1.9 Sephardic versus Seminary Pronunciation

Figure 1.10: Pronunciation Differences

There are some notable differences between what we might call academic or “seminary¹⁹” Hebrew and Sephardic Hebrew spoken today in Israel.

• Academic/Seminary pronunciation is in red above, while Sephardic pronunciation is in blue.
• Modern pronunciation of the Tanakh, is based on Sephardic pronunciation; Hebrew Quest follows Sephardic pronunciation²⁰
• Consonants
  • With “Seminary Hebrew,” all six בגד כפת letters take on a soft pronunciation, not just the three “BucK uP” letters
    • The ג without the Dagesh Lene would receive something like the GH in “aGHast.” The ד and ת without the Dagesh Lene are closer to the English DH/TH like “this”
  • Another difference between Sephardic and Seminary pronunciation is how to pronounce ו
    • In academia, the consonant receives the “w” sound and is called “waw” (pronounced like the English “wow!”)
    • In most non-academic circles, it receives the “v” sound and is pronounced “vav”
    • This is important because a lot of the resources that we will reference come from academia and thus will have the “w” pronunciation. For example instead of “Imperfect vav-consecutive” (Lesson 17), we will frequently see “Imperfect waw-consecutive”
• Vowels
  • There are also significant differences in pronouncing vowels, most notably the short a (“a” like “apple”; versus “ah” like “father”)
  • There is also great variation in the names of the vowels, for example the A vowels are pronounced like PATHick and COMets in academia, and something like puhTOCK and kaMEYTZ (or even kaMATZ) outside of the classroom. We’ll have more to say about vowels in Lesson 2.
• The Covenant Name of God
  • Lastly, since we are talking about pronunciation differences, will use “Adonai” or “the LORD” when we encounter the Covenant Name²¹
    • Again, in some of the materials that we have leveraged from academic circles, you may see (or hear) the Covenant Name (“Ya—h”) written out as this is common in those settings
    • We are taking a devotional approach

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19. "Seminary Hebrew" is a term borrowed from Dr. John Beckman. We don’t say "Seminary Hebrew" to be disrespectful; we only mean to differentiate between the two pronunciation types.↩︎

20. There is also what is called Ashkenazi pronunciation, which is beyond the scope of this course. It also has some different pronunciations. Most notably, the letter ת is given an “s” sound at the end of a word, and “O” vowels are more prominent. So שׁבּת (shabbat), would be pronounced “Shabbos” in Ashkenazi.↩︎

21. Please read Izzy’s statement on the Covenant Name: “When I filmed Hebrew Quest I read God’s Hebrew name as”Yahweh“. This is a relatively common practice in academic circles and was also an expression of my personal love for God’s holy name. Since then though I’ve encountered conclusive evidence that Yeshua and his disciples followed the Jewish tradition of saying”Adonai" instead of using the Sacred Name. It’s my deep conviction that we should follow the example of Messiah and his apostles, so I’ve returned to saying “Adonai” (Hebrew for “the LORD”) or “HaShem” (Hebrew for “the Name”) instead of using the Sacred Name, and I encourage our students to do likewise." ↩︎