> > 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

But you do notice some words, with out vowels, can be confussing.
For instance, what word do I mean here.
This is my ct.

What is ct? Is it a cat or a cot? In something like the bible, which uses a lot of allusions, metaphores, and images confussion like this can change the meaning of an entire passage.

And even when we do know what a word is, some words have multiple meanings.

Speed'cnyrdths'ball