From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Wed May 26 2004 - 10:40:56 CDT
Asmus Freytag wrote at 12:04 AM on Wednesday, May 26, 2004:
>Difficulties in reading a script may explain why it has been abandoned
>but they don't argue for or against encoding it. Otherwise, my handwriting,
>set to type would be a shoo-in. ;-)
Precisely my point for those who ran Palaeo-Hebrew tests with modern
Hebrew speakers and used the lack of legibility as an argument to encode
Phoenician/Palaeo-Hebrew.
We also have to remember that the Siloam inscription test:
* was in "handwriting" incised in stone
* was in a different orthography than modern Hebrew
* using dots to separate words
* and lacked vowel indicators (matres lectionis), very important
contextual clues for reading modern Hebrew
All of this contributed to a lack of modern legibility for the Palaeo-
Hebrew sample text, and the kinds of things I tried to avoid with my
Fraktur test.
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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