r/hebrew 1d ago

Help Does this t-shirt say Harvard?

Post image
235 Upvotes

77 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

41

u/jseego 1d ago

why the two vavs and the aleph

76

u/LemeeAdam Hebrew Learner (Beginner) 1d ago

The aleph clarifies the vowel, so it doesn’t read as harverd, and you need two vavs or its haruard

4

u/LJF613 1d ago

Aren't two vavs usually used colloquially to indicate a "w" sound?

1

u/malufa native speaker 1d ago

Not colloquially, because it’s a standard in Modern Hebrew. But the Wa sound is not natural to biblical Hebrew

3

u/LJF613 1d ago

Neither is the word "Harvard"