Re: Bethel?

On Aug 3, 2:16 pm, Tim Meushaw <meus...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2009-08-03, mirjam <mir...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Tim we could debate whether BETH =which by the way means Bayit Shel
House Of..... and isn`t really a word standing on it`s own , when it
doesn`t have another word to `lean` on ,,

I know.

thus we could debate whether to write it Beth ' which is now the most
common and accepted spelling ' or Beit which i rarely see anymore ,
saw it years ago .. but BEIS NO NO NO Beis is the Ashkanazi
pronounciation , not accepted in most Hebrew speakers groups . beth
ends with a TAV not with a Samech

Except you'd be surprised how many millions of Hebrew speakers DO
pronounce it "beis."  "Most" implies a large majority pronounce it "beit"
over "beis."  Those same people would argue that beth ends in a SAV,
not a Tet.

And given how common "th" is in translations and synagogue names, that
seems to be the original way of pronouncing Thav (Tav without a dagesh).
If that's true,  then Beit is no more "correct" than Beis.  And thus,
the name "Bethlehem" is more accurate than the modern day version you're
promoting.

Personally, I'd invite you to go to Beit Shemesh and take a poll; find
out how many people pronounce it Beis Shemesh instead.  I think it would
turn your stomach.  :-)  (And I've never heard anyone anywhere use Beth
Shemesh nowadays; maybe on street signs in Israel, I don't remember.)

in fact now we should write lekhem as kh has become the official
transliteration of the 8th letter Het ,,,

In the Sephardi transliterations I've seen, "kh" is reserved for Kaf
(11th) letter, and "H" (with the letter specifically in uppercase) or
"h" with a dot underneath of it (which I can't reproduce here) for Het.
Because Khaf is a more gutteral "back of the throat" sound, while Het
is pronounced far more like an English H than a Hebrew Kaf, being
pronunced "front of the throat."  I've never seen anyone use "kh" for
"Het," though, unless they're using it also for "Khaf" and aren't
distinguishing between the two.

(For those wondering what I'm talking about, the best way I've seen it
described on how to pronounce "Het" is to pretend you're breathing
like Darth Vader.  The exhale is pretty darn close.  If you don't know
who Darth Vader is, I can't help you.)

You mean Beit Lechem.  Or is it Beis Lechem?  Or Beth LeHem  Or Beith
Lechem?

And this is why I'll keep calling it Bethlehem when writing in
English.

This a great pity because by this you give the translation of the
Tananch more power than the Original .

You can see it as power.  I see it as equivalance.  As you've noted,
"Beth" doesn't stand on its own.  It's a helper word.  A quick search
in Chumash confirmed that in the Torah, it's really written "Beth-El,"
with a hyphen.  I didn't confirm "Beth-Lehem" as I only had a Chumash
handy and the index wasn't helpful.  But a hyphenated word, when one
word can't stand on its own, does have an argument for being combined
as one word.  Otherwise, you're likely to think it CAN stand alone.

This doesn't give anyone or anything "power."  If the two words were
vastly different and had different meanings, you might have a better
argument.  But the only difference is whether it's spelled as one word
or two.

We're debating over something that's the SAME WORD in Hebrew and
English; the only difference is if there's a space in the middle.
This is a silly debate for us to have.

Many of the troubles we have as Jews come straight from this
acceptance of reading our heritage through the translated texts ...

Reading names of places and people through translation isn't what's
causing these problems; it's mistranslations of more common words that
corrupt the original meaning that cause the problems we've seen.  I'm
sorry, but you won't convince me that spelling "Bethlehem" as two
words instead of one will make any headway towards fixing the troubles
you allude to.

prope use of names is part of our life , part of our power to stay
alive and keep our cultural heritage.

Our cultural heritage isn't going to die because we spell "Bethel"
when writing in English, and "[Beit|Beis|Beith]-[El|Kel]" when writing
in Hebrew.

By the same token, how many people use the name "Safed" instead of
"Tzfat?"  Or "Acre" instead of "Akko?"  I think more Jews are likely to
use the Hebrew versions of these, because these are radically different.
Spelling a place name as one word or two isn't radically different,
especially when using a valid transliteration (as "Beth" is).

(On the other hand, how many Jews say `aza instead of Gaza?)

Tim

--
Timothy A. Meushaw
meus...@xxxxxxxxx


The current discussion takes me back to a long thread on
transliteration that we had on SCJ well before moderation.
Transliteration of Hebrew with the Latin alphabet is an utter mess. If
it had been set up logically, attention would have been paid to the
structure of the two alphabets, with a sideward glance to the Greek
alphabet, as all three were derived from the Phoenician alphabet.
According to http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin/Grammar/Latin-Alphabet.html
“Originally the Latin alphabet consisted of the following 21 letters:
A B C D E F Z H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X
About 250 BC the letter Z was dropped because in the Latin of this
period there was not a specific sound that would require its usage. On
the other hand, a new letter, G, made by adding a bar to the lower end
of C, was placed in the position of Z.”
Leaving Z in place and replacing C with G, and leaving gaps between H
and I, N and O’, and P and Q, yields:
A B G D E F Z H … I K L M N … O P … Q R
S T V X

The first four letters of the Hebrew alphabet: “aleph–dalet” clearly
correspond to A–D.
E, a vowel, is not needed in Hebrew, so it is used for the aspirated
“heh”.
F is not needed either, as its sound is produced by the undotted
“peh”, so it is used for the related, softer sounding “vav”.
Z = “zayin” and H = “`het” (about which much has been written in
this thread. Note: In the absence of appropriate font for the “dotted
h”, I represent it by “`h”.)
I = “yod”.
K–N = “kaf–nun”.
O = another unnecessary vowel is replaced by the not quite soundless
“`ayin” (for which I use an apostrophe before the appropriate vowel).
Q-T = “qof–Tav”; the remaining two Latin characters are unnecessary..

For filling the gaps, we turn to the Greek alphabet, the relevant
section of which is:
ETA THETA IOTA KAPPA LAMBDA MU NU XI OMICRON PI
(SAN) KAPPA

As ETA and IOTA correspond to H and I, “tet” fits in nicely.
Similarly, “samech” fills the gap between “nun” and “`ayin” just as XI
does between NU and OMICRON, and “tzadi” (or “sadi”, since it was
probably pronounced as a hard sibilant) between “peh” and “qof” like
the obsolete SAN between PI and KAPPA.

I am not making any practical proposals, but presenting my analysis
merely “lehagdil torah u lehaadir” (in order to enhance and glorify
learning). It is far too late to ask people to switch t and th, so
that th is written as “tet” and t as “tav”, but it may still be
possible to insist on “kaf”=k (“khaf=kh), “qof”=q, and “`het”=`h.

Amitai


.

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