Thread:Christian Sirolli/@comment-1777104-20160131020023/@comment-1777104-20160201213915

Oops, I spelled ayin wrong! The others are acceptable alternate spelling. Though I think "yodth" is closer. The ending is the "th" as in "these" without a "e" to clue us in.

The sounding of the wau as "V" is a late development. In Hebrew "V" is a phonetic "B" and thus the modern spelling of the "Nebeb" as the Negev. In English the sound of "V" is a "hard 'F' and was not a variant in ancient Semitic languages (that I know of).

I use the "A" to transliterate the Aleph based on the development of the Greek Alpha, a full vowel letter. The accent acute (the apostrophe) is easy to spot, and should be used when the vowel sound is NOT , but then, the accent grave (leading single quote) is not easy to see (which why I used the underscore instead. The ayin never made the transition over into the Greek and Roman alphabets.

And did you note the difference pronunciation made for the poor Ephraimites! It mattered then! :-)

It doesn't matter, too much. From the very beginning homonyms have confused human readers and speakers. Eve gave birth to a son she named Qain (meaning possession from qanah, an  irregular verb). He would become known as Qayin (meaning "spear" or possibly "lament" from the verb Quwn ).

My analysis above shows a respect for the final writer of this account, Moses, who uses one word, and quotes Eve as having used another word. To explain that it as Eve making a mistake is ludicrous, for she, with Adam, were speaking the ORIGINAL language. They worked out those things early on. It is more probable that over the years, the original name was corrupted, or purposely changed, to distinguish from Cainan, a descendant of Seth, whose name sounded much like his infamous uncle.

I have a slight advantage on you. I not only had university level Hebrew, but I had a class in phonetics (only one, but it was fascinating). I have been a student of languages (Spanish, Latin, French, Greek, and finally Hebrew) for years. Jesus once said that not one "jot" -- the yod, yoth, or yodth -- would pass away. I strive to discern the reason for the different spellings that sometimes are counted as "contradictions."