[geeks] The unspellable name of G-D (was Airport Security)

[Nadine Miller]

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> As for Jesus, it is very obviously not his name. The "G" sound did not
> exist in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic. In fact it really does not exist
> in modern Hebrew either, technically, I have to use a special marking with
> my name (which I don't bother with) to differentiate it from gehf-ry.
> (gimel (mark) fey resh yould) (that's backwards, Hebrew reads from
> right to left).
> 
> 
> It was yeh-shoe-ah which is a variant of yeh ho shoe ah. Hebrew and 
> Aramaic have no letter vowels, so just translating it to Latin
> (English) letters makes little sense anyway. Either name begins
> with a yould (Y sound) not a "G" sound anyway.

In Latin pronunciation the "j" would not get the "j" sound, either, 
since there is no "j" in Latin, but rather an "i", though the 
consonantal "i" is often written as "j" in modern textbooks.  The 
pronunciation of the consonantal "i" is as "y" in the word "yet".

For example, the ancient Latin pronunciation of Julius Caesar is 
"YOO-lee-us KYE-sahr".

One of the few things I retain from my 3 semesters of college Latin. :-) 
  I don't ever recall us covering anything about the Christians in my 
Latin classes during cultural studies, so I don't think I've ever seen 
how Jesus was written in ancient Latin.

=Nadine=