# He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us



## EntreNousFilsDePasteur

Bonjour. 

Would you be so kind as to translate this sentence in hebrew for me ? 


Toda raba


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## arielipi

הוא מתהלך בינינו, אך הוא לא אחד מאיתנו
משלנו


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## EntreNousFilsDePasteur

Thank you very much Arielipi


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## hadronic

I guess the last two words are two different options ?
And the pronunciation, if OP is interested in that: 
Hu mithalekh beyneynu, akh hu lo ekhad me'itanu / mishelanu


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## arielipi

hadronic said:


> I guess the last two words are two different options ?
> And the pronunciation, if OP is interested in that:
> Hu mithale*c*h beyn*enu*, a*c*h hu lo ekhad me'itanu / mishelanu



Yes, notice my corrections, this is a kaf not a khet


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## EntreNousFilsDePasteur

Merci beaucoup pour la prononciation hadronic 
C'est très gentil de me l'avoir expliqué.


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## hadronic

But the pronunciation is the same, and kh is less misleading than ch. 
Moreover, why do you transliterate the tsere + yod once as "ey", and once as "e"?


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## arielipi

hadronic said:


> But the pronunciation is the same, and kh is less misleading than ch.
> Moreover, why do you transliterate the tsere + yod once as "ey", and once as "e"?



the pronunciation shouldnt be the same; i transliterate the way people say.


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## origumi

hadronic said:


> Moreover, why do you transliterate the tsere + yod once as "ey", and once as "e"?


More details here: https://www.safa-ivrit.org/spelling/beinenu.php


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## hadronic

arielipi said:


> the pronunciation shouldnt be the same; i transliterate the way people say.



And people pronounce ch and kh the same, don't they.... 

*I'm not in the oriental/ashkenazi pronunciation debate but on how we should transliterate (modern, ashkenazi) Hebrew


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## arielipi

hadronic said:


> And people pronounce ch and kh the same, don't they....
> 
> *I'm not in the oriental/ashkenazi pronunciation debate but on how we should transliterate (modern, ashkenazi) Hebrew



i follow these rules in that order when i transliterate:
1) the letter that is in hebrew
2) the way people say
3) the way i say
4) the way it should be said


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## hadronic

origumi said:


> More details here: https://www.safa-ivrit.org/spelling/beinenu.php


  Unless I didn't fully understand the article, but it doesn't explain why the first "ey" is kept in pronunciation and why the second is reduced to "e". For me, it looks pretty random : "en" instead of "eyn", "bet-sefer" instead of "beyt-sefer" but "beytenu" ...   (i'm *not* talking of the 'reverse' mechanism like "teysha" ).


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## origumi

hadronic said:


> it doesn't explain why the first "ey" is kept in pronunciation and why the second is reduced to "e".


According to the comment is safa-ivrit, it's not clear that the second "י" of בינינו was pronounced historically as "ey". Therefore not necessarily a reduction.


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## hadronic

Yes, but "history" doesn't exist for Hebrew . There's only what the first people *thought* it should be pronounced...


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## arielipi

hadronic said:


> Yes, but "history" doesn't exist for Hebrew . There's only what the first people *thought* it should be pronounced...



It *should* be beyt-sefer.


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## origumi

hadronic said:


> Yes, but "history" doesn't exist for Hebrew . There's only what the first people *thought* it should be pronounced...


I'm not sure what you mean here. Anyway, there's a tradition since ancient times of how to read the Bible. We cover the Torah again and again every year.

For בינינו I couldn't find a good source that explains the diffrerence between how it's written and how it's pronounced.


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## arielipi

origumi said:


> I'm not sure what you mean here. Anyway, there's a tradition since ancient times of how to read the Bible. We cover the Torah again and again every year.
> 
> For בינינו I couldn't find a good source that explains the diffrerence between how it's written and how it's pronounced.



I think i once heard that every tzere that opens a word is a tzere with ey, and that every tzere that ends the word is an e.


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## origumi

arielipi said:


> I think i once heard that every tzere that opens a word is a tzere with ey, and that every tzere that ends the word is an e.


