Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Berel Beyer <berelbeyer AT gmail.com>]

Hello all,

I was asked a question by a friend about the origin of the sofit
letters.  I looked in Gesenius and he seems to be silent about the
matter.  I'm a high school Latin teacher, with no expertise in Hebrew,
so I thought I'd check here for verification of my off-the-cuff guess:

1. This is a question of the development of the Aramaic alphabet,
since the Paleo-Hebrew script does not make a distinction in terminal
letters (as far as I can tell by glancing at the chart in Gesenius at
least!).

2. The sofit letters seem to be the ones to come directly from the old
script (so the non-terminal versions must have developed later).

3. My guess is that the distinctions developed for either or both of
the following reasons: to make writing quicker and simpler (like the
development of minuscule lettering with the Roman alphabet), or to
distinguish between orthographically similar letters (*something* like
the development of j, to distinguish between the consonant and the
vowel).

Does this sound about right?

Thanks in advance,

Berel Beyer
-- 
Al titen lamuglegim ledake otcha! ~ Ron Weasley