Transferring Vowel Length from Hebrew to Latin

The process of transferring vowel length from Hebrew to Latin is fairly straightforward. As you start,
working out the first few names will be very slow going. As you continue, you’ll get faster until you
can do it in a few seconds. No understanding of Hebrew as a language is required, just an
understanding of how Hebrew is written in terms of its consonants and vowels.

We are basically looking at a six-step process:

1. Find the Hebrew name.

2. Transliterate the Hebrew name into Roman characters.
3. Divide the name into syllables.
4. Find the stressed syllable.
5. Find the open syllables.
6. Compare your Hebrew word to the Latin.

As you get confortable, probably with just several hours of practice, this entire process will happen
almost automatically for you. Don’t be intimidated by this massive document. This is just a maximally-
explicit explanation of what’s involved.

This is probably better learned by doing than by laying out a complete theory. Let’s try the first name
found in Numbers 27:1 – “Salphaad” in the Vulgate.

1. Find the Hebrew Name

We begin with Numbers 27:1 in the Vulgate:

accesserunt autem filiae Salphaad filii Epher filii Galaad filii Machir filii Manasse qui fuit
filius Ioseph quarum sunt nomina Maala et Noa et Egla et Melcha et Thersa1

The first name is “Salphaad”. For convenience, we should check this against an English translation, as
virtually all English translations from the Hebrew stick more closely to the Hebrew form of the name
than the Vulgate does. For convenience, let’s use the ASV, though probably any version would be fine:

Then drew near the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of
Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph; and these are the
names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Tirzah.2

So we are looking for a Hebrew name close to “Zelophehad”.

In navigating the Hebrew text, the best resource for a beginner is likely going to be the Bible Online
Learner website.3

We’ll look at the interface on the next page.

1 https://vulgate.org/ot/numbers_27.htm
2 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2027&version=ASV
3 https://bibleol.3bmoodle.dk/text/select_text
You’ll want to navigate to “Numbers” in the “Book” drop-down, and then enter “27” as your chapter,
then click “Display.”
Now you have the Hebrew text in front of you. The first thing to understand is that the Hebrew text
goes from right to left. This website allows you to hover your mouse over any word in the Hebrew, and
a pane will appear with shows a wealth of information about that particular Hebrew word.

So, for example, suppose we hover the mouse over the first word:

When you do this, a pane will appear, at the top of which is the following information:
The critical part for our purposes is the transliteration ttiqravnah (ignore the diacritics and oddly-sized
letters for now). This doesn’t look like Zelophehad at all, so it’s not the word we’re looking for. So we
try the next word.

Hovering the mouse over

gives us the transliteration benot. This also cannot be what we’re looking for.

The third word is

It’s transliteration is ṣᵊlofḥād. This is our Zelophehad, as we can see from the resemblance. We have
now completed the first of our five steps: finding the Hebrew word. Once you’ve done this step a few
times with a few different words, it will become rapid. Once you’ve learned how to sound out Hebrew
words, you’ll be able to do it automatically, without even looking at the transliterations.

On to step 2.
 2. Transliterate the Name

So our Hebrew word is

and its transliteration is ṣᵊlofḥād. Bible Online Learner has done the work of transliterating for us, but
you’ll want to understand how the Hebrew letters relate to the Roman Letters for any word you’re
working with, as it will make the following steps easier. So let’s go through the word piece by piece,
explaining how the Hebrew letters work. You can use a chart of Hebrew letters and vowels for
reference as you do this.

You can find the chart you need here: http://www.viceregency.com/Translit.htm

You should mostly ignore macrons in the chart – they do not correspond to the Latin macrons you want
to derive for the most part.

Now, the Hebrew word consists of three elements: the letters (consonants), the vowels (small markings
below the consonants), and an accent mark. Let’s blow up the word and take them one by one.
Using the SBL chart, let’s go through each of 1 through 10, and look at their phonetic value.

1. Is a tsaddi (or ṣāde). This is a letter which the chart renders as ṣ. You can pronounce this as a ts
sound like in pizza.

