I am really interested in hearing from you what are the arguments in favor of the claim of "gemination" in ancient Hebrew.
Isaac Fried, Boston University On May 17, 2011, at 3:12 AM, Ratson Naharadama wrote: > Isaac writes: > > precisely because it is all unnecessary. > > Hebrew functions perfectly well > > without these theoretical fantasies. > > Languages function pretty well without a LOT of things that many > cultures somehow found rather necessary to include in their > language. English (mostly) no longer has noun cases nor gender. > Hebrew lacks many of the untranslatable niceties added within a > sentence found in Cantonese that give the context of why the > speaker is speaking what he is speaking (such as in answer to a > question, or summing up what he had been discussing for the past 15 > minutes). Sign languages are stripped of even more things not found > in their host languages. Just because you don't see why it was > necessary now doesn't mean that 2500 years ago it was likewise > thought so. Most English speakers can't fathom why anyone would > need nor want noun case, but a speaker of Old English wouldn't > fathom why or how anyone could go without noun cases. The same > would apply with Hebrew. > > If you were to be interested in Arabic and those other Semitic > languages you brush aside as having no relation to Hebrew, you > might see why vowel and consonant length were important. Your > attitude reminds me of those King James Version only adherents > (kind of a "this is what I am use to, so this is what it has always > been and always will be" outlook). > > Is there something we are missing that, to you, clearly indicates > that there was never any consonant length? > > -- > Ratson Naharädama > Denver, Colorado _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
