[b-hebrew] consonant vowel order of )EHYEH & YAHWEH

Peter Kirk peterkirk at qaya.org
Thu Sep 29 14:21:15 EDT 2005


On 27/09/2005 04:39, Read, James C wrote:

>...
> 
>However, try as I might I just cannot humanly pronounce this word with such syllabic separations without 
>inserting a vocal schwa between the two syllables:
> 
>Ya (cv) H: (cv) WeH (cv(c))
> 
>Maybe this is just a limitation of my personal pronuniciation capabilities but the form Yahweh as a bisyllabic word 
>would seem to break the rules of the consonant/vowel structure of b-hebrew words.
>  
>

I think this is because of your limitations as an English speaker, 
because in English the sound [h] is never used at the end of a syllable. 
However, for speakers of some other languages e.g. Arabic which use 
syllable final [h], and for those trained in phonetics like myself, this 
syllable final [h] is not a problem at all. And it doesn't seem to have 
been a problem for Hebrew speakers at one time - but it may have become 
one later, for there is a tendency in later editions of the Hebrew Bible 
to replace silent sheva under he and under other "guttural" consonants 
with a non-silent "composite sheva". But this is certainly not an 
argument that there was originally a vowel in the middle of the divine name.

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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