[Avodah] What is the correct way to pronounce Hashem’s name in Shmoneh Esrei and other brachos?

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 01:18:11PM +0000, Professor L. Levine via Avodah wrote:
:  From today's OU Halacha Yomis
...
: A. Rav Shlomo Zalman Ehrenreich, HY"D ...                       "We have
: a tradition in our hands from Sinai, from the mouth of the Almighty,
: that the reading of the honored and awesome name of Hashem is AH -- DOY
: -- NOY (AH-DOE -- NOY or AH-DOW-NOY) using the vowelization of Chataf
: Patach for the Aleph, a Cholam for the Daled and a Kamatz for the Nun..."

First, we know from seifer Shoferim that different shevatim had different
accents, such that Shevet Ephraim (like Litvaks of a much later date)
pronounced as right-dotted shin the same as a sin or samekh.

So how can we talk about a single accent even at Har Sinai?

I therefore assume RSZE Hy"d was saying that you need to use your
mesorah's patach-cholam-qamatz, as he spells out in the rephrasing. And
that these vowels are what's misinai.

Which is also problematic, as the division of various possible
vowel alophones into specific phonemes probably didn't happen until
Teverya.

This next paragraph may make your eyes glaze over. It justifies the
previous one, but feel free to skip it if it bores you and move on to
the next point:

Which explains why Bavel's nequdos don't line up one-to-one with the ones
we use today -- one symbol for segol and patach and one symbol for qamatz
qatan and cholam with a different one for. And the prior Israeli system
fits Sepharadi pronounciation, fewer symbols showing less differentiation,
but it could simply be less precise. The way we still have one symbol for
qamatz qatan and qamatz gadol, or sheva na and sheva nach. (Unless you
are using a "simanim" or other non-standard printing. Unicode actually
supports this differentiation, if you find a font and a text file that
distinguishes.) One symbol does not mean one phoneme. But it hints at
how the locals viewer the vowels. Like Rashi, who echoes the Babylonian
single segol-patach system when he refers to a segol as a patach qatan.
(If you are still reading this paragraph, you'd probably enjoy our
mesorah email list. Ask me to sign you up!)

R Rallis Weisenthal (CC-ed), in his siddur in memory of Qh"Q Bad Homburg
pg LXV <http://bit.ly/2titFZE> (on opensiddur.org), lists traditional
Ashkneazi cholam sounds, claiming that they're all dipthongs. ("Claiming",
because I am not sure he's right on one of them):

    Poland, Austria-Hungary
	komatz chirik
	O^i
	[t]oy
    Lithuania, Russia
	segol chirik
	Ae^i
	[p]ay
    Northern Germany, Holland
	patach shuruk
	A^u
	[h]ow
    Southern Germany, Switzerland, France, Latvia, England, North America
	komatz shuruk
	O^u
	[g]o

I think the Lithuanian cholam was originally more like /oe/ a sound
halfway between /o/ and a tzeirei. (And the /e/ of the tzeirei isn't
quite the same as a segol.) What he is describing reflects later
Polish influence, a compromise position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vowel_chart_with_audio could help here.

And I think the British cholam actually is rounder than a qamatz, like
a long /O/ in English. And like a long /O/, there is a tendency to add
a rounding /w/ (eg "blow"), but it's not always there. Maybe a dipthong
of qamatz qatan and a /w/, which is shitas haGra. Not entirely different
than what RRW writes, but also not quite as implied from his description.

Anyway, he has a continuing discussion by R' Y Kramer againt using a /y/
or /i/ sound to round a cholam. Go to the above link. It's too long and two
bi-lingual for me to cut-n-paste here.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Friendship is like stone. A stone has no value,
micha at aishdas.org        but by rubbing one stone against another,
http://www.aishdas.org   sparks of fire emerge. 
Fax: (270) 514-1507                  - Rav Mordechai of Lechovitz