View Single Post
  #522  
Old June 3rd 04, 06:11 PM
Holger Dansk
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On 3 Jun 2004 11:12:35 -0500, (Herman Rubin)
wrote:

In article ,
Holger Dansk wrote:
On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 13:33:07 -0700, "Circe" wrote:


Um, are you suggesting that Greek was the first language to have vowels in
it?


I'm not suggesting it but saying that it was.


Holger


At most, you can claim that Greek was the first language to
have an ALPHABETIC system of writing with all vowels being
EXPLICIT. One could make a case for this, but at least the
Indian alphabet independently introduced vowels, and I do
not believe that the Persian alphabet of the Behistun Rock,
which does have vowels, is based on the earlier Semitic one.
At least Grotefend did not find that to be the case when he
deciphered the inscription.


"As opposed to other types of writing systems including syllabaries, the
alphabetic principle seems to have been invented only once, by North
Semitic peoples living in Palestine and Syria in c. 1700 B.C. This
alphabet represented only consonants (22 consonants were initially
represented). The principle was diffused rapidly, but as symbols were
passed along, they also changed such that many of today's alphabetic
writing systems are unrecognizable as "daughter" systems deriving from
this one brilliant idea.
The North Semitic alphabet was used to represent Aramaic and Hebrew, and
was borrowed by the Phoenicians in approx. 1000 B.C., being passed on by
them to the Greeks, who added vowels, and thence to the Etruscans in
about 800 B.C. The Etruscan alphabet was the source of the Roman
alphabet that has since been adopted for use in many languages around
the world."

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fa...itinglect.html

These knuckleheads keep talking about spoken language which began about
30,000 years ago. I wonder if they even know what a vowel is? For
their information, the modern English vowels are a, e, i, o, and u.
These are letters that are written, and they should have learned how to
write some letters in the first grade. Written language began about
3,000 years ago.

We are not talking about some guttural grunting noises made 20,000 or
30,000 years ago. Forget about that doo doo.

Holger

http://www.mindspring.com/~holger1/holger1.htm