The following is a response to one person who took exception to another's use of "Jehovah" in reference to the great I AM, insisting that Yahweh is the correct way to render it:
That's okay...we're English speakers. We allow speakers of other languages considerable latitude in their pronunciation and spelling of names, places, etc. Why shouldn't that same forbearance be extended to us?
I'm reminded of the name "James". In other languages it's rendered Jakob, Jacobus, Iago, etc. How we came up with James I don't know! But would you deny parents the right to name their child James because it doesn't conform to the original language?
In German and some Slavic languages that J is pronounced like we English speakers pronounce the letter Y. (Go ahead, take a crack at Ljubljana!) Hence the perfectly logical Iago in Spanish. I don't know for certain, but suspect that the Hebrew letter we use the V or W for (depending on how you pronounce it) has an actual pronunciation midway between the two. I've heard that pronunciation in Urdu, for instance.
What about the name Jesus? It's actually Yeshua, or Joshua in our rendering. Again the Y sound has been replaced by our J sound. Is that blasphemous? I think Yeshua would be very tolerant!
So what I'm trying to say is, be forbearing and allow people their linguistic/cultural differences. Even our own.
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