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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] YHWH pronunciation

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Vadim Cherny <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org, "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] YHWH pronunciation
  • Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 00:43:20 +0100

On 01/08/2005 19:01, Vadim Cherny wrote:

RE: [b-hebrew] YHWH pronunciationExactly. In your examples, he is not lost,
but somehow transliterated. One such transliteration is assimilation
ha-alpha. In Iao, the second he is lost completely. Peter, as I understand
him, suggests that the first he is also lost completely, though much weaker
schwa survived as aleph.


You misunderstand me. I do not hold that there was any schwa in the divine name, although there is (at least in the Masoretic pronunciation) in the reduced (cf. construct) form used as a prefix in theophoric names. Anyway, I dispute that schwa is "much weaker" than he. It is very hard to quantify the strength of a sound, but certainly to me, subjectively, any vowel sound is stronger than an "h", which is in many ways the weakest sound at least in the English language. It is well known that the sound "h" disappears in many European languages e.g. French and Spanish, also in Greek when not word initial - and in later Greek which explains why Russian forms of Greek names are always missing any "h", and never have a "g" where there was a Greek "h" - except perhaps for a few secondary borrowings via German, English etc like "gorizont".

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



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