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#129536 07/10/04 06:02 PM
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of troy Offline OP
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there is, too, a NT biblical proverb about 'every jot and tittle'

in hebrew, (or is it old aramaic?) vowels were not always included in the text. the equivient of H had a H(a) sound, so the name hannah, was written hnnh. --and 'everyone' understood it to be Hannah--but as we have seen with the 'mispelled words' thread (some months ago, human minds tend to 'fill in' and read things. so we ]unerdsantnd the word in blue to be be understand. --BUT there were words that we all 'misread'--and once we did, it was hard to read it correctly.

you can see how this kind of mistake, over time, could play havoc with a text!

Jots and tittles are used in hewbrew(armamic?) to make clear the 'correct' word-- by indicating the correct place to put the vowels, and which vowel to use.
and i agree, i's and t's is clearer than is and ts!


#129537 07/10/04 07:39 PM
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If I remember my Vos Savant aright the dot over the i is but one version of a tittle. Using Jackie's analogy, the tittle is the whisky. The question was "If the double dots are called a dieresis, what is the single dot over an i called?" Marilyn said it was a tittle and said the the dieresis was also a tittle, as were accents of both stripes, macrons, and circumflexes. She did not offer a term unique to the dot over the i.

Edit: Thanks again to Dr Bill for catching, in this case, a flat out misspelling. Can't plead typo on this one. It's dieresis or diæresis, not diaresis.

#129538 07/10/04 09:38 PM
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in hebrew, (or is it old aramaic?) vowels were not always included in the text.

Actually, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic do not normally indicate vowels, unless, as you say for clarity (e.g., in the Tanakh, or Old Testament) or for pedagogy (children's books, dictionaries). The term in Hebrew is niqodah 'point, prick' (plural niqodot). (Also, Hieroglyphic Egyptian did not indicate vowels.)


#129539 07/11/04 02:05 PM
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She did not offer a term unique to the dot over the i.

I thought the dot over the i was called a dot. BTW, Turkish has both dotted and dotless is. The capital dotted i is cute.


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