“How many consonants did Hebrew have?

This is a trick question. The answer depends on what you mean by a consonant: spoken or written. Today everybody knows we count 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. But everybody knows, and forgets, that it has 23 consonants: original ?in is still with us. Sorry.

Writing is the only way we can learn what the ancients said, but writing is not language. And as writing reveals, it always conceals something of what it transmits.

There’s no better example of this than the way writing masks the sounds of speech even as it immortalizes them. Since the 19th century, scholars have argued that there were actually 25 sounds in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic: it has been long noted–and best argued by Joshua Blau–that the Septuagint distinguished original ?ayin and ?a in many place names and other transliterations. During the 80′s, Richard Steiner first realized that there was an entire Aramean religious liturgy–really a kind of alternate-universe Hebrew Bible, including a pagan version of Psalm 20 with Baal instead of the Lord, and mourning for an Exile (with the Assyrians around, lots of people got exiled), transcribed into Demotic in Egypt, that distinguished these two consonants.”

Of course, I know that the search for my lover (yes I know where my mother is … is inside of me… I asked for the sake of change… getting some great leads. Thanks, XO E