# Correct pronunciation of the Lord's Name



## Peairtach (Dec 4, 2011)

Would the proper pronunciation of Yahweh in Hebrew be Yach-veh rather than Yah-weh?


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## Wayne (Dec 4, 2011)

No. The letters comprising the tetragrammaton are transliterated *Y*od - *H*ey - *V*av - *H*ey.
Thus YHWH or YHVH. 

To be pronounced Yach-vey, that second letter would need to be _Het_, the seventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
That seventh letter (Het) looks a lot like the fifth letter (Hey)


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## athanatos (Dec 5, 2011)

What I was going to say has already been said. So, I'll go further.

We are unsure how the "WH" is supposed to be pronounced... whether a Wah or a Weh ... Hey tends to like a-class vowels ('specially on the end), but that's not definitive. If we take it as a drift from the imperfect 3rd-person, masculine singular of "to be" (e.g. "I AM who I AM") (i.e. yih-yeh), with the yod being historically a vav instead of a yod, then it would be yih-veh... We're pretty sure it is Yah, not Yih, since we have other names with YHWH included, like Eli*jah*, hallelu*jah*, etc.

Thus, we've got a good guess that it is Yah-Veh ... accent on the last syllable


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## Peairtach (Dec 5, 2011)

Thanks for that.

So the letter _Het_ is the one that produces a guttural sound, as in _loch_ (for the English _lake_) in the Gaelic.

Just to pedantically clarify - the _W_ in Yahweh should be pronounced more like a _V_ than a _W_?


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## Wayne (Dec 5, 2011)

Reminds me of the old Borscht-belt joke about the tourist asking a native:

"Is it pronounced 'Hawaii' or "Havai-i"

"It's 'Havai-i' "

"Thank you!"

"You're velcome"

http://instantrimshot.com/


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## athanatos (Dec 5, 2011)

Peairtach said:


> Thanks for that.
> 
> So the letter _Het_ is the one that produces a guttural sound, as in _loch_ (for the English _lake_) in the Gaelic.
> 
> Just to pedantically clarify - the _W_ in Yahweh should be pronounced more like a _V_ than a _W_?


I think there are different traditions of pronunciation/schools of thought on this. For example, we learned the Waw to be pronounced as a Vav at Westminster Theological Seminary; but my brother, who goes to Dallas Theological Seminary, was taught that the Waw is pronounced like a Wow/Wau ...

David -> dah veed or dah weed

I think the voiced labial-dental fricative (v) is the most aesthetically appealing, but historically the waw is not only a consonant, but also a vowel: the O and the U. The "holem-waw" is a long O, so when one comes to the word y*ow*m (day) it makes sense that the vowel-waw is like a W there. How much more the U/sureq! The sureq (oo sound) is a long U, so when one comes to a word sh*u*b/sh*u*v (to turn back, return) it becomes obvious that it sounds just like a double-u does at the start of a *w*ord (w - a "voice labial-velar approximant").


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