[Avodah] Yehoshua and Yehonasan

[Chanoch (Ken) Bloom]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:11:17AM -0600, Lisa Liel wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:46:29 -0500, Micha Berger <mi... at aishdas.org> wrote:
> 
> >The niqud we see in siddurim for the sheim Havayah is that of
> >sheim Adnus, with the minor alteration of putting a sheva under
> >the yud instead of a chataf patach. (Not sure if that's because
> >the printer thought that a chataf patach under a yud looks weird,
> >or because it would widen the word -- a sheva fits under the yud
> >better.) This is standard practice for q'ri ukesiv, to place the
> >niqud for the q'ri.
> >
> >BUT, if the vowels of the first two letters weren't sheva and
> >cholam, why would Yehoshua and Yehonasan as they are?
> >
> >That's assuming, of course, that the suffix version is more likely
> >to be modified: Yoshiyahu, Eliyahu....

The halacha seforim (e.g. Halacha Berura) say it's the nikudot for
L'Olam. I bet this isn't just a decision of the printers to do the
nikudot this way, and that there's some significance to the fact that
it's l'olam, and not the shem adnut.

--Ken

-- 
Chanoch (Ken) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/