I have reached the chapters in my Biblical Hebrew book which deal with irregular verbs; these appear to compose the bulk of the book. Now I can see why the rabbis felt the need to put vowel points; the “tense” can remain recognizable while the correct pronunciation is still hidden, the opposite of European languages. That semantic transparency is also one of the beauties of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the study of which I have been neglecting while I concentrate on Hebrew.
As I have progressed in Hebrew, I have discovered the underlying reason why the Semitic languages are described as “heavily lexicalized”, i.e., you have to know the language well to read it. The interwoven structure of consonants and vowels makes unnecessary (at least for the fluent L1 speaker) many of the prefixes, suffixes, and qualifiers found in other languages. There is no grace period in which the foreigner with stumbling tongue can recognize affixes by which he may find meaning. I suppose I should be glad I am not studying Arabic, with its plethora of broken plurals and guttural consonants that are actually pronounced.
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