3. The _Hebrew alphabet_, like all the other Shemitic alphabets--with the exception of the AEthiopic, which is _syllabic_, the vowels being indicated by certain modifications in the forms of the consonants--was originally a skeleton alphabet, an alphabet of consonants, in which, however, certain letters, called vowel-letters, performed in a measure the office of vowels. The Shemite did not separate the vowels from the consonants, and express them, as we do, by separate signs. He rather conceived of the vowels as inhering in the consonants--as modifications in the utterance of the consonants, which the reader could make for himself. Various particulars in respect to the pronunciation of certain consonants were, in like manner, left to the reader's own knowledge. For example, the three Hebrew letters, [Hebrew: sh], _sh_; [Hebrew: m], _m_; [Hebrew: r], _r_, ([Hebrew: shmr], to be read from right to left,) might be pronounced, _shamar_, _he kept_; _shemor_, _keep thou_; _shomer_, _keeping_--the reader determining from the connection which of these forms should be used, just as we decide in English between the different pronunciations of the word _bow_. As long as the Hebrew remained a living language, that is, the language of the masses of the people, this outline alphabet was sufficient for all practical purposes. The modern Arabs read without difficulty their ordinary books, which omit, in like manner, the signs for the vowels. The regularity of structure which belongs to the Shemitic languages generally, makes this omission less inconvenient for them than a like omission would be for us in our western tongues. 4. During the long Babylonish captivity the mass of the Jewish people, who were born and educated in Babylon and the adjacent regions, adopted of necessity the language of the country; that is, the Aramaean or Chaldee language. After the exile, the Hebrew was indeed spoken and written by the prophets and learned men, but not by the people at large. In Nehemiah 8:8 we are told that "they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." This has been explained by some as meaning simply that they expounded to them the sense. But the more natural meaning is that they _interpreted_ to the people the words read from the law. We find, soon after the captivity at least, the old Hebrew supplanted as a living language among the people at large by the Aramaean or Chaldee. Why not date the change from the latter part of the captivity itself?