Hebrew is a phonetic language... the letters of the Hebrew alphabet have a characteristic sound (yes, there are exceptions), and the basic letters of the alphabet are all consonants. The vowel sounds come from additional dots and dashes that are added above, below, and off to the sides of the consonants. I can read Hebrew (because it is phonetic) even though I don't know very many words in the actual language. I therefore marvel when I see Hebrew bible scholars reading biblical Hebrew, which when written, does not contain any of the vowels.

Imagine what it would be like to read English without vowels (mgn wht t wld b lk t rd nglsh wtht vwls)

I don't do very well under these circumstances, and there is a class of puzzles that deals with trying to decipher entire sentences without the benefit of vowels or word breaks. (mgnwhttwldblktrdnglshwthtvwls).

Today's puzzle would have stumped me like all the rest, were it not for the fact that it's the 4th of July: SFRMGVMLBRTRGVMDTH - is the very first one of these puzzles I've ever been able to solve.