From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Tue May 04 2004 - 20:43:51 CDT
D. Starner wrote at 8:37 PM on Monday, May 3, 2004:
>I mean, maybe you're right and Phonecian has glyph forms too far from
>Hebrew's to be useful ...
I thought it might be useful, even for those who are relishing the
"immunity of the ill-informed" with regard to West Semitic scripts, to
provide sample images of just what sort of glyph differences we are
talking about as we discuss Phoenician, Old Aramaic, Imperial Aramaic,
Old Hebrew, post-exilic Hebrew, Samaritan, medieval and modern Hebrew.
The attached chart focuses on Hebrew consonantal script development
(archaic, post-exilic, medieval, & modern), but includes some listings of
related "diascripts".
As this chart shows, the real break in Hebrew glyph shapes came with the
post-exilic adoption of Aramaic forms (samples 7 - 12).
[An aside: Not having taken the time to learn it, I find modern cursive
Hebrew, with no separate encoding (nor should there be), to be
practically illegible.]
Respectfully,
Dean A. Snyder
Assistant Research Scholar
Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project
Computer Science Department
Whiting School of Engineering
218C New Engineering Building
3400 North Charles Street
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218
office: 410 516-6850
cell: 717 817-4897
www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
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