What is the pronunciation of the name "YHWH" (the LORD)? The Hebrew name for God is a four letter word spelled with four Hebrew letters, yud, hey, vav, hey and transliterated into English as YHVH. There are three problems when trying to find the pronunciation of this name. First, Modern Hebrew pronunciation is slightly different than modern ancient Hebrew pronunciation. We do not know for certain how Ancient Hebrew was pronounced. For example the letter vav is pronounced with a "v" in modern Hebrew but was more likely pronounced with a "w" hence the often seen transliteration YHWH.Secondly, each of these letters were used as a consonant or a vowel in Ancient Hebrew. For instance, the letter vav (waw) could be a "W," "O" or "U." Thirdly, vowels are frequently used in Hebrew words but not written. For example, the word MLK could be pronounced melek (king, a noun) or malak (to reign, a verb). If the letters in the name were used as consonants we do not know what vowel sounds were associated with name. The two most common prounciations are Jehovah and Yahweh. Yahweh is a possible translation but not Jehovah as there is no "J" in Hebrew. But, it should be noted that the letter "J" was originally pronounced as a "Y" and Yehovah is a possible translation (if the vav was pronounced with a "w"). Other possible pronunciations include Yehowah, Yahueh, Yihweh, Yahwah and Yahuh.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:23:43 +0000
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