[Mesorah] Bemidbar or Bamidbar?

[Akiva Miller via Mesorah]

I noticed that the Soncino Chumash gives the name of the parsha (and the
sefer) as "Bemidbar". Obviously, the letter "e" is a transliteration of the
Hebrew shva, as the pasuk begins "bemidbar sinai".

Personally, I would transliterate it with an apostrophe (B'midbar), but
that's a minor point of style. Significantly different is ArtScroll's
practice of spelling it with an "a": Bamidbar. Even though there's no
patach on the beis when we lein it, there certainly would be a patach when
it is a standalone word (unconnected to the "sinai" that follows it). And
in actual practice, if you ask people the name, they will often respond
"Bamidbar", and not "Bemidbar".

My question today is to ask the chevreh if anyone has any strong feelings
one way or the other. Should we use the pronunciation as it is read during
krias hatorah, or should we take the word and apply the grammatical rules
as a standalone?

And even if you don't have strong feelings, maybe you can offer examples to
support one side or the other. For example, I have never heard anyone call
the parsha "Fekudei"; everyone adds the dagesh, even though it is absent
from the phrase "Eileh fekudei".

Any other examples?

Akiva Miller
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/mesorah-aishdas.org/attachments/20160605/1cb71bd2/attachment-0004.htm>