Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Joseph Roberts <josephroberts3 AT gmail.com>]

After looking at the vowel system of Hebrew, I was curious if its uses
of so many vowels was artificial and rise from a liturgical use or is
that how it was originally spoken. I have seen similarities between
Hebrew and Arabic. Arabic of course has a Dhama which makes the "u"
sound, a Kasra which makes a "i" sound and a Fatah which makes an "a"
sound. These are considered short vowels and they have corresponding
long vowels which seem to just lengthen the time that one makes the
vowel sound. Did Hebrew originally function like this? is the Cholem a
later invention? It just seems like there are a lot of sounds that are
not present in other semitic languages that i am familiar with.

Joseph Roberts