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