Re: God

"jerry_friedman@xxxxxxxxx" <jerry_friedman@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Oct 14, 3:48 am, Chuck Riggs <chri...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:33:52 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum

It also didn't help that in the earliest texts, they didn't put
spaces between words (five of the letters have distinct forms when
they appear at the end of a word, so this probably helped with
synchronization a bit).  Even now, with spaces, there's a rule
that single letter words aren't allowed, so many prepositions,
relativizers,

More than one (she-)?

I'm pretty sure you can get up to three, at least: v-, k/sh-, b/l-.
Think of the four questions: "sheb'chol haleilot". The first word is
<shin bet chet lamed>, with the first a relativizer and the second a
preposition.

and the conjunction

Meaning "and" (v-, etc.)? In grammar (not logic), I've always heard
"conjunction" as meaning "and", "or", and "but", and maybe other
words, but you've studied grammar at a whole different level than I
have.

Nah, you're right. Logic was interfering there. It's only /v/, I
think, that cliticizes, but the rest ar conjunctions, too.

are written as prefixes, sometimes more than one attached to a
word, so you have to decide whether a sequence of letters
represents a word or a word with these extra clitics on it.

Do Israeli children find learning to read Hebrew especially
difficult? If American youngsters can learn to read English in two
years, let us say, I would think it would take considerably more to
learn Hebrew, based on all the complications you've touched on.

Most of the complications Evan has touched on (and simplified!) are
historical. Israeli schoolchildren are no more confused by them
than English-speaking schoolchildren are by the thorn and the yogh.

I suspect that some of them do come into play when reading
transliterations of foreign names.

Hebrew with points is far easier to learn to read than English. I
don't think the usual way of writing, without points, presents much
difficulty. Thgh yv nvr hd n prctc, y cn prbbl mk t nglsh wrttn ths
wy wtht t mch trbl, nd srl chldrn gt a lt f prctic. There are
regular (though not invariable) patterns of vowel use that help.
But the main thing is probably just knowing the spoken language.
Distinguishing the different meanings of 'mr (Evan's example) is no
harder than distinguishing the different meanings of "read", "cut",
or "wind".

I strongly suspect learning to read Hebrew without points is easier
than learning to read English. But I strongly suspect that about
every language, except those like Chinese that use whole-word
characters.

Actually, I don't believe that you're right. I, unfortunately, don't
own a copy of _Advances in the Creation and Revision of Writing
Systems_ (edited by Joshua Fishman), but I seem to recall that the
articles on Hebrew there presented evidence that Hebrew, while
definitely learnable, did take at least a couple of years longer for
native speakers to learn to read than English did.

The technology for printing the points is in constant use for
instructional purposes. If people saw an advantage to printing that
way for other purposes, they would.

And, similarly, handwritten text almost never includes points, except
text expected to be read by young children.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I am ever forced to make a
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |choice between learning and using
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |win32, or leaving the computer
|industry, let me just say it was
kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx |nice knowing all of you. :-)
(650)857-7572 | Randal Schwartz

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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