The Strange Case of Missing Vowels

I couldn’t find it anywhere, I flipped through the pages once again. As the ink cradled the bleached paper, the truth flashed before my eyes in the form of bony alphabets –the vowels were missing. Where were the vowels? Had someone stolen them from the Torah? Or had they unanimously decided to take a day off, leaving the shriveled consonants to deal with their fate? Was the Torah always like this- a skeletal form lacking the gorgeous aplomb of the vowels? As I delved deeper into the mystery of this astonishing disappearance, history and culture unfurled before me like the dried leaves that fall on an autumnal evening….

Centuries ago, in an era very similar to ours and yet very different, a startling invention was made which revolutionized human life in ways unimagined. The inventors were none other than simple traders in the region of Semite and the invention was none other than that of the Phoenician alphabet. It was huge leap from the old fashioned ideograms of hieroglyphs and the decaying Akkadian syllabaries. It was the first time anyone ever thought of separating the vowel from the consonant. It was the first time someone ushered in the dawn of phonemic representation in language. But, of course the Semites didn’t invent the Phoenician script for the attainment of success in the realm of abstract. Their motives were far more earthly, far more worldly, far more practical; the Phoenician script with its separate consonants was an easy way out of the perplexing knot of the hieroglyphs. Being traders they certainly valued economy; economy of time as well as space and thus, the vowels were most conscientiously left out. Although exiled from the world of writing the vowels continued to tyrannize the world of speech.

Hebrew which divorced itself from Aramaic, did not take the effort of inventing its own script. Instead, it very effortlessly adopted the Semitic system of alphabet representation. Thus, the missing vowel representations in the Torah, could easily be attributed to the remarkable character of its mother script. Is that really the end of the story? Could the vowels have been sadly neglected merely in order to save writing materials and time? Hebrew refused to accept that as a justification for its linguistically wayward actions. It had a far more enlightened explanation for the tiny imperceptible glitches in its systems. An explanation which fitted  perfectly with its piously religious character. Thus, the lack of vowels in Hebrew has been appertained to a deeper, far more profound cause... an idea which stems from religion itself.

Hebrew script

Although the Torah seemingly lacked vowels, it was not really devoid of them. The vowels encircled the Torah, like a semi-visible halo. It was believed that the nekudot (vowels) were given by God to Moses on mount Sinai and were passed down orally from leader to leader as a part of the oral Torah, until they reached Ezra the Scribe, who revealed and taught them to the Jewish nation. The Hebrew vowels were not merely materialistic representatives of phonemes, they served a far greater purpose;Just like the Hebrew alphabet the vowels were Holy.

The Jews drew a compelling metaphor on the canvas of their phonemes. It was believed that the consonants in a word were like its body whereas the vowels were the soul. The soul which remains masked and unseen, exercises power over the body. A power that animates and adds meaning to the body. Similarly, the vowels in Hebrew accentuate and augment the meaning contained in a consonant. Hebrew is a triconsonantal language. It comprises of words containing a group of three consonants which have a root meaning. It is only through the inflection of the vowels, that both the meaning and the pronunciation of a word containing the same root consonants changes. for instance- KTB is a triconsonantal root which refers to idea of writing. The usage of vowels gives us a variety of words which make use of the base root while having different meanings such as -kāṯaḇtiכתבתי "I wrote",kattāḇā כתבה "article" ,miḵtāḇ מכתב "postal letter" ,miḵtāḇā מכתבה "writing desk.

Hence, the vowels breathe life into the words. The Torah is not merely a text, rather, it is believed to be an interactive medium wherein the reader at once reads and writes the text. one  breathes life into the text through the  the vowels one uses. The ambiguous use of vowels heightens the mysteries contained in the Torah. It is through this ambiguous usage of vowels, that the rabbis derive layers of meaning from a single unidimensional word. Contrasting the actually vocalized version of the word with other possible pronunciations, unleashes a whole new world in the realm of meaning. the Hebrew vowel transcends beyond it’s practical and metaphysical importance. It pushes forth to emerge as something greater- a crossroad in the fragments of meaning, a contingency…a possibility!

This very fluctuating, moody vowel added a tinge of fluidity to the personality of spoken Hebrew. But this fluidity of Hebrew and its notorious pronunciations had international implications. While the scholars of Hebrew gravely shook their heads and argued over the pronunciations of words, the Bible and its teaching were swept across the Mediterranean by the sly hand of Phoenician. The Mediterranean nations had their own interpretations about the behavior of the mischievous Hebrew vowel. This led to a general fluidity and fluctuation in the pronunciation of the Bible, leading to various versions of it.

However, one must give credit to rabbis for trying to contain the deviant behavior of their vowel. One of the remedial measure surfaced in the form of annotations made by Masoretes. During the early ninth and tenth century, the Masoretes perfected a point system called nikkud, which helped in a relatively standardized interpretation of the Torah. Despite being linguistically good Samaritans, the Masoretes were accused of treason against the original Hebrew scripture by many a person. The accusation stemmed from the belief that the Masoretes had made annotations on basis of their understanding of the pronunciation of words which may not necessarily be consistent with the actual pronunciations. Thus, the wisdom of the deed still remains a topic of debate in the world of alphabet.

Just as it had emerged out of nowhere, the strange case of the missing vowels reached a sudden, unlooked for conclusion. As I sipped my steaming cup of tea, I realized what it really meant. The marvels that I had witnessed in the world of language went beyond language itself. They were symbolic of a society- not just the one that had invented them, but, a society which continues to exist at every phase of human existence. A society just like ours, adapting and adjusting to the churn of change and evolution!

 

Written by:

Saniya Pathare- SYBA