Small Open Source projects attn: Gordon Marx

Josh Pollak pardsbane at offthehill.org
Sat Mar 19 12:19:06 EST 2005


On Mar 19, 2005, at 10:37 AM, Gordon Marx wrote:
> Also, whether the Torah has vowels or not has nothing to do with
> humans. The newspaper Yediot Acharonot (and all the other ones) don't
> have vowels, either. :--)

It should be pointed out that in Hebrew, the vowels are small dots and 
strokes that are placed
under the characters that represent the consonants they follow. They 
are used to teach the language, but very often fluent speakers don't 
write them at all, it takes too much time and people recognize the 
words without them.

I've always assumed newspapers don't include them because it allows 
them to squeeze extra lines onto the page, with them they would have to 
save additional space between each line of text.

-Josh




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