# Anyone know a little Hebrew? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 9, 2003, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643 "2003-04-09T21:00:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/41 "2003-04-10T17:53:05Z")
I’m not sure why _t’fillin_ ends with -in. Some words with plurals end with -in (such as the word **talito** brought up, _m’subin_, which is Hebrew, not Aramaic (as in _ha-lilah hazeh kulanah m’subin_, from the _hagaddah_.) I’ll see if I can do some more research in the coming days, or wait for one of our more-learned scholars to come along and answer. Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/42 "2003-04-10T18:56:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kyla \* > \*\*It’s a transliteration/anglicization dealie. If you’re actually speaking Hebrew, you would not say “beth”, you’d say “beit”. I have no idea why the word was transliterated with a “th.” But I don’t like it. \*\* When Nepali is transliterated, a distinction is made between aspirated and un-aspirated consonants. For example, an un-aspirated “t” sound is simply written as “t”. The aspirated version is written as “th”. Thus, “Kathmandu” should be pronounced with an aspirated “t” sound. (Personally, my Western ears have a very hard time hearing the difference between aspirated and un-aspirated consonants in Nepali.) Is it possible that something similar is going on in the transliteration of Hebrew? Perhaps it’s spelled “beth” to indicate that the “t” sound isn’t “normal” for English? Or to distinguish it from something else? ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/43 "2003-04-10T19:30:31Z")
**chukhung** , I don’t think so. The only thing I can think of is that sometimes tavs have nikud (a dot) in them, and sometimes they don’t. My nitpicky grammar isn’t good enough to know what gets a nikud and what doesn’t. I’ve had Hebrew teachers who admitted they didn’t know, either, it’s that obscure. I wonder if that is the key? ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/44 "2003-04-10T19:50:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kyla \* > \*\ ***chukhung** , I don’t think so. > > The only thing I can think of is that sometimes tavs have nikud (a dot) in them, and sometimes they don’t. My nitpicky grammar isn’t good enough to know what gets a nikud and what doesn’t. I’ve had Hebrew teachers who admitted they didn’t know, either, it’s that obscure. I wonder if that is the key? \*\* There are many rules for determining which letters get a _dagesh_ and which don’t. I’d be lying if I told you that I knew them all off the top of my head. However, here’s a sampler of some of them: Generally speaking, the letters Bais, Gimel, Daled, Chaf, Pei and Tav have a _dagesh_ (dot) in them at the beginning of the word. However, if the previous word ends in a vowel sound, they lose the _dagesh_. Note that this rule is not absolute and there are exceptions. Any letter that follows a Heh prefix meaning “the” (as in _yom ha-shishi_ - "the sixth day – Genesis 1) gets a _dagesh_. Likewise, any letter that follows a Mem prefix meaning “from.” Likewise, depending on the tense, person and _binyan_ (activity vs. passivity vs. reflexivity) of the word, certain letters may or may not receive a _dagesh_. However, there are five letters that cannot have a _dagesh_. Those letters are _aleph, heh, ches, ayin, reish_. If, in any of the above cases the rules indicate that the letter gets a _dagesh_, they, in fact, do not get a _dagesh_ and this is noted by a change in a different letter. For example, the word “from Sinai” is _mi-sinai_. However, if you were coming from Horeb (which begins with a _ches_, the word would be _may-choraiv_, not _mi-choraiv_. The _chirik_ (“ee” sound) under the _mem_ changes to a _tzairey_ (long a sound). (N.B. Sometimes you will see a _dagesh_ in a _heh_ at the end of the word. That dot [despite all appearences] is not a _dagesh_, but signifies a _mapik heh_, which is a different animal altogether.) That’s just a sample off the top of my head concerning the rules which letters might or might not have a _dagesh_. The rules are fairly complicated… Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/45 "2003-04-10T20:05:09Z")
What Zev said. > [@](#): > > let’s create two letters that look the same except for one little dot See, it’s the dot that tells you whether to vocalize it or not. /v/ and /b/ as pronounced in classical Hebrew are closer phonetically than they are in English. Same with /t/ and /th/. The dot lets you know which way to pitch it. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/46 "2003-04-10T20:09:53Z")
To put it another way, when you say the Hebrew alphabet, you say “alef, bet, gimmel,” not “aleph, bet, vet, gimmel.” It’s the same letter, pronounced slightly differently depending on its phonological and stress context, in the same way that “th” is pronounced in different ways in English, or “p” is harder or softer depending on whether it’s at the beginning or end of a word (hold a piece of paper in front of your lips and say “power” and “stop” to see what I mean). ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/47 "2003-04-10T20:13:00Z")
Well. I wonder why this thread has languished in MPSIMS fer so long. Anyway, off to GQ. That seems a better place for it. ---
