Probie
Okay, I need to be careful here because I've certainly been guilty in the past of having a little bit of knowledge and then being destructive with it. So please take that as a disclaimer along with stones & glass houses...
...but there are parts that drive me nuts! Example:
Yes to your main point Snuffin and a big resounding NO to how you got there.
First off, sir, there are no Hebrew letters for vowel, they're all consanents. Aleph transliterates into English as a soft breath mark and Ayin into a rough/hard breath mark like ' (Aleph curves toward right, bows out towards left and Ayin does the reverse). What they are is Matres Lectionis or "mother of the language" that gave Hebrew speakers cultural cues of where to insert vowels.
An Aleph (and maybe Ayin too) tends to draw an "a" and sometimes "e" class vowel, a Vav (not "Vau" - see below) draws a "o" class vowel, a Sere draws an "e" or "i" class vowel, and a He at the end of a word (far left as it's right to left) tends to let the speaker/reader know to insert a long "a" class vowel right before it. As the biblical corpus expanded, the final He (as it has come to be called) started to drop off much like the silent "e" from middle to contemporary English as languages seek to simplify throughout time (e.g., soon "through" will be "thru").
Now in the Middle Ages a group of Jewish scholars were very concerned about the continuation of reading Hebrew for future religious studies. Hebrew and its kissing cousin Aramaic (FYI: all contemporary Hebrew characters you see are actually Aramaic block characters, not Hebrew - from the street signs in Israel to the Biblica Hebraicia Stuttgartensia or just "BHS" for short [spelling? - that's the standard/"official" Biblical Hebrew text used from Stuttgart in Germany, again "spelling" on Stuttgart - sorry!
] used by atheistic/secular, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars.
So "God" is actually 'l in transliteration (see below why the right to left goes now into left to right) from Hebrew. The Aleph draws an "a" class vowel, but that's usually for verbs becasue Hebrew forms it nouns from verbs (English does the opposite) and then transforms into an "e" class vowel AND it is highly probable this word is actually a loan word from a surrounding culture so borrowed in the first place, and becomes this e'l and is pronounced "ale" like the drink. The word "no, not" (nothing is a real stretch with this word) is actually l'o as it draws an "o" class vowel and this little word rarely stands alone and is usually hypenated to another noun. So it could be like this transliterated, l'o-e'l for "not god."
But to say that e'l is the mirror opposite of l'o is really bad. It's like saying a place is called "Mansville" because it's a "village of men." The technical term is an eytmological fallacy, or that the roots that make up a word somehow define it. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Best to stick to the number system where the consonants can mirror each other or reverse or the math.
Secondly, Hebrew as a language of technicality and law, therefore it is religious about requiring a uniform transliteration system. "Transliteraion" is the term for keeping the word looking like it did in the original language, but making those characters into English characters versus a translation.
Example: lmg (right to left here) becomes "gamel" in transliteration and then "camel" in translation, like for our 2/High Priestess. There are no upper/lower class Hebrew letters like Greek & English, so really everything is lower case from "samuel" to "goat" to "god" to "yhvh" (Jehovah - also really bad too from a transliteration system perspective too, see below).
However, to switch up your transliteration mid-stream - and even in the middle of a word! - is really bad form. So make your choice, and remember the vowels are shown in the Masoertic texts like the BHS as little dots all around the consonants or as lines underneath them. So there's only a few cases for making one into a vowel and these are for the very strong classed vowels like: holem-vav (long "o"), sere-yod (long "e"), hiriq-yod (long "i"), and holem-qibbus (I believe it's called, but it is a long "u") .
The letter you call "vau" transliterates as this: vv or ww. That because it is vav-vav right next to other like "JJ." You wouldn't call one of those "J" and the other "U" would you? No, they'd have to be the same. So most Hebrew scholars (which I am not, so I follow their lead) call it "vav" with some dissenters calling it "waw" instead. Pick one or the other: v or w, but not "u" unless it's a holem-vav which is highly unlikely. Maybe they believed that around Golden Dawn time, but since then it has fallen into disfavor. Say "vau" to someone who knows there stuff and they'll go "come again?"
