Hi, Barry:
The only difference is the presence of a simple shva on the yod of YHWH and
a compound shva (patach hateph) on the initial aleph of Adonai.
When words are lengthened in Hebrew, the vowel in the beginning often
weakens and becomes a shva.
Thus the word for prophet, navi becomes nebiim. The qamatz that stands
under the nun in navi weakens and is replaced with shva, a non-vowel. But since
the combination nun bet is hard to say, the shva takes on a touch of vowel
coloring and become a vocal shva. In practice is it pronounced as an "e".
But it is not that the "a" become an "e" in the plural, rather that the "a"
disappears as the accent in the word shift toward the back in the plural.
Likewise for the word El (God), the initial aleph, takes a sere, a long e
sound. But when el is lengthened into a plural, and becomes elohim, the
accent shifts to the end of the word and the vowel at the beginning of the word
is weakened into a shva.
Further since the first letter of elohim is aleph, it follows special rules
for the gutterals, (Gesenius explains this) and becomes a seghol hateph,
one of the three special forms of shva used with gutterals. Ditto with
Adonai. Adon has a qamatz under the initial aleph, but Adonai has a compound
shva (patach hateph).
Non gutterals never take compound shvas. Not patach hateph, not seghol
hateph, not qamatz hateph.
Likewise, yod never carries a compound shva. Yod always takes a simple
shva.
The fact that Adonai has a compound shva and the MT texts of YHWH have a
simple shva is not evidence of a different vowel. It is the same vowel,
applied to a different letter.
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