> One thing in particular stands out -- it has
vowels.
>
> Biblical Hebrew was originally written without
any vowels; that's why you'll sometimes see Yahweh
written as YHWH -- though we're pretty sure Yahweh
is the correct pronounciation, it could
theoretically be almost anything. There were a
number of reasons the texts didn't need vowels,
among them that they were primarily being
transmitted orally; the existence of a text helped
more to validate the spoken word than it did as a
reference for it.

Hrm. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by
"reasons they didn't need vowels" but...

Hebrew (Biblical or Modern) does certainly *have*
vowels. (I know, you weren't suggesting it
didn't.) They simply aren't represented by
characters in the alphabet as they are in English.
I would argue that the "reason" Hebrew didn't need
vowels, is that...well...neither does English, or
any other language. Obviously we need to *speak*
the vowels, but write each one out? Anyone
familiar with Hebrew can easily read aloud (with
correct vowels) a Hebrew text without vowle
markers. If i were to have written this post
without any vowles, my guess is that, with very
little difficulty, you would have understood it.

Aftr ll, y cn undrstnd ths sntnc, rght?

Anyway, this was just a little side note to my
original question. I simply wanted to make clear
that the reason written Hebrew does not represent
vowels, is that they're simply not necessary.
Hebrew is a very "compact" language in many ways,
the lack of alphabet vowles being only one
example.

Gr"p.s. there *are* vowels markers in Hebrew, they
are just very rarely used, and consist of small
dots and dashes marked underneath the consonant to
which they belong"ace