Why not "Jehovah" for those who want to know:
The term (left to right) for the tetragrammatron (spelling?) is this: yhvh. The "J" most likely was meant to be seen like a German "j" when you say "yah" for "yes" and not "jah." So problem #1. Problem #2 is the difference between the qere and the ketiv. The first one means "it is called," as in read in the synogogue, and the second one means "it is written." So the Masoretes would never correct the Hebrew text, too sacred - even the misspells! - but they made up the vowel pointing system. Now you can't say "G-d" if you're a good Jew because if you misspeak you broke the 3rd Commandment.
So even today good Jews (well, some of them...well...you'll see this sometimes even today, then you'll look for an "o" in other words to see if you're seeing things or [in the old days] to check to see if their typewriter's "o" key was broken - just drove Gentile professors nuts until they figured this was what was going on) will spell "God" as "G-d" in their writings.
So the Masoretes came up with an ingeniuous idea, take the word they could say for "G-d" and take it's vowel pointing system and impose that on yhvh to save the day. That word? It's "adonai" and gives these vowels: long "a", long "o", and then either a long "a" OR a long "e/i" - but not both. So now the reader could see it was yhvh, but would say "adonai" instead FTW. When I'm around an unknown crowd, I say "Adonai" out of respect and it's a nice, respectful practice to take up. No reason to offend unintentionally.
So we get the "y" or "j" from the Yod, then the "a" from the vowel point, then an "h" from the He, and then...hell breaks loose. You get to do one or the other, but not both and "Jehovah" does both. You either get a holem-vav, but then no "v" for you as the holem-vav sucks up the vav for the long "o" or you ignore the "o" (called simply a "holem") and go with the vav as just a "v." But the dot is clearly on top of the vav, so you can't get both (normally in "adonai" it's over the dalath/dalet, so no worries - you get your "d" and "o").
So you get "Jahoah" if you go with the holem-vav - but you can't do that because those breath consonants of Aleph and Ayin HAVE to be there to stick two vowels next to each other (Hebrew's very dogmatic about this!). The other option is to fight the Masoretes and their pointing (a common tactic used by scholars fo all stripes & levels of devotion) and keep you "v" but lose your "o". Then you get "jahvah," but then most scholars drop "j" for "y" and then argue (again) against the pointing to scrap the "a" and the "i" in favor of a sere-yod (certainly allowable and defendable) to get a long "e" and end up with "yahveh" or "yahweh."
And for all my Jewish sisters and brothers out there, I'm saying "Adonai" okay?
...but there are parts that drive me nuts! Example:
Snuffin (2007) said:
Yes to your main point Snuffin and a big resounding NO to how you got there.
First off, sir, there are no Hebrew letters for vowel, they're all consanents. Aleph transliterates into English as a soft breath mark and Ayin into a rough/hard breath mark like ' (Aleph curves toward right, bows out towards left and Ayin does the reverse). What they are is Matres Lectionis or "mother of the language" that gave Hebrew speakers cultural cues of where to insert vowels.
An Aleph (and maybe Ayin too) tends to draw an "a" and sometimes "e" class vowel, a Vav (not "Vau" - see below) draws a "o" class vowel, a Sere draws an "e" or "i" class vowel, and a He at the end of a word (far left as it's right to left) tends to let the speaker/reader know to insert a long "a" class vowel right before it. As the biblical corpus expanded, the final He (as it has come to be called) started to drop off much like the silent "e" from middle to contemporary English as languages seek to simplify throughout time (e.g., soon "through" will be "thru").
Now in the Middle Ages a group of Jewish scholars were very concerned about the continuation of reading Hebrew for future religious studies. Hebrew and its kissing cousin Aramaic (FYI: all contemporary Hebrew characters you see are actually Aramaic block characters, not Hebrew - from the street signs in Israel to the Biblica Hebraicia Stuttgartensia or just "BHS" for short [spelling? - that's the standard/"official" Biblical Hebrew text used from Stuttgart in Germany, again "spelling" on Stuttgart - sorry!
] used by atheistic/secular, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars.So "God" is actually 'l in transliteration (see below why the right to left goes now into left to right) from Hebrew. The Aleph draws an "a" class vowel, but that's usually for verbs becasue Hebrew forms it nouns from verbs (English does the opposite) and then transforms into an "e" class vowel AND it is highly probable this word is actually a loan word from a surrounding culture so borrowed in the first place, and becomes this e'l and is pronounced "ale" like the drink. The word "no, not" (nothing is a real stretch with this word) is actually l'o as it draws an "o" class vowel and this little word rarely stands alone and is usually hypenated to another noun. So it could be like this transliterated, l'o-e'l for "not god."