**Author:** ![Fin\_man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@Fin\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fin_man)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/48 "2003-04-10T20:16:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shoshana \* > **To put it another way, when you say the Hebrew alphabet, you say “alef, bet, gimmel,” not "aleph, bet, vet, gimmel."** Growing up in a reformed synagogue (called Temple Jesus by my conservative friends), we learned the alef-bet as “alef, bet, vet, gimmel,…”. And IIRC there is another letter (or two) that has a similar issue (kopf, maybe)? ---
**Author:** ![IzzyR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/2acd7d/32.png) [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/49 "2003-04-10T20:38:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by cmkeller \* > Zev, I sympathize about the "oy"s. It’s the reason I stopped listening to Hebrew music. Thank G-d my sons’ teachers don’t suffer from this affliction. That final word is a bit strong there, no? Unless your ancestry is from Germany, that’s probably how your grandparents spoke. Nothing dishonorable. If you’ve done some linguistic analysis that shows this pronunciation to be incorrect, please share it. If not, it’s just an accent that you don’t happen to use. Like a northerner who is not “afflicted” with a southern accent. And so on. ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/50 "2003-04-10T20:39:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fin\_man \* > \*\*And IIRC there is another letter (or two) that has a similar issue (kopf, maybe)? \*\* The letters where a _dagesh_ makes a difference in the sound of the word are: Letter Sound with _dagesh_/sound without Beis/Veis B/V Kaf/Chaf K/CH (as in _ach_ in German) Peh/Feh P/F Tav/Sav T/S Note that the last difference only applies in the Ashkenazic pronounciation. Sephardim pronounce a Tav/Sav with a “T” sound regardless of whether or not a _dagesh_ is present. Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/51 "2003-04-10T20:48:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shoshana \* > \*\*See, it’s the dot that tells you whether to vocalize it or not. /v/ and /b/ as pronounced in classical Hebrew are closer phonetically than they are in English. Same with /t/ and /th/. The dot lets you know which way to pitch it. \*\* Okeydoke. Bet and vet, I am good with. If there’s a dot, it’s bet, if no dot, it’s vet. But /t/ and /th/? Does the tav actually change its pronunciation based on the dagesh or lack thereof, at least in Modern Hebrew? ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/52 "2003-04-10T21:32:40Z")
My father spoke Hebrew using the oy where modern Hebrew uses the oh. On the “th” sound, there was a th sound in Hebrew, but it was dropped centuries ago. This was not a change in the 1940s or 1950s, as someone suggested, but centuries before. There were other sounds as well. My memory is fuzzy on this, but I think that a daled with a _dagesh_ was pronounced as a hard “th”, like in the English “that” which is different from the soft “th” like in the English “wrath.” Anyhow, I read a text once that said that there were more sounds in the past, that were dropped over time. The same thing that is happening to the “sav” and “tav” in our very day, and over the last 50 years. In short, when you are dealing with a language that was in use 3500 years ago (give or take a few centuries), there will have been considerable evolution. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/53 "2003-04-10T21:38:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fin\_man \* > \*\*Growing up in a reformed synagogue… \*\* Gah! Sorry for the hijack, and the correction, but since this _is_ The Straight Dope, I just couldn’t let this pass (especially because I see it all too frequently)… we aren’t Reform_ed_, we’re just plain [Reform](http://rj.org/rj.shtml). Shalom, Shayna (or, Yacovah, as I was named by my Rabbi, which I sadly learned there’s _no_ way to spell in Hebrew, when I tried to have it made into a neclace when I visited Israel \ ☹ ) ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/54 "2003-04-10T21:40:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shayna \* > \*\*(or, Yacovah, as I was named by my Rabbi, which I sadly learned there’s _no_ way to spell in Hebrew, when I tried to have it made into a neclace when I visited Israel \ ☹ ) \*\* _Yud-ayin-kuf-beis-heh_ Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/55 "2003-04-10T21:42:59Z")
