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Are "Yah" and "Way" common sounds in Hebrew?
I was wondering about the correct pronunciation of YHWH this morning, and it occurred to me that the correct pronunciation of the name might not use any common phonemes in the Hebrew language because they were so careful not to use His name. Let's say, for instance, that the word for cup was "Yah" (I don't know Hebrew, this is just a hypothetical), then wouldn't rabbis say it was forbidden to use the word lest you inadvertently use the Lord's name in vain? Just a thought, but we guess what the correct pronunciation of YHWH would have been, and that makes me wonder.
3 Answers
- SlusLv 71 decade agoFavorite Answer
Israel is mostly a secular country, and it certainly has been so at the times of the revival of Hebrew, so most people don't really care about pronouncing or not pronouncing YHWH or parts of it.
It's true, however, that sometimes even secular people would replace יה or יו with other letters, and the orthodox minority uses apostrophe between these letters when part of a word.
"Yah" is one of the most very common ending for female nouns in Hebrew, and even though the orthodox Jews don't write it, they have no problem pronouncing it.
יְהוָה is actually actually spelled with the vowels something like "yehva" or "yehova" but at school we are told to pronounce this "adonai", for historic reasons of tradition.
One last thing, modern Hebrew does not have the sound "W" at all, and uses the letter ו or "V" to represent "V" and "W", but on the other hand, a sister semitic language, Arabic, has the sound "W" and does not have the sound "V", so it may be that in biblical times they pronounced it "W".
- ?Lv 71 decade ago
The vowels are not used as a sound in the Hebrew language. But the Y is...interesting story about it in unleashing the power of the God code, by Gregg Brandon...just listened to it on CD, but, sorry, don't remember how they say they pronounce the name, said it was a big secret...and they don't know why, but if you pronounce only the vowels you get a sound that vibrates with your DNA and empowers you. Its 4 cd's so I can't explain it all here. it is interesting, though.
