Holiday Spellings Vary; Meanings Stay the Same

What’s wrong with this sentence? A week ago Thursday, Jews lit the eighth and final candle on Hanukkah menorahs, marking the end of Chanuka, the Jewish festival of lights, a.k.a. Hanuka, which will begin next year on the night of Dec. 23.

Answer: nothing.

The three spellings of the holiday are among the most common variations in English that show up in Jewish publications, holiday banners and reference works.

It’s a problem shared by Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus living in an English-speaking world. A favorite religious festival may legitimately be spelled different ways, depending on what transliteration from the original language is preferred or customary.

* When the Muslim Ramadan month of daytime fasting ends about Feb. 9, Muslims will begin the three-day holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which in Arabic means “the festival of breaking the fast.” But some Muslims spell that holiday “Id ul-Fitr,” “Id al-Fitr” or “Id ul-Ftr,” among other variations. Meanwhile, Americans tend to pronounce “id” the way they do the psychoanalytic term, rather than using an “ee” sound.

“Eid al-Fitr” is the spelling recommended by the Fountain Valley-based Council on Islamic Education, which works with major school textbook publishers in the United States.

* Buddhists, especially Terevadan Buddhists with origins in Southern Asia, celebrate Vesak, or Wesak, on or near the full-moon day in May in the triple observation of the birth, enlightenment and death of Gautama Buddha.

“ ‘Wesak’ is correct; that’s just the way it is,” said Karuna Dharma, an American-born convert to Buddhism who has been abbess of the International Buddhist Meditation Center in Koreatown since 1980.

But it is spelled “Visak” by the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion and “Vesak” by the Publishers Weekly Religion BookLine newsletter--two sources for academics and journalists.

* Hindus observed on Nov. 10 their own Festival of Lights, spelled “Diwali” by the Artesia-based Federation of Hindu Assns. and Religion BookLine. One variation is “Dewali,” which suggests the correct “ee” sound for “i.” But the HarperCollins Dictionary spells it “Divali,” which indicates the proper “v” sound in the middle.

“The confusion arises because the ‘v’ sound in Sanskrit may become a ‘w’ in pronunciation when it is next to a consonant,” said Kumarswami, deputy editor of the monthly magazine Hinduism Today, published in Hawaii.

“Thus, the word written as ‘svami’ is pronounced ‘swami.’ ”

When it came time to publicize Hanukkah festivals at three locations this year, Shoshana Hirsh, planning director for the Jewish Federation’s Valley Alliance in West Hills, had to choose between different spellings by two centers.

“I picked ‘Hanukkah’--the spelling used by the center with the longest history,” she said.

That spelling is also used by The Times. But guidelines at the weekly Jewish Journal in Los Angeles call for “Chanukah” in news stories. Some ads use different spellings, but the inconsistencies haven’t drawn complaints, said Editor Gene Lichtenstein.

“We’ve received complaints about everything else, but never about this,” he said.

*

On the other hand, the Los Angeles Jewish Times featured a lighthearted treatment of the spelling quandary on the cover of its Dec. 6 issue--offering 17 possibilities, including a writer’s suggestion to adopt “Khanukah” or even “Xanuka” as the new standard.

The biggest problem with the word lies in trying to replicate the throaty “h” of Hebrew with an English equivalent. “Ch” is often preferred in English-speaking Jewish circles, justified by some as being close to the “ch” sound in words such as “mach,” “Bach” and “Loch Lomond.”

Whenever an English word begins with “ch,” however, the inclination is to use the sound found in words like “chair” and “chalk.”

Given the choice between starting the word with “h” or “ch,” the latter is preferred by Zev Garber of Los Angeles Valley College, who is president emeritus of the National Assn. of Professors of Hebrew.

“But using a double ‘k’ [toward the end of the word] is the correct rendering from the Hebrew,” Garber said. “The first ‘k’ is after a short vowel and closes that syllable, and the second ‘k’ starts the next syllable. The ‘h’ at the end, however, is redundant.”