Re: My Conlanging History (was: Re: Tolkein?)

> On Tuesday, December 16, 2003, at 07:50  PM, Caleb Hines wrote:
> > At one time, I also had an interest in learning OT Hebrew, and our
> > pator
> > was pleased to help. We had about three lessons, during which I
> > learned the
> > alphabet and a few words (I still recognize some of the alphabet), >
but
> > I
> > never went far with the vocabulary. I guess the main dificulty there
> > was
> > all those gutteral sounds that don't really get pronounced, and the
> > "consonants" that sound like vowels.
>
> I'm just wondering, what do you mean by '"consonants" that sound like
> vowels'?  The use of |hei|, |yud| and |vav| as vowel-placeholders?
>
Yes. 'waw'/'vav' and 'yud'/'yod' for starters. Also 'aleph' and 'ain'
(which also fall into the category of gutteral sounds). And the fact that
OT Hebrew was originally written with no vowels. Not to mention the fact
that, IIRC, aren't there like 3 different letters for 's', two different
letters for 't', and two different letters for 'h'? OTOH, I thought it was
pretty cool how a letter could have two related sounds by adding/removing a
dot to it (although at the time, I didn't know what was phonologically
taking place).

Back then it all seemed very confusing. I do intend to eventually re-visit
it, though, now that I have a more linguistic-oriented outlook.

Thanks,
~Caleb

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