Hermetic Hebrew

Satyatarot

Nonono, I intended to mean that the Alef is a consonant in hebrew, even though (Within that system of transliteration) it is represented by an A. I am not saying that A is the same sound as in hebrew. I know that it is silent ("alef is the breath which decides between them") I haven't heard of that transliteration scheme, but it makes more sense. I'm not a native hebrew speaker, but I was led to believe by a sephardic rabbi I know who is a native hebrew speaker that ayin actually shapes the vowels differently than aleph, which is entirely silent. I don't actually know, but I found that interesting.
 

Richard

........However, English vowels are not consonants in Hebrew, they are simply not written. א is not A and ע is not O. Matres lectionis (emot kriah) are not vowels, either.....
No one is suggesting that א is A and ע is O. In this transliteration scheme, whether an English letter is a vowel or consonant is immaterial. It is a symbolic transliteration, not phonetic. It is just an artificial device which enables one to reconstruct the Hebrew spelling. Moreover, no one is claiming that the matres lectionis are vowels, only that they can be used to represent vowel sounds.
 

Richard

......(It's a bit confusing for non-native Hebrew speakers to hear native speaking parents say: "we picked names for our children that start with the same letter," and the children are called Ori, Adam and Itamar (all aleph) or Adi, Uzi and Eden (all ayin) :-D but it makes you understand that the vowels only "color" the consonants.)
That's a mildly interesting example. I will readily admit that I am very far from being an expert on the Hebrew language, but please do not assume that every non Hebrew speaking person is a total idiot regarding Hebrew orthography. That's an unwarranted assumption in the context of a 'Kabbalah & Alphabets' forum.
 

Nemia

I'm not a Hebrew native speaker and I don't assume that people are idiots. I didn't mean to imply that. I referred to things written in this thread that might be misunderstood by somebody who has no background knowledge.

I do find apostrophes for aleph and ayin better solutions that others though not ideal. I'm not here to convince anyone. I just said what I use and why.

Indeed aleph and ayin sound differently, especially in Oriental Jewish and Arab Israelis the difference is clearly audible. Ayin is guttural. That's why they shouldn't be represented by the same sign (some books use the same apostrophe for both, if I remember well.)
 

Richard

I'm not a Hebrew native speaker and I don't assume that people are idiots. I didn't mean to imply that. I referred to things written in this thread that might be misunderstood by somebody who has no background knowledge.

I do find apostrophes for aleph and ayin better solutions that others though not ideal. I'm not here to convince anyone. I just said what I use and why.

Indeed aleph and ayin sound differently, especially in Oriental Jewish and Arab Israelis the difference is clearly audible. Ayin is guttural. That's why they shouldn't be represented by the same sign (some books use the same apostrophe for both, if I remember well.)
Lambdin's Introduction to Biblical Hebrew uses ‘ for א and ’ for ע, but I was never very comfortable with it.
 

Nemia

You are right, an apostrophe doesn't have the presence of a letter. (I don't know Lambdin, but I do have old Gesenius still somewhere in my bookcases...)

All the other letters are easy to transcribe, but these two are difficult. Until I find a better alternative, I'll stay with the apostrophe although it really diminishes the power of the letters :(
 

Ross G Caldwell

I like the Latin capital letters method of transcription for casual writing. Obviously you have to remind people that these aren't the same as vowels. A for Alef and O for Ayin have the advantage of implying the letters' origin - A does come from Alef through Alpha, and O from Ayin through Greek O (distinguished later as O-mirco and O-mega, but in the earliest they were the same).

They are much better for casual writing than the apostrophes, in any case, since it often hard to rely on typefaces or writers to make a clear distinction between which way they lean. "Power" or "Presence" as Nemia puts it. I think any intelligent person can remember that A and O aren't vowels, if that is made clear at the beginning.
 

DavidMcCann

Before modern computer fonts, I always used the AO system: using apostrophes is so unclear. The accepted scholarly characters are the "half-rings" at Unicode 2BE and 2BF, but not every font has them. I see that this site won't even allow them to be pasted in, for example.
 

Richard

Before modern computer fonts, I always used the AO system: using apostrophes is so unclear. The accepted scholarly characters are the "half-rings" at Unicode 2BE and 2BF, but not every font has them. I see that this site won't even allow them to be pasted in, for example.
There's nothing wrong with using the Hebrew letters instead of a transliteration, but the Windows Character Map reverses the delete, backspace, and space bar, which can be troublesome in the context of an English sentence. I wonder if there is a workaround for this. What I do now is leave a space for the Hebrew word and paste it in later.