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User:Spoken36/On Vowels

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The ancient Hebrew language is itself very good evidence that the notion of vowels is a bogus idea as applied to languages that predate the modern languages. All of the common European languages for example postdate the creation of vowels (by Masoretes less than 1500 years ago) as a separate group of phonology in contrast to the consonants. Therefore, our ingrained habit is to perceive vowels and consonants as necessary components of language. But that perception is caused by the development of the languages in a modern vowel/consonant paradigm.

In reality, what we perceive as vowels is simply the resonant sound that occurs when the mouth changes shape moving from one "consonant" sound to the next. In scripture the lip and tongue are referred to as the makers of language. These are some of the surfaces of the mouth that are used to make unique, repeatable sounds for communication. However there is no sound regardless of how we shape our mouths unless we generate some humming of the vocal folds for resonance and fricative force. If "consonant" sounds are made transitioning directly between the mouth shapes required by those "consonant" sounds, specific "vowel" sounds will consistently occur between them as a passive part of the speech process. Accuracy and consistency are aided by speed of execution. If you enunciate a Hebrew word fast enough, the question of what vowels to use disappears. Note that Moses cited an abnormal slowness of speech as an impediment to his communication capabilities.

The development of languages by the corruption of an original language is shown to have occurred at the Shinar/Tower-of-Babel incident. Perhaps a general slowing of the lingual skills was a part of this. Slipping extra letters into words would seem to be a bad practice, especially if the language is based on a logical construction. One can see this looking at Strong's Concordance. There we see some very strange representations of phonological application. ברא is rendered "baw-raw'". קוה is presented as "kaw-vaw'". Comparing the two it is clear that the introduced "vowels" have taken over, and the original letters have very little to do with the suggested pronunciation. Not a single letter is reproduced in the original Hebrew, yet they are represented in English as overwhelmingly similar, the correlation being 2/3. When we slowly pronounce words we leave open opportunity to corrupt the word with invisible "consonants" disguised as "vowels". Long O-s, for instance, cannot happen without a "w" to finish them off. It's a sleight of hand. A deception. It's not accurate, and it's not honest.

This is not a case of pedantically insisting that we pronounce Hebrew exactly as Moses did. Evidently even he was not the best at reproducing pronunciation in his day, as he attested for our benefit. Rather, we only need care to be consistent. The letters are symbols which utterly lose their effectiveness when they become variable(s). Indeed, the logical essence of phonological letters is consistent repeat-ability. Adding to, and taking away from the original text is forbidden in the text itself. It obfuscates the logic of the text, yet it was done; ostensibly to accommodate the pronunciation preferences of a group of people who had the hubris to assume improvement of the original text.

Through the process of time, the confusion of language has continued. We are expected by experts to accept that some letters are silent, different letters can have the same sounds, and same letters can have different sounds. So the experts are insisting that we embrace the confusion, as if that is the path to understanding. It appears that venerating "the Sages" is paramount, and ancestor worship trumps rightly dividing the word of God. To the experts, that is.

Vowels are an important part of the poorly designed and terribly inconsistent accident that is the English language, but it's a bad idea to engineer them into the language by which God chose to reveal Himself to us. It appears the Masoretes, thousands of years after Babel and thousands of years after Moses, were doing what they had to in an effort to stop changing their hopelessly morphed oral traditions. Why should we be slaves to their constraints when our motives are completely different?