Re: Numerics

It's really late here in the UK so only one answer now and i'll look at the
rest later:

>
> Aleph "a" is given the value of 1 in Vernon's scheme. And since it is the
> primordial vowel and the points use it to tell pronounciation (see
> http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm#Vowels), I guess I am a bit confused
> about the use of vowels. If A isn't a vowel, what is it?

Aleph isn't treated as a vowel in the Hebrew language. It is a described as
a soundless consonant. Here is a good description from "A Practical Grammar
of Classical Hebrew" by J. Weingreen:

" ALEPH (represented by the light breathing ') is a cutting off of the
breath; its consonantal value being apparent when it has a vowel. It is
analogous to the silent 'h' in a word like 'honest'."

In this text aleph is thus unambiguously a consonant.

Hope this helps.
More later when I'm awake.
Iain
Received on Sun Jun 5 19:21:15 2005