Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dinkelberg 14 days ago
> Biblical Hebrew has no vowel markings (well it does, but they are an interpretation), so it cannot be used in daily speech. Modern Hebrew is distinct from Biblical Hebrew

The same can be said about Latin (of which we do not exactly know how they used to pronounce words), or any other language. How to pronounce letters or words is always "interpretation" (or more accurately, tradition).
2 comments
IAmBroom 13 days ago
The mathematical study of the evolution of vowels in languages is quite well developed, and we can say with huge certainty that we know how classical Latin was pronounced. Yes, there absolutely were regional dialectal differences, but we do not rely on "tradition" to say that a long "i" sound (/i:/) was pronounced like the vowel in modern English "tree".
link
DiscourseFan 13 days ago
Well the difference is that different vowels can signify not only different cases or declensions but even different words entirely in afroasiatic languages. So, yes, missing vowels means that the edition that does have vowels (developed in the 10th century I believe) is a particular interpretation of the work.
link