Talk:Hebrew phrasebook

I don't know if a Hebrew native speaker wrote it or not... LIGH-lah TOHV, I would write as LY-lah, and Eh-rev is surly without the h - it's with Ain (ע) and not with Heh (ה).

"The months are numbered starting from Nisan or Aviv (March-April), but the year number is incremented in Tishrei; thus Elul 5760 is followed by Tishrei 5761."
to this all I have to say is -WHAT????
The first month is Tishrei, the year used to be strat in Nissan who knows when. In the first of Tisgrei there is this big holiday called Rosh-Hashana meaning: Head/begining of the year. (WT-en) F16 14:08, 6 Dec 2005 (EST)

Nissan used to be the first month during biblical times, I believe it was changed at around the talmudic times.

And yes, Erev is indeed with an Ain, but the diffrence between Ain and Alef has mostly withered. It wasn't very common among the Ashkenazy Jews in Europe, and was much more common among Sepharadic and Mizrahi Jews, but Sepharadic and Mizrahi Jews of 40- usually use the more Alef-ish version of Ain. And that opens a whole new discussion. Alot of the pronouncations in this article are severely de jure, and do not conform to commonspeech in Israel. I'd say it's going to be much of a hinderance to any foreign who isn't well-familiar and comfortable with Hebrew already to speak in the way the article suggests. Such a distance from the commonspeech will be very bizzare and awkward, and could lead to confusion or even patronization of either side (I've seen quite a few times that an Israeli will ask a foreigner to speak in English, as the Israeli simply doesn't understand the foreigner's Hebrew, and it sounds like garbled gibbrish instead. Note that it happens mostly to foreigners who are very sure of their own Hebrew, and such a request appears to deal a massive blow to the ego of any foreigner who gets it.) Perhaps a revamp of the pronouncations to a less snobbish way is needed. Any expansion of this article in its current state could perhaps cause a wave of foreigners to come to a kiosk and asking for כעכים (ke-A'KH-im). Could be a good laugh. 85.64.12.103 17:19, 9 Dec 2005 (EST)

I think we should use the regular common modern pronunciation as used in English-language Israeli newspapers and modern Jewish books for this article. For example, "ke'achim" and "laila", "shalom" and "erev tov". The way it is written now may be fitting for a university student studying Hebrew, but it is total nonsense and almost unreadable for practical use. If nobody objects before June 6th I will start some work on it. --User:(WT-en) Daniel575 30 May 2006

The "total nonsense" is pseudo-phonetics, which are designed to be easy for anybody to read with no knowledge of the language, and should most definitely be kept. If you want to add romanizations of the Hebrew script, you're very welcome to do so, but please check Project:Romanization and propose a standard for doing so first -- we haven't managed to come up with one yet. (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:00, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

Those rules Project:Romanization look AMAZING!!! That's excellent. That's normal regular civilized English. (Noting that I only read the chet=ch and tzadik=tz things.) No weird H's for a chat/chaf/kaf, no Q's, etc. For example: Beer Sheva instead of Beersheba. Petach Tikvah instead of Petaq Tiqwa. Ma'aleh Adumim instead of Maale Adummim, Beit Shemesh instead of Beth Shemesh, Chevron instead of Hevron, Bnei Brak instead of Bene Beraq. --(WT-en) Daniel575 07:14, 11 July 2006 (EDT)

Oops, I was wrong. It is Chewron and Petach Tiqwa. There is no way on earth that I am ever going to transliterate a Vav as /W/ nor is there any way that I am ever going write a Kof as /Q/. --(WT-en) Daniel575 07:19, 11 July 2006 (EDT)

Huh? In the UN system, kof is /K/ and vav is /V/. Footnote 12 only says that Q/W were used in the previous Israeli system. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:32, 1 October 2009 (EDT)