Modern Hebrew is poorly spoken in certain regards due to the evolution of the language in its retention around the world, typically through the Ashkenazi. The Yemenite Jews are closer, and their pronunciation is more "Arabic". The closest pronunciation would be Ahh-meen. Aleph always has a long vowel sound in Arabic, which is different from the colloquial Southern-American (uhh, my kin, not Pedro) way of hacking vowels all to death by shortening or lengthening per accent and dialect.
Amen is not technically correct as "A"-men. It is Ahh-meen.
Nor is it "uh-men" or "uh-meen".
With diacritic marking being accepted in Hebrew, generally in the Masoretic style, we must realize that certain pronunciations vary region to region and over time. Even in Arabic this occurs, though certain things are immutable, i.e. the long vowel being written where the short is not.
Yaa is always a consonant at the beginning, and a vowel in the middle, and the end depending on the grammar context. The short vowel is expressed in diacritic marks, in the case of the short "yaa", it would be indicated by Kasra ( آمينvs آمِن )
You (pure Yaa) versus Jury (vowel-long) vs Bit (vowel- short; marked and not written)
For better understanding of how this can morph, even in Arabic (or any other language similar to the parent language, in this case being Aramaic), here is a thing I wrote a while ago regarding the spelling of Gaddafi, koran, etc:
The Arabic alphabet has a few similar sounding letters which are often mistranslated/transliterated into English.
The best example is quran/koran. Here is the Arabic spelling: القرآن
Literally translated it is al-qran. Because the “u” sound is a short vowel, it is implied through native knowledge or through learning. Transliterated for foreign understanding, it’s al-quran, or the quran as Al is the definitive article meaning “the”.
The individual letters are
ا – aleph
ل- laam
ق- qaf (throaty k/c/q like the c in “calm”)
ر- raa
آ- aleph madda( signifies long vowel after a hamza which is a glottal stop)
ن- nuun (like a throaty noon, emphasizing the swallowing of the oo sound)
Now, the ق is a tricky thing to get as English doesn’t differentiate between glottal and fricative letter. We assign that through native understanding and the letter’s use in a word. Arabic, like all Semitic languages, does distinguish a difference.
As an example, here are 3 forms of what we would consider an “H” letter through transliteration without native understanding:
ه ح خ
The round one is a simple, short h.
The middle letter is a sort of hissing H which is drawn out in a breathy manner.
The last one ( خ ) is the hack-a-loogie sounding H, and correctly transliterated is kh. For example, the word khalu, meaning uncle.
Because of colloquial accents, some dialects do not follow classical Arabic pronunciations. North Africa is notorious for this. In Egypt, the typically transliterated “J” takes on a G sound, like in the English word golf. My professor in Arabic told a joke that an Egyptian man was asked where he was from and he replied, “egypt” (with that golf style g). Realistically, golf translated into Arabic as transliterated Arabic from English should use the letter غ. The letter pronunciation of that is like a French “r” with a G sound tacked on the front. To make it, “gargle” an r. The غ is what we see in the Arabic spelling of Baghdad. Because golf is an English loan word, translation is transliteration as is often the case with loan words of recent adoption. Certainly, spellings may vary depending on country when such a word is put into the local language.
Now, because of the colloquial and peculiar nature of the Libyan accent, the beginning letter of Gaddafi’s name is actually a qaf. It should be spelled Qaddafi.
Because Arabic utilizes every single letter, there are no “silent” spellings. No unpronounced letters at all. The letters also retain their proper pronunciation. No wound around the wound type of business. Golf vs gin? Nope. If this was done in English, it would be golf and jin.
Basic grammar is also very simple and generally consistent. There are, as with any language, a few examples of seemingly odd rules but they’re easily learned.
Vocabulary is all about memorization and understanding proper conjugations for various parts of speech.The hardest part was literally learning the dang alphabet in all of its various renderings which depends on the letter’s place in a word.
Once you learn the alphabet and basic grammar it’s just a linguistic math problem of sorts. A conversational game of “Susie is sitting next to Bobby. Bobby is to the right of Ursula. Ursula is to the right of Mr. Smith: who is sitting on the ends of the row of 4?”
Susie and Mr. Smith are on the ends, so they get special treatment in their relational description.
Make sense? Sorta, kinda?
Either way, your tax dollars at work ^^^.
Re: A-men or ah-men
Linear Mode
