Ayin Caramba!
For most of the 20th century, Hebrew teachers dutifully taught pupils that the Hebrew alphabet had two “silent letters,” aleph and ayin. While this may be true of Modern Hebrew, both letters were pronounced in Biblical Hebrew. Eastern European Jews continued to pronounce the ayin until at least the 1700s. Ayin and aleph are still pronounced in the Synagogue Hebrew of Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jews.
The sound of an aleph is the same as the...
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After a While, Crocodile
After a While, Crocodile. By expelling the Jews from England in 1390, King Edward I retarded Hebrew scholarship for centuries. So when King James I ordered a new translation of the Bible in 1604, Hebrew dictionaries and grammar books were rudimentary. Occasionally, the translators sought divine inspiration to understand obscure Hebrew words. Naturally, some interesting errors resulted. Modern translations generally rely on the King James...