Newsgroups: bit.listserv.deaf-l
Subject: Re: Hebrew langauge
From: zevpeter@chen.bgu.ac.il (Bill Peter)
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 11:43:12 GMT
Organization: Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel
Originator: zevpeter@chen.bgu.ac.il


For anyone interested in the Hebrew language, I suggest they ignore
Joseph P. Riolo's explanations of Hebrew in his two long articles.

Joseph, could you please stick to topics that you know something about?


In article <9209081450.aa14740@COR4.PICA.ARMY.MIL>, "Joseph P. Riolo" <riolo@COR4.PICA.ARMY.MIL> writes:
|> Bryce,
|>
|>
|>       In the ancient alphabet, 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.
|> However, later on, some of the alphabet were also used for some vowels.
|> For example, the letter waw (from which we get 'F', 'U', 'V', 'W') is a

     The letter "F" is described by another letter, and not a waw [ or vav ].

|>       The scribes who had responsible for copying Scripture began
|> to develop their own vowel point systems.  Fearing that people in
|> later generations would not be able to pronounce the Hebrew language
|> in the Scripture, they wrote points around the letters.  For example,
|> two dots below aleph stands for long 'e' (if I remember correctly):
|>
|>                 \  |
|>                 |\ |    <- aleph
|>                 | \|
|>                 |  \
|>                  ..     <- two dots

     This is sounded like a short 'e', not a long 'e'.

|>       Like I said previously, the usage of Hebrew language was limited
|> only to religious services.

     This is untrue.  Hebrew was a spoken language in North Africa and Iraq.
Eastern European Jews spoke a mixture of Hebrew and German (Yiddish) and many
other Jews spoke a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish (Ladino).  But Hebrew was spoken
as a second language in much of the Jewish world in Iraq and North Africa (after
Arabic).

  I do not know when but I think around
|> the time when the country of Israel was established in 1948, one man
|> tried to reintroduce Hebrew language into common language.

     This was done by Ben-Yehuda in the 19th century, not the 20th century.

  But
|> doing so, he had to develop a system that will allow Hebrew language
|> to build its own technical vocabulary.

     He did not build a system, he used the already-existing Hebrew grammar.


|> When new words are introduced into language, very often, they are
|> accompanied with vowel points for a while.  After that, the vowel
|> points are not necessary and removed.

     You must have dreamed this.  This is totally untrue.  Hebrew does not use
     vowel points for new words at all.  Vowel points are essentially superfluous
     in Hebrew, and are only needed by children before the first grade, or non-Hebrew
     speakers.


|>      It is Greek people that changed consonant letters 'A' (from
|> aleph), 'E' (from he), 'I' (from yod), 'O' (from ayin), and 'U'
|> (from waw) to vowels.

     This is also untrue.  The Hebrew aleph is not a consonant, but in fact
     serves as a vowel, although it has no distinct sound of its own.  This is
     also the same story with the "ayin."

|>
|> UNLIKEEARLYGREEKLANGUAGEWHICHDONOTSEPARATEWORDSFROMEACHOTHERBYSPACESTH
|> EREWERESOMEEVIDENCESTHATHEBREWLANGUAGEDOESSEPARATEWORDSBYSPACES
|>
|>      (Translation:  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.)  (Both Hebrew language
|> and early Greek language have only capital letters.)

     This is also untrue.  Hebrew and Greek did not frequently space words apart,
which is why in both languages some letters have both a usual and final form.

|>      Let me say that I am not fluent in reading or writing Hebrew
|> language but I do read a lot about its history.
|>
|>                                         Joseph P. Riolo
|>                                         <riolo@pica.army.mil>

     If you are not fluent in a language like Hebrew or English, please don't
     answer questions about it, and please don't spread your ignorance around.

--
Bill Peter
Physics Department
Ben-Gurion University, Beersheva, Israel.
--
Bill Peter
Physics Department
Ben-Gurion University, Beersheva, Israel.
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