Peter Constable wrote:

>
> > From: Mark E. Shoulson [mailto:mark@...]
>
> > It's a little strange to me that one would classify writing systems such
> > that the basic category of a system changes like this, adding optional
> > diacritics. I mean, yes, you can define anything you like, but such an
> > unstable system starts to lose its usefulness. Whatever Hebrew is, it
> > makes more sense to classify it the same whether or not it's pointed.
>
> I agree; otherwise, we can't classify scripts; we can only classify runs
> of text.

Or, maybe, Hebrew writing was transformed by the Masoretes, so now there
are in fact two ways of writing Hebrew, the old-fashioned way, which
retains most of its abjadity, and the new-fangled way, which never
really did catch on, which pretty much achieves alphabeticity?

> S ths Ltn wrtng n bjd?

(a) Who writes that way?

(b) I'm sick and tired of people demonstrating "how hard it is to read"
vowelless English by leaving off an aleph-like marker from vowel-initial
words.

When you use that example in your textbook, make it

" 's ths Ltn wrtng 'n 'bjd? "
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...