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V'E'ESCHA L'GOY GADOL V'AV'RACHECHA V'A'GADLA SH'MECHA V'HEY BRACHA: (B'reishit 12:2)
(G-d's promises to Avraham) And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

Look at the next to the last word of this pasuk. It is tricky to pronounce correctly. The first syllable is made of the VAV with a SEGOL and a HEI with a SH'VA NACH. This means the HEI is aspirated and the first syllable is VEHHH. The second syllable is YEI, and this time, the HEI is silent. The first one is sounded as if it had a MAPIK (dot) in it. A HEI at the end of a word without a vowel is silent, unless it has a MAPIK in it. VEH-YEI.
This is not an uncommon occurrence. In SH'MA (second passage) we find V'LO YIHHH-YE. First syllable is YUD with a CHIRIK and a sounded HEI with a SH'VA NACH. Many people will mispronounce the word as Y'HI-YE, putting a SH'VA under the first YUD and a CHIRIK under the first HEI - neither of which is correct.

The meanings of the words are not changed, but that should not stop us from learning to pronounce them correctly.

My sister = acho-TI. But in 12:8 the word is followed by a one-syllable word, AT (you, fem.) The accent of acho-TI retreats to the first syllable (NASOG ACHOR) and is accented aCHO-ti AT.

We've had this before. And it isn't only in Torah reading. Remember the bracha for Torah: ...aSHER BA-char BA-nu... v'NA-tan LA-nu. ba-CHAR becomes BA-char and na-TAN becomes NA-tan by the rule of NASOG ACHOR (here followed by a two-syllable MIL'EIL word in the same phrase.


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