Word of the Day

[Yarjka]

So, here's a word I learned today:

Cenotaph
an "empty tomb"
a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere

[vorpal blade]

I've never really understood why people become annoyed when a word is not pronounced the way the natives pronounce it. We borrow words all the time from other languages. I don't see why we need to pronounce it the same way the native speakers did. Why can't we just take the word and make it our own, and pronounce it anyway we see fit? It helps if we all agree to pronounce it the same way, of course, in its new habitat. But the idea that only the culture that produced the word in the "first" place has some divine right to the "correct" pronounciation for ever and ever seems strange to me.

Should we all say "Ephraim" like they say it in Ephraim, Utah, if we are referring to that southern Utah community? Or the right way for the rest of America? Or the right way for Hebrew speaking people?

Personally there may be a "right" way to say "Eloheim" for someone speaking in Hebrew, but I think there is another right way to say if for someone speaking in English.

[Dragon Lady]

You're right on Urim and Thumim. I use a short i for both. And it sounds weird to not.

The more I think about it, the more I realize it's just Eloheim that bothers me. Perhaps because it's the name of God? (Well, technically, gods. But whatever.) And maybe it's just because I went through the temple the first time after I learned Hebrew and for all their attention to detail, they got that wrong, as spoken by someone who, well, should be able to speak Hebrew. When I hear people say it, say at church, I just chalk it up to misinformation and hickness (said tongue-in-cheek). But when an official church publication is made, I guess I just expect it to be correct.

[thatonemom]

I can see what vorpal's saying to an extent. There are lots of words we don't have in English that we take from other languages, and it makes sense to me that the pronunciation gets American-ized. But for ideas/things/words we do have in English that people want to use another language to express, I think they look kind of silly not using the original pronunciation. Just stick with the English word instead. For names and titles, like Eloheim, why wouldn't someone use the original pronunciation (assuming they knew it)? And if they don't know it, why would they use the word at all?

[Katya]

flatlander - someone who is not from Vermont

[Dragon Lady]

flatlander - someone who is not from Vermont

bahahahahaha.

I'm amused to think that living next to Utah mountains I'm considered a flatlander. Awesome.

[Katya]

New pet peeve: when I do my own pet peeves without realizing it.

We all do. They wouldn't be pet peeves if they weren't common, and they wouldn't be common if people didn't have good reasons for saying them. When it comes to language, I find it more profitable to step back and study the "why" instead of fussing over the "what." (I am, ahem, still working on applying that philosophy to other aspects of my life. )

[Katya]

flatlander - someone who is not from Vermont

bahahahahaha.

I'm amused to think that living next to Utah mountains I'm considered a flatlander. Awesome.

Isn't that great? I learned that from my seatmate on a flight this morning.

[Portia]

"Elohim" is the only spelling mentioned on the Wikipedia page.

And good call, Yarjka, on the Urim and Thummim being an ancient idea. They were pretty much an ancient Magic 8 Ball. I'm actually surprised that Dragon Lady didn't know the origin.

[Dragon Lady]

"Elohim" is the only spelling mentioned on the Wikipedia page.

And good call, Yarjka, on the Urim and Thummim being an ancient idea. They were pretty much an ancient Magic 8 Ball. I'm actually surprised that Dragon Lady didn't know the origin.

[shrug] I'm not perfect and don't know all the scriptures. There's nothing racy or culturally inappropriate in stories surrounding them. Wanna talk Tamar? I'm all over that. Or even not-racy stories, but just stories in general. Love them. But just objects that appear in history? Less likely to have hit my radar. I'm a story person.

As for spelling, Hebrew to English spelling is more a guess than anything. We're not going from Romanized letters to Romanized letters. You're going from sounds to English. It's like indexing names from the 1800s. Every census will have a different spelling because so many people were uneducated and couldn't spell their own name. So the census taker spelled it however they thought it should be spelled. Elohim appears to be more common of a spelling. In Hebrew it's אֱלֹהִ֔ים . The "im" in question is what you'd see as the box, apostrophe, and dot under the third letter (when read from left to right, which is totally inaccurate, but will do for this conversation) is pronounced as "eem".

