--- "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote: > 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?

But it did catch on in 2 ways:
1) As a writing system, Hebrew script was adapted to
Yiddish which always uses vowels, in which case it
is being used as an alphabet. (Not that Yiddish is
so common nowadays).

Yiddish is written in the Hebrew script but the
Yiddish alphabet.

2) In the Hebrew novels I have, there is usually at
least one pointed word per page or so. The first
one
I remember spotting was the word "geisha" in the
translation of "Memoir of a Geisha".

Is Memoir of a Geisha written in an abjad or an
alphabet? Or is it written in two different types
of scripts?

Andrew Dunbar.

> > 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@...
>

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