Beynenu is supposedly "our beyn" or "our *beynim/beynaim". So we can compare it to other cased like יָדֵנוּ yadenu (our hand) and יָדֵינוּ yadeynu (our hands), both with tzere. If it's "our *beynim/beynaim" then the expected pronunciation is beyneynu, if "our beyn" the expected pronunciation is bynenu and the expected spelling is ביננו. Therefore בינינו looks like an exceptional case, in regard to either the spelling or the pronunciation.


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## arielipi

origumi said:


> Beynenu is supposedly "our beyn" or "our *beynim/beynaim". So we can compare it to other cased like יָדֵנוּ yadenu (our hand) and יָדֵינוּ yadeynu (our hands), both with tzere. If it's "our *beynim/beynaim" then the expected pronunciation is beyneynu, if "our beyn" the expected pronunciation is bynenu and the expected spelling is ביננו. Therefore בינינו looks like an exceptional case, in regard to either the spelling or the pronunciation.



בינינו comes from the singular בין therefore the second tzere is e and not ey; https://www.safa-ivrit.org/spelling/beinenu.php


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## hadronic

That link has already been provided above.  So for "our hands", do you say "yadenu" or "yadeynu" ? Do you insist on pronouncing the "ey" just to distinguish it from the singular ? And how about "bateynu" (our houses) ? Because there couldn't be ambiguity with "beytenu" (our house), would you also say the "ey" ?


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## origumi

hadronic said:


> That link has already been provided above.  So for "our hands", do you say "yadenu" or "yadeynu" ? Do you insist on pronouncing the "ey" just to distinguish it from the singular ? And how about "bateynu" (our houses) ? Because there couldn't be ambiguity with "beytenu" (our house), would you also say the "ey" ?


Normally "e" for singular, "ey" for plural, with exceptions I guess. So yadenu is singular, yadeynu is plural. It's not _just to distinguish_, it's simply how we say the words. Bateyno is pronounced with "ey".

Note that the "e" vs. "ey" are sometimes mixed in careless colloquial talks, so hearing a "wrong" pronunciation (in the TV for example) shouldn't be a surprise.


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## hadronic

Oh, so you mean that pronunciation "beynenu" is not because of ey simplification, but because of an interpretation / feeling speakers have that it is singular underlyingly?


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## arielipi

hadronic said:


> Oh, so you mean that pronunciation "beynenu" is not because of ey simplification, but because of an interpretation / feeling speakers have that it is singular underlyingly?



dont forget hebrew is eager to slide things through, making shifts/diphthongs/eases sounds to make talking consistent.


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## airelibre

To me, the first two vowels of בינינו sound very similar, but maybe that's because the second one is stressed, so it seems to lengthen it to the same length as the first. It doesn't sound like, for example, the vowel in קסם. 
I'm not mentioning vowel/niqud names on purpose, since we are just talking about the common pronunciation here and that seems to differ from the intended pronunciation at times, such as the given example about אין, which sounds like it should be written with segol.


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## origumi

airelibre said:


> To me, the first two vowels of בינינו sound very similar, but maybe that's because the second one is stressed, so it seems to lengthen it to the same length as the first. It doesn't sound like, for example, the vowel in קסם.


There are two possible reasons:

1. In Ashkenazi accent the two vowels really sound alike
2. As explained in the safa-ivrit link, modern speakers tend to either change the spelling according to sound, or change the sound according to the spelling. So some may read it beyne*y*nu.

קסם and segolites in general are a different issue.


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## Malki92

EntreNousFilsDePasteur said:


> Bonjour.
> 
> Would you be so kind as to translate this sentence in hebrew for me ?
> 
> 
> Toda raba



This is a bit like a phrase found in the New Testament (1 John 2:19).

In one Hebrew Bible I have, it reads as: 

*מִקִּרְבֵּנוּ יָצְאוּ אֲבָל לֹא־מֵאִתָּנוּ הָיוּ  *

Granted, that's only part of the verse. But that's what this phrase brought to mind. Curious if this helps at all.


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