Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

You picked a beauty with the English language. Of all the languages I know
it is the one in the most need of a new alphabet. Of course, the history of
English is a rocky one. It's a bastardised mix of just about every
conquering set of barbarians who felt like coming to our little island and
raping our women.

And so with English we see the opposite phenomenon. We see our perception
being influenced by our alphabet rather than our alphabet being formed from
our perception. We have inherited a mess of a an alphabet with words
representative of pronunciation guides of a variety of languages. However,
as your anecdotal evidence shows our alphabet is in desparate need of
reimplementation along with our writing system in general.

However, the inventors of the Hebrew alphabet didn't receive it from many
different conquerors from different nations. They invented it. They were in
complete control of how to implement it.

James Christian

2010/1/22 Ratson Naharadama <yahoo-arch AT heplist.com>

> Let's try applying your idea of the perception of the Hebrew writers to
> the perception of English writers.  How would you explain the perception
> of English writers and the written inventory of 5 basic symbols for the
> vowels (a, e, i, o, u)?  Are you saying English speakers only really
> perceived 5 different vowels?  Maybe we can even extend that to the
> consonants?  English speakers generally only use 21 consonants? Could we
> then say English speakers really only perceived 21 consonants?  If we
> throw in the digraphs (such as th, sh, ch, gh), what then? And, would
> you say each of those only have one perceived phonemic value?
>
> Just as a side note, when I was a child, long before I knew anything
> about consonant only alphabets, I would occasionally write notes to
> myself dropping all the vowels (this was something I had come to on my
> own, it wasn't taught to me, it just seemed quicker to write it that
> way). While it is not to difficult to read a English sentence written
> this way, it is easier to do so with semitic languages.  If you can't
> seem to understand how the semitic root system plays such a large role
> in making writing without vowels so much easier (as others have previous
> tried pointing out) then I would not know where to begin to explain that
> to you (it should be almost self-explanatory to you if you understand
> any semitic language).
>
> Ratson Naharadama
> Denver, CO
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