P.S… > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by zev\_steinhardt \* > > **They pronounce a _cholom_ with an “oy” sound (as in Toy-rah – which grates on my nerves).** Shouldn’t that be, “noives”? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/56 "2003-04-10T21:47:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by zev\_steinhardt \* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by Shayna \* > > (or, Yacovah, as I was named by my Rabbi, which I sadly learned there’s no way to spell in Hebrew, when I tried to have it made into a neclace when I visited Israel \ ) > > \*\*_Yud-ayin-kuf-beis-heh_ > > Zev Steinhardt \*\* Well feh! I went into at least a half dozen jewelers who all looked at me like I was from outer space, or something. Apparently they didn’t understand the “feminization” of Yacov and kept insisting there was no such thing. When I finally found a jeweler who said, “Oh sure! We can do that, no problem!”, what I ended up with was a necklace that read, “Yacov”. I spent the rest of the trip explaining to every guy I met that, no, I did not have an Israeli boyfriend. \ ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/57 "2003-04-10T21:50:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shayna \* > \*\*\*\*_Yud-ayin-kuf-beis-heh_ > > Zev Steinhardt \*\* Well feh! I went into at least a half dozen jewelers who all looked at me like I was from outer space, or something. Apparently they didn’t understand the “feminization” of Yacov and kept insisting there was no such thing. When I finally found a jeweler who said, “Oh sure! We can do that, no problem!”, what I ended up with was a necklace that read, “Yacov”. I spent the rest of the trip explaining to every guy I met that, no, I did not have an Israeli boyfriend. \ \*\* [/QUOTE] It’s not too common a name. I just happen to have a cousin who has it. When I had a necklace made for my daughter (Tzivya - also not too common a name, but more common than Ya’akova) in Israel, I made sure to spell the name for the jeweler. Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/58 "2003-04-10T22:08:53Z")
See? I can’t even spell it right in English! 😃 I should’ve just gone with my middle name, Galilah. It’s prettier, anyway, and I seriously doubt anyone could ever mistake it for a boy’s name! ;j ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2003, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/59 "2003-04-10T22:47:19Z")
IzzyR: > [@](#): > > Unless your ancestry is from Germany, that’s probably how your grandparents spoke. Nothing dishonorable. > > If you’ve done some linguistic analysis that shows this pronunciation to be incorrect, please share it. If not, it’s just an accent that you don’t happen to use. OK, perhaps my language was a bit strong. What I mean is that it annoys me to no end to see people who I _know_ don’t speak naturally with that Hassidic “oy” accent effect it for some reason. Most Jewish people who grew up in America in a non-Hassidic home, the sort of “yeshivish” environment Zev seems to be referring to re: his son’s yeshiva, naturally vowelize the “oh” way. When I hear that said “yeshivish” yeshiva is teaching the kids to talk “oy”, my eyebrow perks up. I don’t mind accents. What drives me nuts is _faked_ accents. I wouldn’t say a Hassid is wrong for speaking the way he was brought up. But it irks me to see someone who does not naturally speak that way make a public show of doing so…as is the case with so much of today’s Jewish music, another area that I mentioned in my reply to zev. Chaim Mattis Keller ---
**Author:** ![IzzyR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/2acd7d/32.png) [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643/60 "2003-04-11T13:47:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by cmkeller \* > What I mean is that it annoys me to no end to see people who I _know_ don’t speak naturally with that Hassidic “oy” accent effect it for some reason. Most Jewish people who grew up in America in a non-Hassidic home, the sort of “yeshivish” environment Zev seems to be referring to re: his son’s yeshiva, naturally vowelize the “oh” way. When I hear that said “yeshivish” yeshiva is teaching the kids to talk “oy”, my eyebrow perks up. The “oy” sound is NOT “Hassidic”. Or even “yeshivish”. If you went back a hundred years, the vast majority of Jews in the world said “oy”. Essentially the entire Eastern Europe - Poland, Russia, Lithuania & thereabouts (although there were also parts of Russia that said “ay”). The only places that said “oh” were Germany and places with heavy concentrations of German immigrants. My guess as to what happened is that the first wave of immigration to the US (& England) happened to be from Germany. By the time the Eastern Europeans came, the Germans were already well established, and represented the “upper class”, and they set the tone. So a lot of people - or really their children - switched over to their way of doing things (see the comment by **C K Dexter Haven** above). Then the Yeshivos and the Chassidim came over, and they were more tied to the way they had done things in Europe then to whatever the established “American” way was, so they kept their way of doing things, and to the extent that they influenced the larger population, they swung things back. But they were - for the most part - merely returning things to the way they had been, as opposed to creating a new way of doing things. BTW, the notion that there is a “Chassidic” accent is a (widely used) misnomer. The so-called Chassidic accent is merely the accent used in Poland and Hungary. Most (Orthodox) people from those countries happen to be Chassidic, and most people from Russia and Lithuania are not, so the accent is associated with Hasidism, but it really has no connection. A Russian Chasid (e.g. Chabad) would speak the same a Russian non-Chasid. And a Polish or Hungarian non-Chasid would use the same “Hasidic” pronunciation as a Polish or Hungarian Chasid would. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-a-little-hebrew/167643.md?page=4)