In other words, neither of us has enough data to convince the other.
I would amend that to an interview with a pre-Galut Babel Hebrew.
Karl W. Randolph.
Ps. I agree with Trevor that there is no good reason to continue the
discussion at this time.
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
> On 12/10/2003 08:32, Karl Randolph wrote:
>
> >... (As for the early Scandinavian runic writing, did the early Vikings
> >have only 16 phones in their speech, or did their 16 glyphs correspond to
> >16 phonemes? Only an interview with a surviving Viking can answer that.)
> >
> >
> Or did they have many more than 16 phonemes but for some reason only use
> 16 glyphs?
>
> >It is my belief that Hebrew started out as a phonetic writing system,
> >where each grapheme corresponded to a consonantal phone with a couple of
> >exceptions where waw and yod sometimes indicated vowels, only later, as
> >the language changed, added new phones and split one phoneme into two,
> >were the graphemes adjusted by adding dots to show the new phonetic
> >values. We see the same development in Arabic.
> >
> >
> Does your belief correspond with historical reality? Only an interview
> with a surviving Hebrew can answer that.
>
> >Karl W. Randolph.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
>http://www.qaya.org/
>
>
--
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