VERALL LINGUISTIC CHARACTER Like the larger astrological text O
libro de ma‹ gika in chapter 5 (and mostnon-liturgical Judeo-
Romance writing), diacritic vocalization is used in only
ahandful of words. The use of the four isgenerally more robust
than in O libro de ma‹gika (chapter 5), and with rareexception
only /a/ is left implicit and unspelled, most often in
Arabicloanwords (cf. chapter 3 § 2.4.2). The double-duty of
,representing both plosives as well as the corresponding
spirants isindicated less than consistently by a diacritic
apostrophe (as opposed to does offer the most wide-ranging
adaptation of Hebrewscript for writing Portuguese, in terms of
both orthographic variation andoverall linguistic structure.
While most of these features are discussed inspecific detail in
the commentaries on individual items in § 5, one aspect of
itsadaptation of Hebrew script is worth highlighting in advance.
As noted in the previous chapter (§ 2.3.2), the spelling of
sibilants in Judeo-Portuguese, as in the Roman-letter