From: Peter Kirk (peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 06:32:04 EDT
On 15/07/2003 02:58, Michael Everson wrote:
>
> ... My native script isn't Hebrew but I am certain that no one who was
> could easily read a newspaper article written in Phoenician or
> Samaritan letters.
Agreed (though my native script isn't Hebrew either) - excluding of
course those who have made a special study of these scripts. But then
the same would be true of black letter (Gothic) script for many English
speakers.
But I don't think this would be true of the Palmyrene Aramaic shapes.
They probably wouldn't appear in a newspaper. But if they were used in a
modern handwritten letter, I think a Hebrew reader would be able to read
them reasonably easily though he or she would think they are in strange
handwriting.
And, to go back to the discussion of a couple of weeks ago, the same is
even more true of biblical Hebrew. No Hebrew reader would have any
trouble reading a newspaper in biblical Hebrew script copied direct from
the classical (Masoretic) biblical MSS. Indeed the Unicode reference
glyphs are practically identical to the ones in these MSS. So certainly
no justification for a separate script there.
-- Peter Kirk peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
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