Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 5:12 PM, Randall Buth wrote:
> Extending the name from YitzHaq's GIGO Hebrew thread to "GAGA":
> GAGA Hebrew ?! (was Perception . . .)

Well, GIGO stands for Garbage In-Garbage Out...

> there is not much to add. The people of Ugarit (14-12c BCE) had
> three vowels (meaningfully perceived sound-units)  in their phonology
> but only wrote consonants. the Phoenicians only wrote consonants,
> the Hebrews only wrote consonants. the Aramaens only wrote
> consonants, the Arabs only wrote consonants.

As I'm sure you know, Ugarit is usually considered to have had five vowel
qualities (two of them developed from diphthongs, aw / ay).

Also, although the majority of Ugaritic inscriptions were written in
alphabetic cuneiform, the use of syllabic cuneiform in some cases is
instrumental in understanding the vowels.

Yitzhak Sapir
> It was a brilliant revolution over the Akkadian syllabaries,
> and has worked up to the present day, as long as we don't promote
> or teach someone "GAGA Hebrew".
>
> BRKT ('blessings' 'braxot')
> Randall
>
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> randallbuth AT gmail.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>