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To: muawiyah

Okay, but that sounds like you can make things seem the same, if you really want to. Again, even if the same historical figure is mentioned in both cases, it just means that two ancient texts agree in one place. It doesn’t prove anything else.


71 posted on 07/10/2007 7:45:48 PM PDT by hunter112 (Change will happen when very good men are forced to do very bad things.)
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To: hunter112
The trick is in understanding what a syllabry is. It's like an alphabet in that it reflects sound values, but it ties specific consonants to specific vowels. Modern Korean (Hangul) is written in a syllabry which also tells you were to place your tongue to make each sound.

Written Cherokee as developed by Sequoia also uses a syllabry.

Not all languages are cut out for that sort of thing. English, for example, with more than half a dozen specific sounds, would require an exceedingly large syllabry to handle all the combinations, and then we still wouldn't agree.

The ancient Sumerians knew what characters to use to represent what sounds they spoke. The Akkadians, however, who used Sumerian only as a written but not a spoken language, had only the vaguest idea what the characters were supposed to sound like outside of their own spoken Semitic language(s).

You'll notice that one of the fairly uniform features found throughout the Semitic languages are the general absence of vowels. It's like they think they don't need them ~ and they don't ~ if they have a pretty good memory. Still, syntax saves the day for them and a mere "dot" to show where a vowel ought to be (if an Arab could figure out how to say one) will suffice. Hebrew is a tad more sophisticated of course ~ (right guys? ~ lots of vowels there ~ NOT!)

89 posted on 07/11/2007 4:53:09 AM PDT by muawiyah
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