In another thread I wrote some notes about why using Jehovah in English is as good as using Yahweh. I'm starting a discussion on this topic because it sounds quite ignorant to hear people talk of the monk who started using it in Latin without really understanding why the monk did so.
The Spanish Dominican monk, Raymundus Martini, in 1270, didn't get hoodwinked by an old Jewish superstition about pronouncing the Divine Name with the vowel points of another word.
1. First the vowel points of ADONAY and JEHOVAH cannot be the same for grammatical reasons. You just can't use the same vowel points because some vowels aren't paired with some consonants in pronouncing Hebrew words. Go ahead and check if you don't believe this. The vowel points aren't the same. So to continue this charade is as stupid as it used to be taught that ALEPH and AYIN were silent letters--they are not and they are both pronounced in Ancient Hebrew like they are even sounded out in modern ARABIC.
2. Jehovah is as good a name for God in English, as Jesus (DJEE-zuhz) is for Christ. Yahweh may be as good as Yeshua in pronouncing those names. We got Jesus from Latin IESUS, which came from IESOUS in Greek meaning Jesus or Joshua. That's right Jesus and Joshua come from the same IESOUS in Greek from the original Hebrew YE-HO-SHU-A.
3. If you're going to say Yahweh, you might as well say Yeshua, or Yirmiyahu (for Jeremiah) or Yeshayahu (for Issaiah), and this would probably peg you as a Sacred Names Movement follower not a Jehovah's Witness. In Arabic, by the way, Jesus is Isa (EE-sah) and Yahweh is (YAH-HOO-AH-HH).
4. If in Spanish you spell out Jesus like in English, but pronounce it "HEY-soos" it goes to show you how silly it sounds to insist on DJEE-zuhz but then avoid Jehovah and insist on using Yahweh instead. They are merely two different traditions, one is an English Biblical names' tradition, the other is a modern scholarly tradition.
This may be news to all who disagree with this and insist on Yahweh. But...
5. In Hebrew it would never be pronounced like YA (as in yacht) with the second syllable WAY. In Biblical Hebrew the H was always pronounced, and that's why it was written. So if you don't aspirate both of the H's then you're not even close to how it may have been pronounced back then.
6. Josephus makes the point that it is pronounced as it is written. So look at how Judah (with Hebrew letters corresponding to YHWDH) and pronounced YEH-HOO-DAHH, compares to Jehovah (YHWH). The D is the only difference. So if it was read as written just take out the D in YEH-HOO-DAHH and you're left with YEH-HOO-AHH.
7. Also rather than continue the misinformation that Jehovah is just a mix of YHWH and the vowels of ADONAY or ELOHIM, it would be good to realize the actual vowel points in many manuscripts don't match those but rather the vowel points of SHEMA (Aramaic for HA-SHEM in Hebrew) which was often substituted instead of pronouncing the Divine Name. Why? Because the vowel point for the O sound (the upper dot vowel) isn't included in many of these vowel pointed instances of YHWH. So the consonants with YHWH and the vowels for SHEMA add up to YEHWAH (pronounced YEH-HOO-AHH).
8. Since Jehovah comes from Latin IEHOVAH, (the V in Latin was like a W) and IEHOVAH is a translitteration (alphabetic substitution) for YEH-HOO-AHH then there's nothing wrong with using Jehovah and anyone who tells you different is just not well informed about the entire history and pronunciation of the Divine Name. To continue using the often repeated false assertion that Jehovah is inaccurate because of YHWH using vowel points of ADONAY and that the Catholic monk made a mistake is just propagating a tradition based on lack of appropriate research.