posted on Feb, 2 2023 @ 04:32 AM
Hebrew: it's been a while (not a native or real student thereof).
Cracking the dictionary I find several possible words...
(assume general visitors to this site may not have hebrew fonts installed on their computers, so I will transliterate into latin alphabet using
Semitic-language-studies standards)
(a) ' 1 (initial vowel holder)
B/v 2
G 3
D/đ 4
H 5
W 6
Z 7
Ḥ 8
Ṭ 9
Y 10
K,ch 20 , final-K 500
L 30
M 40 , final-M 600
N 50 , final-N 700
S 60
(o) ` 70 (glottal-stop)
P/f 80 , final-P 800
Ṣ 90 , final-Ṣ 900 (ts)
Q 100
R 200
Š/Ś 300
T 400
"G" is going to be pronounced like G in got.
"J" in English translations of Hebrew is the letter "Y". That city in Israel/Palestine that can't find peace is Yerushalem.
There is no "J" (pronounced as in "judge") in Hebrew.
Semitic languages are all about the consonants. Vowels weren't written at all till much later when people became concerned that pronunciations might
be forgotten & mispronounced 100's or 1000's of years after the original writing. In general, a particular sequence of Consonants holds the _meaning_
of the root, and then various vowels are littered around and between the consonants to change the part of speech, or to mark other grammatical
distinctions.
so did you hear GeMMa? or did you hear YeMMa?
(if you heard JeMMa with a distinct "J"-in-judge sound, you did not hear Hebrew: someone may be messing with you, or you possibly heard Arabic
instead, where the G's turned into J's. Those animals with humps are Gimel in Hebrew, but Jamal in Arabic.)
browsing through a Hebrew Dictionary, here are some possibilities:
GaMa' = gulp, 3+40+1 = 44
GiMMe' = gulp, 3+40+1 = 44
GaMa` = drink, gulp, 3+40+70 = 113
GuMMaH = pit, hole, depression, 3+40+5=48
YaMMaH = lake (from root YaM = sea, lake), 10+40+5 = 55
YeMaMaH = 24-hour day (from root YWM = day, time) = 10+40+40+5=95
(and NO, I'm not "talking 'bout 'cho mama" ... just sharing what's in my dictionary)
The next distinction in pronunciation is that double-consonants can be grammatically significant. These usually are not distinguished in English
(English uses double-consonants in writing just to mark short-vowels). In Hebrew, double-M is pronounced distinctly as 2 "M" : GeMMa would be
"GeM-Ma", and possibly not at all the same word as "Ge-Ma".
Artifact of Semitic alphabets, doubled-consonants are written singly with a special extra mark, unless they are separated by a vowel... my Kabalah is
even rustier than my Hebrew... but I didn't think you counted the consonant's numeric value twice, unless the consonant was written twice.
The sampling of words listed above is not exhaustive. Verbs can add more letters to the beginning and end of the word; pronouns can be suffixed onto
the word, the definite article, and several prepositions can be prefixed onto the start of the word...
Sorry I can't be more help. If you have further questions, you probably need to include a recording of the sounds you heard (not necessarily the
original, but you need to repeat as best you can what you heard). Bring recording of sounds to a nearby Rabbi and real help with Hebrew language.