Pronouncing Explanatory Glossary

Format. Names of persons and places are printed in ordinary type, other terms in italics. All terms are Hebrew except where [A] indicates Aramaic, [Y] Yiddish, and [O] some other language. Usual English renderings are shown in parentheses, unless the usual ones are the same as the CJB ones or differ only by reason of apostrophes. The definition or explanation, if there is one, follows a dash. In the case of B’rit Hadashah names and terms, there is given at the end of each entry the book, chapter and verse of the B’rit Hadashah where the name or term first appears (see abbreviations below); a "+" means it appears in at least one subsequent verse; "f." or "ff." means it appears again only in the verse or verses immediately following. Tanakh names and terms are generally not explained, although translations are given where needed.

Pronunciation. Vowels are pronounced as boldfaced in the following words: father, aisle, bed, need, neigh, whey, marine (accented on last syllable) or invest (not accented), obey, rule. As for consonants, "ch" is pronounced as in Johann Sebastian Bach, and so is "kh"; "g" is always hard (give); other consonants are more or less as in English. The guttural stop alef is represented by an apostrophe (’) before a vowel, except at the beginning of a word (example: Natan’el is pronounced Na•tan•’el and not Na•ta•nel). The stronger guttural stop ‘ayin (closer to the hard "g" sound) is represented by a reverse apostrophe (‘) before or after a vowel.

Dots separate syllables unless hyphens or apostrophes do the job already. Accented syllables are printed in boldface. Except where an asterisk (*) follows the word, the pronunciation shown for Hebrew and Aramaic is that used in Israel, where at least 90% of all words are accented on the last syllable; many of the exceptions, in which the next-to-last syllable is accented, end with "ch," with a vowel followed by "a," or with "e" in the last syllable. Ashkenazic (German and eastern European) pronunciations common in English-speaking countries often shift "a" sounds towards "o," turn some "t’s" into "s’s," and accent the next-to-last syllable where the Israelis accent the last, e.g., Shab•bos instead of Shab•bat.

Section xvI of the Introduction tells more about how to pronounce Hebrew.

An asterisk (*) means: See "Accentuation" paragraph on p. liii.

References to Books of the Bible. Books of the Tanakh are not abbreviated in the Glossary. The books of the B’rit Hadashah are abbreviated as follows:

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Note: The glossary provided is not a complete Hebrew thesaurus of terms, but related to the Complete Jewish Bible.

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