Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>You never know, perhaps someone out there pronounces "ouest" /uest/, but 
>I've never 
>heard it!

Just to follow up...

The distinction between /w/ and /u/ is sometimes not made in modern 
languages, as 
it seems in both French and Italian. Working with Italians, I have often said 
that 
the letter "u" can be used as a consonant and they swear to me I'm wrong, so 
I 
point out words like "uomo" (man) and "uova" (egg) and ask if they really 
pronounce 
these words as written, giving pronunciation examples. It takes a while.

The same is true for /j/ and /i/. In Italian "yesterday" is "ieri" in which 
the 
first "i" is a /j/, just as in the French "hier" (also think of "hierarchie" 
or 
"hiatus").

(How does this relate to BH? It's just the same story of waw and yod being 
used 
both as consonants and, where necessary, as vowels.)


Ian