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Old June 3rd 04, 06:47 PM
Bob LeChevalier
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Holger Dansk wrote:
[obviously smoking something]
On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 08:25:52 -0700, "Circe" wrote:

If the writer had simply accurately stated that Semitic languages didn't
have *written* vowels and that the Greeks put vowels into the *written*
language, you might not have been led so far astray. All the Greeks invented
was a method of representing a vowel sound with a written symbol.


That's what putting vowels in a language is.


Nonsense. That's is what putting vowel symbols in an alphabet is.
Alphabets are orthogonal to language (or maybe one could say that they
are orthographic to language %^)

Vowel *sounds*, OTOH, had no need to be invented, since any month-old infant is
quite capable of producing them!


Of course there was every need for vowels.


They were already present, so there was no additional need.

It gave the Greeks an
advantage because they were able to create new words easier.


The Greeks gained no ability to create new words by adding vowel
symbols to their alphabet.

People make new words without any alphabet at all, and an alphabet
doesn't make it easier.

In order to communicate you have to be able to write words down.


Really? You mean no one on earth communicated until 3000BC? You mean
that the American Indians could not communicate, since they had no
written language? Or to you think they just walked around saying
"How!" all the time.

And God help you if you are ever struck deaf. All of those people who
use American (or other) Sign Language, which has neither vowels nor
consonants must not be communicating.

Not just make sounds like savages sending drum messages through the jungle.


There are drum languages which indeed serve to communicate. But that
has nothing to do with what you are discussing.


--
lojbab
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
http://www.lojban.org