Shaleshudes and Tisha Bav

We last discussed Shivasar B'Tammuz. Two more interesting words, pronounced in one way but often written in their more formal, correct form, are Shaleshudes and Tisha Bav.

This makes some sense. Even in Yiddish, where the pronunciation differed, the original Hebrew spelling was maintained. Then again, there it was maintaining the original spelling in the original alphabet. Once we more to a transliteration system, such as where we desire to write the words in English characters, we might expect that the words will be written as they sound. Yet at the same time there is sometimes knowledge that they are not "correct," in the etymological sense of capturing the original Hebrew as carefully pronounced.

Tisha Bav exhibits the same phenomenon as Shivasar B'Tammuz of eliminating ayin and glottal stop. Thus, the ayin in Tish'a was not pronounced as an ayin but as the same as aleph. Then, preceding the vowel "a," it simply dropped, such that we have Tisha, with emphasis on the first syllable. In the word Be-`Av, there was the aleph as glottal stop in the word `Av, and that elides. Along with that, the shva na under the bet also disappears, such that we get Bav. We don't delete the sheva na in B'Tammuz or B'Teiveis because it is a consonant rather than glottal stop which follows (namely, T).

Shaleshudes actually has a fair amount of attestation via Google search. (There are other, similar, spellings as well.) That particular spelling yields 174 hits. Meanwhile, "Shalosh Sedudot" yields 3300 hits. We can guess what is happening here. The es ending is common for "ot" -- ות endings. Thus, you can search for Sukkes and get a bunch of hits for Succoth. Similarly, the first e in Shaleshudes also parallels the o. And when placing two similar sibilants together, the result is assimilation of one into the other. Perhaps one can argue that is how Yissachar developed (from Yesh Sechar), with the one of the two sibilants assimilating into the other.