also telephone icon

Someone · on July 6, 2020

And ox head (https://www.britannica.com/topic/A-letter)

Who knows what these things will look like a few millennia from now.

efreak · on July 7, 2020

Any idea what this quote means?

> In the Phoenician alphabet the letter stood for a species of breathing, as vowels were not represented in the Semitic alphabets.

What exactly is a _species of breathing_?

culturestate · on July 7, 2020

It's a pronunciation reference. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_breathing and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_breathing

c3534l · on July 7, 2020

Some kind of typo or misunderstanding. "A" represented the glottal stop, not the vowel sound. Maybe the person who wrote that article was struggling to explain what a glottal stop was? Either way, its nonsense.

dredmorbius · on July 7, 2020

Reference?

bbarnett · on July 6, 2020

Nice link, great info, thanks.