Holger Dansk wrote:
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.

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.

snip quote which has no relevance to the subject at hand

These knuckleheads keep talking about spoken language which began
about 30,000 years ago.

Blink Bob and I (and Herman) have referred to languages like Hebrew,
Sanskrit, and Chinese. We have not remotely suggested that any of those
languages is 30,000 years old.

Bob and I *have* stated that vowel sounds are a component of all human
languages and have therefore presumably been present in human language since
its earliest development. There is *no* exstant human language that does not
consist of both consonant and vowel sounds, whether it was ever committed to
a native writing system by its speakers. It is highly unlikely that any
human system of verbal communication could have been produced without the
existence of vowel sounds given that no language exists now that does so.
Whether or not the vowel sounds are represented in *writing* has nothing,
therefore, to do with whether vowel sounds are present in language.
(Hawaiian was never committed to a native writing system, for example, yet
it clearly has plenty of vowel sounds in it!)

I wonder if they even know what a vowel
is? For their information, the modern English vowels are a, e, i, o,
and u.

Wrong again. You confuse the symbol with the symbolized. A vowel is a kind
of sound, distinct from a consonantal sound; the letters you have written
are merely symbols for representing those sounds. Moreover, in English, the
alphabetic symbols for the vowels do not have a one-to-one correspondence
with the *sounds* they can represent: a can be either an "ah" sound or an
"ay" sound; e can be "eh" or "ee" or unpronounced, and so on.

Oh, and you forgot "sometimes y".

These are letters that are written, and they should have learned
how to write some letters in the first grade.

And we all learned to say them years before we learned to write them. Ergo,
there is no relationship between *written* vowels and *spoken* ones. Ergo,
you are full of ****.

But then, we all knew that already.
--
Be well, Barbara

All opinions expressed in this post are well-reasoned and insightful.
Needless to say, they are not those of my Internet Service Provider, its
other subscribers or lackeys. Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a
fight. -- with apologies to Michael Feldman