RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Is it to be pronounced "waw" or "vav?"
Vav is easier to read and has a better cadence, yet I say "Yahweh."
Vav is easier to read and has a better cadence, yet I say "Yahweh."
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The emeritus professor at Cambridge, J.A. Emerton (born 1928) spoke of the "wow-consecutive" in my days there, however his younger counterparts (H.G.M. Williamson and R.P Gordon) called it a "vav consecutive". The w sound used to be conventional but has been overtaken by the v sound, in line with Modern Hebrew.I say “vav.”
Do you still use that terminology or have you switched to something like the "narrative-form" or some such?The emeritus professor at Cambridge, J.A. Emerton (born 1928) spoke of the "wow-consecutive" in my days there, however his younger counterparts (H.G.M. Williamson and R.P Gordon) called it a "vav consecutive". The w sound used to be conventional but has been overtaken by the v sound, in line with Modern Hebrew.
The emeritus professor at Cambridge, J.A. Emerton (born 1928) spoke of the "wow-consecutive" in my days there, however his younger counterparts (H.G.M. Williamson and R.P Gordon) called it a "vav consecutive". The w sound used to be conventional but has been overtaken by the v sound, in line with Modern Hebrew.
the slight "g" sound in the ayin
Like most things in languages, it's a bit more complicated than that. 'ayin actually comes from two different letters with different sounds. One has something of a "g" to it, as may be seen by place names like Gaza and Gomorrah (both of which begin with an 'ayin). But the other was more silent. It's probably helpful to think of the silent sound as a glottal stop, like a Cockney's "bottle", in which the t's disappear into a silent pause.I wish I had been told to use that -- I about made a mess in my car practicing what I was told was "the sound of incipient vomiting".
I defer to more expert grammarians than myself, but I don't think it's that straightforward. Not every name that begins with an 'ayin gets the "g" sound in the Septuagint - King Omri, for example.That's a helpful comparison, Dr. Duguid, thank you. Is it possible to generalize and say that at the beginning of a word there should be a "g" tinge and within a word more of the glottal stop?
Ayin is a voiced pharyngeal fricative.