2. Two vertically oriented dots under the tsaddi: these dots are called a shva. A shva, depending on
context, is either a very short e vowel or completely silent. You do not need to learn the rules to
distinguish which is which, because Bible Online Learner already provided the transliteration ṣᵊlofḥād
for you, so after the tsaddi in this case it’s a short “e”.

3. This letter is a lamed, or l consonant.

4. This symbol is a kamatz, either a or o depending on the context. Your transliteration ṣᵊlofḥād tells
you it’s an o here.

5. This is a pe, either a p or f or ph by context. The transliteration ṣᵊlofḥād tells you “f” will work here
(ph is completely equivalent; those are just two different ways of rendering the same thing).

6. Just like (2), this is another shva. This time, ṣᵊlofḥād shows you it’s silent.

7. This is the consonant het or chet. It’s a harsh h-like sound. It has no equivalent in Latin. We can just
use h for it any time for our purposes and that will be fine.

8. Like (4), this is a kamatz. In this case, ṣᵊlofḥād shows you it’s an a. Ignore the macron in any
transliteration from Bible Online Learner; it doesn’t always help you.

9. You’ll notice that this doesn’t appear on the SBL chart. When a symbol doesn’t appear on an SBL
chart, you can assume it’s an accent mark showing vowel stress. So we’ll circle back to this.

10. This is dalet, the Hebrew d.

So putting all these together, we now have tselofhad, which is a serviceable transliteration, and we’re
ready to move on to step 3.
 3. Divide your word into syllables.

e
ts lofhad
The first rule of syllabification in Hebrew is that each syllable must begin with a consonant. And the
word will naturally fall out into syllables if you work from the end of the word forward.

So starting at the end of the word, the last syllable must be had, which just leaves us to analyze tselof.

The next syllable is lof.

The first part of the word, tse, has the little half-vowel shva, which is always a short vowel and can’t
form its own syllable, so we’ll call this a two syllable word:

e
ts lof-had
We are now ready for step (4).
 4. Find the stressed syllable

e
ts lof-had
Now we want to find our stressed syllable. This is easy. Remember how (9) is not a consonant or a
vowel? That means it’s the stress mark of our word. It’s over the het and kamatz, which means that the
kamatz, the a of had, is a long vowel.

e
ts lof-hād
Now that we’ve identified the stressed syllable, we want to check for any open syllables: step 5.
 5. Find any open syllables

e
ts lof-hād
The rules of Hebrew vowel length are simple: (1) a stressed syllable has a long vowel, (2) an open
syllable has a long vowel, and (3) all other vowels are short. We’ve already found our stressed syllable,
so now we’re looking for open syllables.

An open syllable is simply a syllable that ends in a vowel. A closed syllable is simply any syllable that
ends in a consonant.

Since the only syllable we have left to look at is tselof, we can simply look at the consonant at the end,
and now we know it’s a closed syllable. So since tselof is neither stressed nor open, it’s vowel and half-
vowel are short. So it’s

e
ts lof-hād
… and we’re done with the Hebrew. On to the Latin.
 6. Compare the Hebrew and Latin

So now our finished product is tselof-hād. How can we compare that to the Latin Salphaad?

First, the tselof has become Salph. If we want to reproduce the Hebrew stress in Latin, then we’ll keep
this syllable short.

The had has become aad. My best guess, based on this same phenomenon existing in Greek, is that the
harsh h of het, which does not exist in Latin, has been assimilated as an extra a.

The final a is the equivalent of the actual Hebrew vowel that is long, so I would write Salphaād.

Of course, if Salphaād is absurd in Latin for some reason, then by all means, go ahead and make
whatever adjustments are necessary. But Salphaād is the maximally Hebrew-compatible form.

A Brief Encouragement

This may have seemed like a long process, but it’s just me writing out a pretty automatic two-second
instinctive reaction that you’ll have once you know how to sound out Hebrew. With every word you
sound out, you’ll get stronger, and if you’re planning to do the whole Vulgate this way the process will
be a cinch after the first few dozen words.