Help understanding word in Hebrew

[James Taylor]

I"m trying to understand a little Hebrew and have what I'm sure is very simple question. Looking up the word father, H0001 in the Hebrew Strong's, it shows a word composed of two letters - Alef and Bet. It seems to indicate a word pronounced "awb" (or maybe i'm not understanding that correctly). However, looking up the Hebrew alphabet it says that in order for Bet to have a "b" sound it needs a dagesh? So should it be pronounced "av" in this case? Why wouldn't the Hebrew Strong's show the pronunciation this way?

 

This is all new, so I'm probably way off ;-)

 

Thanks,

 

JT

[Robert Holmstedt]

I"m trying to understand a little Hebrew and have what I'm sure is very simple question. Looking up the word father, H0001 in the Hebrew Strong's, it shows a word composed of two letters - Alef and Bet. It seems to indicate a word pronounced "awb" (or maybe i'm not understanding that correctly). However, looking up the Hebrew alphabet it says that in order for Bet to have a "b" sound it needs a dagesh? So should it be pronounced "av" in this case? Why wouldn't the Hebrew Strong's show the pronunciation this way?

 

This is all new, so I'm probably way off ;-)

 

Thanks,

 

JT

 

James,

 

Others can answer about Strong's, which I've never used. But as for the word you're asking about, it's pronounced "av" (the /a/ is typically pronounced as the /a/ in "father").

 

You've run into the challenge that every new Hebrew learner faces. Most of the consonants and vowels are straightforward, but a few have two sounds, depending on whether has a "dot" in the consonant. If there is a dot, it's the "hard" sound -- Bet = /b/, but if there is not dot, it's the "soft" sound -- Bet = /v/.

 

When and where this occurs would probably bore you (or worse, be confusing) if you've just started learning Hebrew. Save that for a later date. But perhaps it will useful to know that there are 6 consonants this affects: B, G, D, K, P, T (the traditional mnemonic is "BeGaD KeFaT"). In late antiquity and the medieval period all 6 would have had variants: B/V, G/GH, D/DH (=/th/ in "this"), K/KH, P/F, and T/TH (= "th" in "think"). The Israeli-like pronunciation that many of us teach only distinguishes the two variants for 3 of the pairs: B/V, K/KH, and P/F.

 

Hope that helps. Have fun learning Hebrew.

[James Taylor]

Thanks Robert! That helps. My next question was going to be if anyone knows of a resource that would speak the Hebrew words so I could actually hear them. However, as I was working in Accordance I came across the lookup - speak! Very helpful! Do most find this enough, or is there other tools that would help as well?

 

Thanks again,

 

JT