--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...> wrote:
> > >account

> What is the similarity of Cree and Tamil that is not shared by Cree
> and pointed Hebrew? I would have thought Hebrew would have greater
> influence, plus being a far more likely (certain?) language to have
> been looked at. As a very minor point, Hebrew pointing does not
> distinguish /i/ and /i:/ or /u/ and /u:/. If the mater lectionis

is

> missing, the pointing does not recover the situation in these cases.

Richard, I am really just playing around with ideas - I can't prove
that Evans met Winslow or even was in New York at the same time. He
was in NY - from what I have read it was the place to visit (to go to
conference) in the early 1800's! Some things never change. Or course,
access to his papers in TOronto would help - sme day!

The pointing in Cree looks superficially like Hebrew and was used by
the Cree to disambiguate. However, syllabics were first displayed as
a matrix of combinations of CV units, with only 4 vowels but each
vowel could be made long by adding an overdot.

There was intense activity around studying Indic lgs in the early
1800's among the Methodists, headquartered in NY, and the American
Methodists did evangelize Ontario, lots of traffic back and forth -
so this link is not too bizarre. I think NY at that time sounds a bit
like SIL, with intense activity in writing down new lgs!

I think, however, it would all go back to where the idea came from to
teach literacy by using a matrix of syllables. As mentioned earlier
in qalam, Hebrew and Italian have both used a syllable chart for
teaching reading. Where that tradition came from is probably a more
fruitful area of research. How old would that tradition be - was the
matrix of syllables an historic Hebrew model?

Suzanne