how to say “Yemen” in Hebrew
[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/תימן-#.m4a” /]תֵּימָן
The English name of the southernmost state on the Arabian Peninsula follows the Arabic: Yemen.
But the Hebrew name – תימן[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/תימן-#.m4a” /] – departs a bit by adding a t sound.
For example:
[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/תימן-#.m4a” /]הם עלו לארץ מתימן בשנות החמישים.
They immigrated to Israel from Yemen in the Fifties.
Both the Arabic يمن (Yaman) and the Hebrew תימן come from the word for right (the direction) shared by both these Semitic languages, in Hebrew spelled ימין[audioclip url=”https://archive.ulpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/תימן-#.m4a” /]. Why right? Because when people would orient themselves facing the east (as they did in the Middle East in ancient times), the south – where southernmost Yemen is located – would be on their right-hand side.
So why does Hebrew add a t sound to the name? תימן didn’t always refer to Yemen: the word first appears in the Torah, where it refers to a place in Israel’s desert – in the south. So rather than calling it by its Arabic name, Modern Hebrew borrows the Biblical name תימן to refer to the modern state of Yemen, like it does for other place names such as Tel Aviv.
