Was there ever a J sound in Hebrew?

there are no consonants in god's name. rather, there are four semi-vowels. you are arguing, effectively, whether yud could ever have been pronounced with a "jah" sound. it's a little tricky to say for certain, but i can tell you:almost certainly not.well before hebrew, possibly the first phonetic alef-bet was phoenician. in fact, the very word "phonetic" comes from "phoenicia." from phoenician alef-bet spawns several languages we're quite familiar with:

• hebrew: no "j" sound
• aramaic: no "j" sound
• arabic: no "j" sound
• greek: no "j" sound
• latin: no "j" sound
• german: no "j" sound

aramaic comes directly from phoenician, and biblical hebrew mostly from aramaic. arabic also comes from aramaic. greek coems directly from phoenician, latin comes from greek, and the germanic alphabet comes from latin. so, that's 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations with no "j" sounds. so where does "j" come from, exactly? the letter J is, in fact, the letter I, which corresponds to iota in greek, and yud in hebrew. "J" was more of less a fancy way of writing "I", and often used in miniscule. the new pronounciation came from certain romance languages -- 5th generation, at lest. even in german today, "j" is read like an "i" or "y". the sound itself is simply absent from the very first alphabet, to well after the fall of the roman empire.further, since hebrew was originally adapted from certain phonetic sumerian cuneiform scripts, before the modern aramaic alef-bet, it's quite likely this sound was absent in sumeria as well. now, let's look at the name of god for a second:yud-hey-vav-hey. the name itself is a conjugation of a hebrew word:—that lamed-hey-yud-vav-taf. shall we try to figure that out using your pronounciation scheme? sounds like it'd be "lehejavet." which, really, really, sounds like gibberish. it's pronounced "l'hiot." that's "leh-he-ote," with the first syllable very short. while most consonants do have vowels added to them, not all of them are pronounced -- especially when there are semi-vowels in the word. and not all big hebrew letters are consonants. yud, vav, and sometimes hey are semivowels. alef and ayin are (full) vowels.so, — is pronouced "leh," not "lehe." is pronounced "he," not "hej," and not "heje." the yud must take a soft sound in the middle of the word. is pronounce "yo," not "jo," not "jav," and not "java." like the yud, the vav takes a soft sound in the middle of the word. (there are exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between. normally, a "va" sound in the middle of the word is made by a softened bet, not a vav). on the end of a word is pronounced "oat," and is the common feminine pluralization, used here in a rare infinitive form. it's not "vat," "vet," or "vata." as a whole, the word is "l'hyot," to be.the present tense and past tense of the word is , hayah. though the present is never used. rather, it's implied in the language. that's "hayah" not "hajah." now, in hebrew, when we change conjugations of words, typicalled we add a vav "oh" sound in different places, depending on what we're saying, and what the subject of the sentance is. one particular conjugation of moves the yud out front, and sticks the "oh" sound in the middle, like this: which should look familiar.so, the makes a "yah" sound, the makes a "ho" or a "hu" sound (easier to say), and the last makes an "eh" or and "ah" sound (probably an "eh"). why? because that's the way semi-vowels work. how do i know it's probably a "yah" sound and not a "jah" sound? because the harder versions of that soft yud in the middle of l'hyot is "yah," like the "yah" in hayah. so god's name can acceptable be pronounced "yahueh" ("yahu" being a common root in hebrew) and probably not "yahoah."now, let's examine something sneaky here, and tie the two arguments here together. how can i say for certain that god's name never had a "jah" sound in it? the "jah" sound does not exist in hebrew (and cannot exist in this word, phonetically), *AND* god's name comes from a hebrew word. which, again, should not be a startling conclusion for a book written in hebrew. if a "j" sound existed in other languages, and god chose to reveal himself to other people, that's fine. but his name in that language would likely come from the same word in that language, and would not be but something else entirely. if hebrew is a corrupted version of the original (babel-onian) language, the "jah" sound would still not be in the name, because it would not be in the middle the cognate of hayah.so no, there was probably never a "j" sound in hebrew, and even if there was, it wasn't in this word.

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not a good example. modern english has deviated from old english far more than modern hebrew has deviated from biblical hebrew.the difference is that english has been spoken ever since before beowulf was written, continuously, until now. if we take a look at shakespearean english, it's almost contemporary. technically, what we speak is a dialect of shakespearean english. we can read shakespeare (even in the original script, slightly different alphabet) and the kjv and still understand them with a high degree of ease and accuracy. go back to chaucer, and it's a little more difficult. tricky, but possible with some work. back to beowulf, and it's basically a different language.now, compare that to hebrew. biblical hebrew was written for a few hundred years, during the time of the old testament's authorship (be definition). sometime during that period, aramaic became not only the vernacular, but a few books of the bible were written in it. the biblical hebrew script is derived from aramaic, in fact. before that, the books were written in paleohebrew. and guess what, they were the same words, in a different font. the problem is that once aramaic became the common language, hebrew for all intents and purposes died. the only people who spoke it were the priests, and probably just for reading the bible, until the septuagint came along. the translation to greek was issued because hebrew had basically become a dead language.the next time hebrew appears as a spoken and evolving language, as opposed to solid tradition, is 1948. that's 2200 years with no one adding words, changing pronounciation, messing with grammar and spelling, adding characters, etc. that's key one. technically, eliazer ben yehuda, the man responsible for modern hebrew, died before then, but until the formation of the state of israel, his work was generally considered blasphemous. hebrew was a traditional and sacred language, and one you did not mess with. that's key number two. third key is that, while there were medieval and regional dialects of hebrew, modern hebrew was taken, for all intents and purposes, directly from the bible. the only gigantic noticeable change is sentance order, and you figure that about somewhere in genesis 1:1.so, let's use some proper english analogies:the change from biblical hebrew to modern hebrew is about as dramatic as the change from shakespearean english to contemporary english, if not less dramatic in some books. if go read the books in aramaic, we find that all the words are pretty much exact cognates to modern hebrew, with slightly different grammar. so aramaic to modern hebrew is sort of like chaucer to modern english. if you speak hebrew, and go talk to someone who speaks aramaic (certain groups in jerusalem still do), you'll pick up about as much as you or i would pick up from chaucer. probably 50-75% of the words. what about an analogy for old-english?phoenician. it's not a semitic language, exactly. similar, OE is norse in origin, not germanic like modern english. but it uses the same alef-bet, and probably a few of the same words. as for paleohebrew?essentially early biblical hebrew, with the phoenician script.Edited by arachnophilia, : typo

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language, no, alphabet, absolutely. see the chart on the wikipedia page. similarly,

quote:

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The History of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letterforms...

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History of the Greek alphabet - Wikipedia

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ancient greeks and phoenicians often traded and sometimes warred. language? no. script, yes. sorry if i was being confusing. the germanic alphabet comes from the latin alphabet, which comes from the greek alphabet, which comes from the phoenician alphabet. yes, they are, of course, but their common ancestor is the phoenician alphabet.

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are they? hm. ok. i was under the impression norse was a separate group. ah well. uh, this one i'm also pretty sure about. my father happens to be fairly fluent in old english (don't ask me, he's as crazy as i am). he relates to me that the angles and the saxons were originally norse people, who invaded the british isles a long time ago. (beowulf is, btw, a norse legend, regarding someone from apparently what would be denmark or sweden today.) if we compare OE to the native languages of area, various forms of gælic and welsh, its quite different. OE shares remarkable similarity to old norse, and suprisingly, modern icelandic.

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nope, it was all a phonetics argument. different languages using the same sets of sounds.

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um, ok.anyways, back on topic now

please see Message 9