'Try it with a hey,' the tutor would say. Or 'try it with a nun!.
I would look up each and every word not understanding why I needed a hey when there was clearly no hey in the word.
Then, after several days we were asked to learn a Rashi.Again my head was raised, this time a little bit less timidly.
'Excuse me, but I can read print and I can read script, but this is not Hebrew.'
'Oh,' the tutor informed me, 'here is a piece of paper.On this paper you will find the Hebrew alphabet and you will find Rashi script.You can tell the differences..."
Sites to See: Real Writers
The Writers Cafe.org
Aharon Moshe's Notebook
1 comment:
>> 'Oh,' the tutor informed me, 'here is a piece of paper. On this paper you will find the Hebrew alphabet and you will find Rashi script. You can tell the differences..." <<
So, the question is: Why do some Rashi letters look very different when most Rashi letter look very similar to the standard square Assyrian (Asheris meruba) script?
And the answer is: Because when the so-called Rashi script was formed, the letters that look very different had a different sound, actually an older sound. Ergo, Rashi script existed before the Asheris meruba script was designed.
The Rashi aleph looks like a het + chupchik because the ancient aleph had a het-like CHS/GGT-sound.
The Rashi shin looks like a tet turned 90 degrees clockwise because the ancient shin had a dental D/T-sound. ShoR (ox) had been ToR as in Taurus. SheN (tooth) had been TeN, as in TaN = jackal and TaNiN = crocodile, both of which are "toothy" animals.
Today, the standard hand-written shin still looks like a closed tet.
Ciao,
Israel "izzy" Cohen
cohen.izzy@gmail.com
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/
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