But to say that e'l is the mirror opposite of l'o is really bad. It's like saying a place is called "Mansville" because it's a "village of men." The technical term is an eytmological fallacy, or that the roots that make up a word somehow define it. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Best to stick to the number system where the consonants can mirror each other or reverse or the math.
Secondly, Hebrew as a language of technicality and law, therefore it is religious about requiring a uniform transliteration system. "Transliteraion" is the term for keeping the word looking like it did in the original language, but making those characters into English characters versus a translation.
Example: lmg (right to left here) becomes "gamel" in transliteration and then "camel" in translation, like for our 2/High Priestess. There are no upper/lower class Hebrew letters like Greek & English, so really everything is lower case from "samuel" to "goat" to "god" to "yhvh" (Jehovah - also really bad too from a transliteration system perspective too, see below).
However, to switch up your transliteration mid-stream - and even in the middle of a word! - is really bad form. So make your choice, and remember the vowels are shown in the Masoertic texts like the BHS as little dots all around the consonants or as lines underneath them. So there's only a few cases for making one into a vowel and these are for the very strong classed vowels like: holem-vav (long "o"), sere-yod (long "e"), hiriq-yod (long "i"), and holem-qibbus (I believe it's called, but it is a long "u") .
The letter you call "vau" transliterates as this: vv or ww. That because it is vav-vav right next to other like "JJ." You wouldn't call one of those "J" and the other "U" would you? No, they'd have to be the same. So most Hebrew scholars (which I am not, so I follow their lead) call it "vav" with some dissenters calling it "waw" instead. Pick one or the other: v or w, but not "u" unless it's a holem-vav which is highly unlikely. Maybe they believed that around Golden Dawn time, but since then it has fallen into disfavor. Say "vau" to someone who knows there stuff and they'll go "come again?"
Why not "Jehovah" for those who want to know:
The term (left to right) for the tetragrammatron (spelling?) is this: yhvh. The "J" most likely was meant to be seen like a German "j" when you say "yah" for "yes" and not "jah." So problem #1. Problem #2 is the difference between the qere and the ketiv. The first one means "it is called," as in read in the synogogue, and the second one means "it is written." So the Masoretes would never correct the Hebrew text, too sacred - even the misspells! - but they made up the vowel pointing system. Now you can't say "G-d" if you're a good Jew because if you misspeak you broke the 3rd Commandment.
So even today good Jews (well, some of them...well...you'll see this sometimes even today, then you'll look for an "o" in other words to see if you're seeing things or [in the old days] to check to see if their typewriter's "o" key was broken - just drove Gentile professors nuts until they figured this was what was going on) will spell "God" as "G-d" in their writings.
So the Masoretes came up with an ingeniuous idea, take the word they could say for "G-d" and take it's vowel pointing system and impose that on yhvh to save the day. That word? It's "adonai" and gives these vowels: long "a", long "o", and then either a long "a" OR a long "e/i" - but not both. So now the reader could see it was yhvh, but would say "adonai" instead FTW. When I'm around an unknown crowd, I say "Adonai" out of respect and it's a nice, respectful practice to take up. No reason to offend unintentionally.
So we get the "y" or "j" from the Yod, then the "a" from the vowel point, then an "h" from the He, and then...hell breaks loose. You get to do one or the other, but not both and "Jehovah" does both. You either get a holem-vav, but then no "v" for you as the holem-vav sucks up the vav for the long "o" or you ignore the "o" (called simply a "holem") and go with the vav as just a "v." But the dot is clearly on top of the vav, so you can't get both (normally in "adonai" it's over the dalath/dalet, so no worries - you get your "d" and "o").
So you get "Jahoah" if you go with the holem-vav - but you can't do that because those breath consonants of Aleph and Ayin HAVE to be there to stick two vowels next to each other (Hebrew's very dogmatic about this!). The other option is to fight the Masoretes and their pointing (a common tactic used by scholars fo all stripes & levels of devotion) and keep you "v" but lose your "o". Then you get "jahvah," but then most scholars drop "j" for "y" and then argue (again) against the pointing to scrap the "a" and the "i" in favor of a sere-yod (certainly allowable and defendable) to get a long "e" and end up with "yahveh" or "yahweh."
And for all my Jewish sisters and brothers out there, I'm saying "Adonai" okay?
