How Do You Pronounce Hard Bible Words? | Word Nerd: Language and the Bible

how do you pronounce hard bible words [Music] confidently that's the answer if you're gonna get it wrong along with martin luther i say sin boldly but that's just it when it comes to bible words there are fewer pronunciation sins than you might think now there are some i was just listening to a new king james version audio bible and i got to the scene in daniel 5 where a disembodied divine hand writes on the wall in front of a shocked and drunk king belshazzar i would probably have said if i were the voice actor monet monet tekkel ufarseen but listen to the way the actual narrator read the words mini mini tickle ufarsen like many americans i am something of a child of the television so i happen to know that there was a famous children's show in 1962 called beanie and cecil which was in turn lampooned in 1993 my own era of sprawling before the boob tube after school by the fantastic recurring animaniacs short pinky and the brain what are we going to do tonight brian same thing we do every night pinky try to take over the world this was a particularly good episode in 1993 one which i've actually often thought over the years because it seemed to predict the triumph of the therapeutic or at least of therapists you'll just have to watch it on hulu season 2 episode 5. anyway in this little satire beanie and cecil the kids tv show became meanie and treacle and it took my brain about one second to go down this whole inevitable thought path when while listening to an nkjv audio bible while getting ready in the morning the hapless voice actor said mini mini tikul yuvarsen so yes here's a pronunciation sin inducing giggles by making an ominous biblical phrase remind your gen x hearers of a silly old cartoon sort of like turning caesar's famous i came i saw i conquered into weenie ouija don't do that but think with me here mene and tekel simply are not english words there is no rule for how to pronounce words from other languages correctly probably don't be distracting or silly don't fumble or stutter definitely draw a believable connection between the letters on the bible page b-e-n-a-i-a-h and the sounds you utter banaya or banaya but leave it there do not feel that you have to reconstruct the way these words were originally pronounced in hebrew or greek or aramaic that pronunciation will often be impossible for you to mimic anyway using as it does sounds you physically cannot make as an english speaker like and who's to say that all ancient israelites pronounced israel or israel the same way even in english today how is the word b-a-g pronounced around here in washington the checkout clerks at the grocery stores ask me if i need a beg where i come from it's bag who's right surely ancient hebrews had regional dialects and accents too just like we do in new testament times the disciples were noted as galileans probably indeed because of their accents what was the right way back then to pronounce kiriath jiarim and was it philistine or philistine or something else entirely who can know i'm not saying we can't know anything about ancient pronunciations of hebrew and greek words scholars have worked on this for example by looking at things that were supposed to rhyme or examining misspellings i'm just saying that the original pronunciation whatever it was cannot serve as the standard for how you and i pronounce names in the bible today take that impossible pressure off your shoulders plenty of names in the bible have come into english or are used often enough at least in churches that they do have standard pronunciations they are now english words in their own right job the main character of the book of job could absolutely be pronounced like job if things were different for example but the standard long o pronunciation job is well established stick with it abraham sarah lot isaac jacob jesus himself all of the names of these important bible characters have been anglicized they've been englished we don't say any of them like their mothers would have when they called them in for supper and that's okay brits say isaiah while americans say isaiah fine continue really just act like you know what you're doing and other people will assume you do

Channel: Logos Bible Software

Views: 1,080

Rating: 4.8620691 out of 5

Keywords: bible, translation, english, hebrew, greek, aramaic, pronunciation, pronouncing hard bible words, pronouncing bible names, nebuchadnezzar, tiglath-pileser, maher-shalal-hash-baz

Id: zw5PlH9yfhk

Length: 4min 42sec (282 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021