Paleo-Hebrew

[Gregory Matthews]

One of our members has referenced Paleo-Hebrew [Note: It has variant spellings.]  multiple times.  I have decided that it might be of interest to discuss this in further detail.

Languages:  Linguists tell us that there may presently be from 6,000 to 7,000 languages that presently exist in the world.  Languages are spoken and they may be written.  In actual fact, the majority of languages do not exist in a written forum, outside of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

When languages are written, they may be written is some sort of a symbolic script.   Hieroglyphs are one type of script that is used to write a language.  They may also be written in an alphabetic script.  The English language is written in what is called the Latin/Roman script/alphabet.  But, that script is not a language. 

The Roman/Latin alphabet is used to write multiple languages.  The Herew alphabet is used to write some 18 languages.  

Script:  The student of Biblical Hebrew will study Hebrew that is written with the Aramaic Square Script (ASS).    ASS is different from the Paleo-Hebrew that our forum friend has mentioned.  They are two different scripts.  But, both have been used to write Hebrew, which is a language.

If you would like to learn more about the relationships between the Hebrew language and other languages of the world I provide the following;

*  The   Afro-Asiatic family of languages includes about 300 languages that exist today and are divided into six (6) subfamilies.

*  One sub-family is the Semitic subfamily. 

*  Included in the Semitic subfamily is the Hebrew language.

 

If you wish to learn more about Paleo-Hebrew, click on the link below.  NOTE:  That link does not have most of the information that I provided above.

Paleo-Hebrew alphabet - Wikipedia

[Gregory Matthews]

For those interested in the Hebrew alphabet, there is a wealth of information available  on the Internet  One source is the Jewish Encyclopedia.  While not specific to Paleo-Hebrew, one might be interested in clicking on:

https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1308-alphabet-the-hebrew#anchor1