I feel like this particular chapter of the book is harder to have deep thoughts about, just because of the way it is. I’m not sure what inspired or challenged me, or what might need further class discussion. However, I did find this chapter fairly interesting. I find it so strange that the Hebrew language didn’t have vowels and that they weren’t introduced into the written form until the fifth century with the Masoretes. I just can’t really understand why the Hebrew people wouldn’t have done it for themselves given the likelihood of their messages being misinterpreted. I feel as though when the written form of their language was first invented that they would have thought of that themselves. It just seems odd to me. I have been learning in my Cultural Anthropology class that we can’t always assume that everyone around the world and across time will do things exactly the way we do and that we shouldn’t pass judgement until we better understand context and such, which I suppose could be applied to this issue. Still, however, I feel as though understanding what was intended would have been important to anyone at any time.
It also seems to me that to decide to create a written language where you leave out certain parts of speech would be a very strange way to decide to record the spoken word. I feel as though you would have to already have a language and then decide to purposefully leave out vowels for efficiency’s sake or something of the like to come up with a language without vowels. It seems backwards to me.
Perhaps, however, this way of only writing down the gist of what was said comes from, as stated in the book, the Jew’s tendency to only really care about the overall message of texts instead of details. Still, however, I feel as though it’s a lot more work to attempt to figure out what is being said than to just write it all down.
Caroline's Encounters 