"Essentially" a vowel? Well, at least you are now conceding that it is, in fact, a consonant.
10th century pronunciation by Rabbis is no sure guide at all to true pronunciation 2000 years previously.
I trust rabbinic teaching on the subject far more than I do your opinion.
I guess "h" is a true borderline kind of thingy. Or can be. I can say "hi" without relatively restricting the breath coming out.
All of this seems irrelevant. I can accept that Hebrew was written without vowels. My only concern is with the claim that this would never ever introduce any type of confusion. Obviously it must have, since they later started using other marks to signal the proper vowels.
SD
Me, too. Actually, the fact that Hebrew was not a spoken language for 2,000 years, but used only for study and worship would stabilize the pronunciation.
And, Hermann, how would your theory account for the thousands of Hebrew words that don't have an aleph, an ayin, a yod or a he (I can't think why you omitted vav)?
malakhi, perhaps you know how exactly Hebrew ceased to be spoken. I find the story of its rebirth fascinating, but I don't know how it stopped being spoken in the first place.
"Essentially" a vowel? Well, at least you are now conceding that it is, in fact, a consonant.
Well, its still an "e" or other vowel sound in Hebrew. Its not an "haitch". Like I said, look at the tetragrammaton HWHY. The "H" is an "eh" sound - a vowel.