example of what is now called redundancy in languages 
     and code; one of the difficulties in deciphering the 
     Rosetta stone lay in the fact that a polysyllabic word 
     might give each syllable not one symbol but a number of 
     different ones in common use, in order that the word 
     should be thoroughly understood. (The effect when 
     literally transcribed into English is one of stuttering.) On 
     the other hand the Semitic languages show an early 
     recognition of redundancy. Ancient Hebrew script had no 
     vowels: modern Hebrew has none, too, except in children’s 
     books. Many other ancient scripts have no vowels. 
     Slavonic Russian went a step further in condensation: in 
     religious texts, commonly used words were abbreviated to 
     a few letters, in a manner similar to our present-day use 
     of the ampersand, abbreviations such as lb and the 
     increasing use of initials, e.g., U.S.A., Unesco, O.K.