In <[email protected]>,
on 11/19/2012
   at 04:06 PM, "McKown, John" <[email protected]> said:

>I was told that many old languages had no interword spacing 
>mainly because that wasted precious writing material. I was also 
>told that old Hebrew omitted the "vowels" to save space,

No; there were no vowel markings to omit; those were invented later,
as were the Cantillation marks[2] (trop). AFAIK the interword spacing
came before the vowel marks.

>which is why some words in the Torah as uncertain as to which word
>was meant.

There are also issues with consonants.

[1] Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niqqud> claims
    Early Middle Ages.

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantillation>

-- 
     Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
     Atid/2        <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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