To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: Mesha Stele and the Tetragrammaton
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 03:05:09 +0100
> Just how do you pronounce Ieoua, iahu, iehu, etc.
Perhaps, Joe, I might try with an IPA (International Phonetic Association)
approach:
/je'owa/ (where the apostrophe here represents a stress
in the following syllable);
/'ja:hu/
/'je:hu/
A syllabic initial "i" followed by other vowels is usually a velar glide in
the orthography of those languages that don't have a specific letter for it,
as in Italian. The users often don't realise that it is a consonant, though
they invariably produce one. English people usually use a "y" as in "yacht",
but even that can be a vowel as in "syzygy". The same logic is true for the
"u" in Ieoua, which is a bilabial glide and would be a "w" in English
orthography.
Ian
(This is an example of where a syllabic initial "i" followed by other vowels
is not a velar glide. It gets pronounced /@j@n/ by some Australians, where
the @ is a schwa, rather than /ij@n/.)
Re: Mesha Stele and the Tetragrammaton
, (continued)