ScorpioSniper2 Wrote:I see what you mean. There is an ayin in the name of the Messiah. A lot of people have stated that alef has no sound and that there is no "w" sound in Hebrew. Alef is so commonly used that I don't see how it couldn't have a sound. It is the Hebrew/Aramaic "a" and is pronounced as such. And base on what I've read, ancient Hebrew and Syriac both pronounce vav with a "w" sound because it used to be "waw". Many Jews write the Tetragramaton as YHVH (Yahveh), when it would actually have been pronounced according to YHWH (Yahweh).
So Sniper, what we have is a situation not much different than if Latin were revived as a spoken language in Italy. Imagine if Italians fled Italy due to persecution 2,000 years ago and settled in China and other countries in the far east. During that time, their everyday language became whatever language was spoken where they lived. But they kept Latin for church use, much like they do today.
2,000 years later, they emigrate back to Italy and attempt to revive Latin. It's likely going to have many changes and influences from Chinese, especially in pronunciation and accent.
Unfortunately, that's the situation we have with modern Israeli Hebrew today. And how that affects us is this: it's different enough in pronunciation from all its sister languages from around the region, that is sounds foreign. Both to the majority Arabic and minority Aramaic speakers.
Specifically, it affects us in the "Messianic" circles because people tend to associate the sounds made by modern Hebrew with how it's "supposed" to sound. Which is totally inaccurate.
To be sure, and fair, all languages change over time. And accents and pronunciations can vary from region to region even within the same language. But, the case with modern Israeli Hebrew is even more complicated due to the things mentioned above.
Aleph isn't an A, either. Remember that there are no vowels in the 22 letter alphabet. These are truly only only consonants. Aleph is a consonant just like Ayin, but it is a lighter guttural sound. It's close to the English uh as in "uh-oh!". If you hear an Arabic person pronounce "Allah" for God, or an Aramaic person pronounce "Allaha" for God, you will hear the proper sound. It sounds more like "Uh-lah-uh" if you spell it phonetically in Latin characters.
The problem is also with convention. Realizing that the Aleph is not an A sound, you'll notice that Jews usually spell it E when writing 'lh ( the apostrophe being aleph). And from that we usually get the "Elohim" spelling in English.
All of this is wrong, and because of two reasons: (1) the already mentioned problems above with modern Hebrew and (2) the lack of exact equivalent sounds and letters in Latin characters.
To summarize, if you were transported back thousands of years and could hear Moses and Jesus speak, it would probably sound very "Arabic" to you.
I've had many Jewish friends tell me that our Aramaic speech sounds a lot like Arabic of the surface. And I always respond by saying that's how it's supposed to sound! The sound you are hearing is how your ancestors sounded in the past.
+Shamasha