And now I have this fear that if I actually go look this up in my textbook that I haven't cracked open in over 5 years, I'm going to be proven wrong. Just to spite me.

[Yarjka]

Is the 'h' in 'Elohim' pronounced in Hebrew, or is it more of a silent sound?

[Dragon Lady]

Is the 'h' in 'Elohim' pronounced in Hebrew, or is it more of a silent sound?

Pronounced.

[vorpal blade]

If you go to this site you can hear the word "Elohim," or "'elohiym" pronounced by a Hebrew speaker.

http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lex ... H430&t=KJV

[Yarjka]

If you go to this site you can hear the word "Elohim," or "'elohiym" pronounced by a Hebrew speaker.

http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lex ... H430&t=KJV

What a lovely resource. Thank you!

[Dragon Lady]

That is a great resource! (And for those wondering, the "Elo-[phlegm]" (I really don't know how to phonetically spell the guttural ch sound. But Achmed the dead terrorist taught me you just say phlegm.) is the singular word. Elohim is the plural.)

And thank you for showing me that I'm not crazy, as I was starting to suspect. It really is Eloheem! Hooray!

[vorpal blade]

I really like the Blue Letter Bible website. I've been using it for many years. The pronunciation feature is relatively new. What I find particularly useful is that I can look up a verse that is difficult to understand and find the original Hebrew (or Greek) word in question. Then I can look at every other verse in the Bible that uses that Hebrew word to study how the word is used in various contexts. It gives great insight in the meaning of the verse.

I can see your point, Dragon Lady and thatonemom, if you are borrowing from another language to express an idea, why not use the original pronunciation? I can see how Dragon Lady would be bothered to hear the word “Elohim” mispronounced in the temple ceremony. Why didn’t they take the time to learn to pronounce it? Why did they get that wrong and not pronounce it correctly?

The problem I have is that people like me don’t expect Elohim to be a Hebrew word. Why should Jehovah use a Hebrew word when talking to His Father while the earth was being created—long before there was a Hebrew language? To me to hear “Eloheem” would be anachronistic, as if someone mistakenly thought they were actually speaking Hebrew at the time. Hebrew has nothing to do with what is going on.

“Elohim” is an English word and has been since around 1600. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?all ... hmode=none
The word refers to God, which is somewhat different from the way it is used in Hebrew. We may have borrowed the word but we have changed its original meaning, so why not also change its pronunciation? Incidentally, we in the LDS church have probably a unique definition of the word “Elohim” to express the name or title of God our Heavenly Father, the Father of Jesus Christ. But that is okay, we needed our own “naming convention used in the modern Church for clarity and precision.” (see fairmormon.org).

Fair Mormon has an interesting discussion on our use of the word “Elohim.” http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_ ... nd_Jehovah
And just to add a little more confusion to the discussion, Joseph Smith apparently studied Hebrew with an expert who spoke Sephardic Hebrew. “Sephardic Hebrew pronounces this word for God a bit differently than does Ashkenazic Hebrew (which is the Hebrew that is most commonly used and taught today).”

I hope that helps mitigate one of your pet peeves, Dragon Lady. At least know that if they pronounced the word “Elohim” in the temple the way you think it should be pronounced, it would really bother me as being anachronistic and inappropriate. I’d sit there thinking, “what was actually said, and in what language, and are we to suppose that Jesus spoke to His Father using the term usually meaning plural Gods, and is this some sort of revealed pronunciation?”

[Portia]

This article from The New Yorker is relevant, and hilarious.

(Right-click to view the image.)

[vorpal blade]

(I really don't know how to phonetically spell the guttural ch sound. But Achmed the dead terrorist taught me you just say phlegm.)

I was going to say that when I was in Israel every time I cleared my throat someone would say, "Oh, I didn't know you knew how to speak Hebrew!" Every time I made a kissing sound when I was in Italy they would say, "Your Italian is improving!" The problem is that I don't actually remember that happening.

[Katya]

fascicle - a separately published installment of a book or other printed work

I come across this term occasionally in library work, so I wanted to know the precise definition.

[Digit]

Computer science luminary Donald Knuth uses that word for parts of his great series of books on The Art of Computer Programming, which he started in 1968 and has been continuing to do as of 2011 it appears.