[edanm]

I'm from IL :) [1]

You're right about the י and ו replacing vowels much of the time. Inspired by this discussion, I went and read a little more about the history of Modern Hebrew, and stumbled on this page in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ktiv_male

The idea of writing vowel-like signs into the letters is called Nikkud. But apparently, since most people don't write Nikkud, the Academy of the Hebrew Language wrote a set of rules explaining how to exchange Nikkud for letters that will serve as vowels. I had no idea it was so deliberate, but this explains why there are many words which people here write differently.

I still think there is more ambiguity in Hebrew. Or, as you put it, less "error correction margin". Even with "Ktiv Male".

[1] I lived abroad for a few years, so I wasn't in Israel from the 2nd grade to the 7th. This means I missed a lot of the "traditional" learning process of learning about the language, grammar, etc. So I'm a native Hebrew speaker, but I have some gaps in my knowledge about the correct way to do things, etc.