{"id":4919,"date":"2011-04-26T14:03:42","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T14:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=4919"},"modified":"2011-04-26T14:03:42","modified_gmt":"2011-04-26T14:03:42","slug":"golems-and-trolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=4919","title":{"rendered":"Golems and trolls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always thought that the word <strong>golem<\/strong> was pronounced \/\u02c8g\u0254l\u0259m\/ with a short o as in doll, probably influenced by Tolkein&#8217;s gollum, and my preference for northern vowels. Yesterday however, while watching <a href=\"http:\/\/sky1.sky.com\/going-postal\"><em>Going Postal<\/em><\/a>, a film based on the Terry Pratchett&#8217;s book by the same name, I noticed that some other people pronounce it \/\u02c8\u0261o\u028al\u0259m\/. <\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Golem\">Wikipedia<\/a>, golem \/\u02c8\u0261o\u028al\u0259m\/ comes from Hebrew and appears as <strong>\u05d2\u05dc\u05de\u05d9<\/strong> in the Bible (Psalms 139:16) and means &#8216;my unshaped form&#8217;. This became the Yiddish word \u05d2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd (goylem), and in Modern Hebrew \u05d2\u05dc\u05de (golem) means &#8220;dumb&#8221; or &#8220;helpless&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/\">OED<\/a>, golem is pronounced \/\u02c8g\u0259\u028al\u0259m\/ or \/\u02c8g\u0254\u026al\u0259m\/ and comes from Hebrew \u05d2\u05dc\u05de (g\u014dlem &#8211; shapeless mass) via the Yiddish \u05d2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd (goylem).<\/p>\n<p>I pronounce <strong>troll<\/strong> \/t\u027e\u0254l\/, rhyming it with doll, whereas I&#8217;ve heard other people pronounce it \/t\u027e\u0259\u028al\/, rhyming it dole.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Troll<\/strong> \/tr\u0259\u028al\/, a being from Norse mythology, comes from the Old Norse <em>tr\u01ebll<\/em>, though only arrived in English, probably from Swedish, during the 19th century. <\/p>\n<p>How do you pronounce golem and troll?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always thought that the word golem was pronounced \/\u02c8g\u0254l\u0259m\/ with a short o as in doll, probably influenced by Tolkein&#8217;s gollum, and my preference for northern vowels. Yesterday however, while watching Going Postal, a film based on the Terry Pratchett&#8217;s book by the same name, I noticed that some other people pronounce it \/\u02c8\u0261o\u028al\u0259m\/. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,121,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-hebrew","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}