Newsgroups: bit.listserv.deaf-l
Date:         Sat, 12 Sep 1992 02:26:06 -0400
From:         "(Seth Gordon)" <sethg@SILVER.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Hebrew and its loose vowels
              9 Sep 1992 09:05:42 EDT <9209091512.AA23568@silver.lcs.mit.edu>

(Warning: this post has virtually nothing to do with deafness.)

Lew Golan probably knows more Hebrew than anyone else on this list,
but he hasn't responded yet to this thread, and since I took a few
years of Hebrew when I was a wee child, I'll try to respond.

      In the ancient alphabet...

I think it's misleading to refer to the Canaanite/Phonecian alphabet
as "the ancient alphabet".  There were other writing systems floating
about in which there were connections between the symbols of the
writing and the sounds of words.

    ...there is no letter that stands for any
    vowel.  Since the Hebrew language uses the ancient alphabet, it
    naturally does not have any written script that stand for vowels.

The Hebrew alphabet is *derived from* the Canaanite/Phonecian
alphabet.  But they're not the same thing.

    However, later on, some of the alphabet were also used for some
    vowels....

In Hebrew, only "vav" is used this way.

                .
###            ###            ###           ###
  #              #              #             #
  #              #            . #             #
  #              #              #             #
  #              #              #             #
                                            ..
"v"            "oh"           "oo"          "vay"
sound          sound          sound         sound
                                            (see below)

    The letter yod (from which we get 'I') is a constant for 'y' but can
    be used as a vowel for 'i'.

"Yod" is always the "y" consonant in Hebrew.

    For example, two dots below aleph stands for long 'e' (if I remember
    correctly):

		    \  |
		    |\ |    <- aleph
		    | \|
		    |  \
		     ..     <- two dots

Not quite.  Two horizontal dots below *any* consonant signal that that
consonant is followed by the long "a" sound, sort of like English
"pay".  (All comparisons between Hebrew and English phonemes should be
treated as rough approximations, of course.)

And "aleph" is a *silent* consonant, so of course, any vowel below it
would be pronounced alone.

There are also some consonant letters that stand for more than one
sound.  A Hebrew text that includes vowels will include dots in the
center of the letters to signal one of the alternatives.

######     ######
     #          #
  *  #          #
     #          #
#######    #######

"b" sound  "v" sound

Finally, there are "strophes" or "cantillation marks"--other
diacritical marks that indicate how a passage from the Bible should be
sung during a prayer service.

    Except for some words especially the tetragrammaton, scholars felt
    that the vowel points were accurate enought to reflect the usage at
    that time in a specific area.

The tetragammaton, "yod-hay-vav-hay" or YHVH, is a special case.
According to Jewish tradition, YHVH is the most holy name of God (at
least, the most holy name that's been passed down to humans).  It's
pronounced "Yahweh", but observant Jews *only* speak that name on Yom
Kippur (the Day of Atonement).  When they're reading the Torah in the
synagogue, and come to YHVH in the text, they don't say "Yahweh"; they
say "Adonai" ("My Lord") in its place.  To remind people not to
pronounce "Yahweh", Bibles and prayer books in Hebrew deliberately
have the "wrong" vowels under YHVH: the vowel for "Adonai."

	 (Unlike early Greek language which do not separate
    words from each other by spaces, there were some evidences that
    Hebrew language does separate words by spaces.)

The canonical text of the Hebrew Bible has no vowels and no spaces
between the words.  There is a conventional way of breaking up the
words and putting in vowels, yes, but if you're into Deep Biblical
Criticism, you can read one passage in the Bible two or more different
ways, simply by changing the vowels and spaces.  (This is one reason
monolingual "fundamentalist" preachers annoy me....)

	   A lot of basic words in Hebrew language have three
    consonants....

In Hebrew, Arabic, and other Semitic languages, most words are built
around three-consonant roots.  Words with the same root differ from
one another by having different vowels, prefixes, suffixes, and so on.
It's not *just* the vowels that make the difference.

For instance, the root "aleph-mem-resh" denotes words relating to
speech.  "La'amor / lamed-aleph-mem-resh" is "to speak", "omeret /
aleph-mem-resh-tav" is the feminine present-tense form of "speak",
"amarti / aleph-mem-resh-tav-yod" is "I spoke", "yomer / yod-aleph-
mem-resh" is "will speak", "l'hit'omer / lamed-hay-tav-aleph-mem-resh"
is "to speak to one's self", and so on.

(Lew, am I remembering all these correctly?)  I can't remember any
nouns or adjectives built around this root, although I'm sure they
exist.  I would ask my Orthodox friends for more information ... but
they don't hang around the computer cluster on the Sabbath.

As in all languages, the system is not perfectly regular and
predictable.  For centuries, Biblical scholars have been arguing about
whether "b'reshit" (the first word of Genesis, with conventional
vowels and word divisions) means "at the beginning of everything" or
"at the beginning of this action" -- in other words, does Genesis 1:1
mean "In the beginning, God created..." or "When God began to
create..."?

Deep Biblical Critics have all sorts of erudite commentary on why
"bet" is the first letter of the Torah, but this posting is already
far too long.

--
seth gordon ... <sethg@silver.lcs.mit.edu>   ... .sig under construction;
mit bs '91  ... learning ctr 4 deaf children ... pardon the inconvenience
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