All I can think of is that Latin is basically like Italian, and I can very much see f's exchanged for v's in an Italian-like pronounciation.
Where/when did it become Rav? Or was Rav also used then?
I guess it'd be interesting to look for other examples of transliterations of words ending in bet with no following vowel. This may just reflect German pronunciation rules. It brings to mind Russian words nominally ending with a "v" sound (e.g. "Rachmaninov") that made it into Western European orthography with an "ff" ("Rachmaninoff").
Well, the V -> F thing happens in English too. Leaf, leaves.
Raf Ram filius Papa!
This needs to be incorporated somehow into the next siyyum I attend.
Leaf/leaves and Italian/Latin have nothing to do with it, it's really just the West Yiddish pronunciation. Concerning Rab with a b, don't forget that this is the Sefardi pronunciation among European Sefardim and partly in North Africa as well. Rabh is learned 19th century, probably still pronounced -b, and Rav is mainly modern Israeli and some Yiddish dialects (Litvish, Ukrainer, while Galitzyaner and all of the West have Raf).
Rauf is interesting. I suppose this spelling was chosen, maybe inadvertantly, to make sure the vowel of father is used, not the one of bad, though words such as laugh show that this isn't ideal.
At that time (at least in England, not sure about America), many -au- words were still pronounced with -ah-, not -aw-, and I'm still used to saying lahndry, lahnsh (launch) etc. Some are universally pronounced like that, I think, such as the name Saunders.
>Where/when did it become Rav? Or was Rav also used then?
That basically only makes sense in English, but not Latin or German, where v is but a variant of the letter u or w, which really ought to be used for the Hebrew letter vav, not beis. This is why, especially in older writings, one frequently finds things like "yeshiba" (or "jeschiba") but it in not way implies that they meant the hard /b/ sound.
Incidentally, see post update. I added an image of a 19th century American paper with reference to a rav as the "rauf."
>Leaf/leaves and Italian/Latin have nothing to do with it, it's really just the West Yiddish pronunciation.
Right, that's what I was getting at. In the case of a 17th century German Hebraist, likely his pronunciation of the Hebrew "rav" was influenced by the living pronunciation among German Jews of his time and place, whereas he may have been unaware or not so interested in transliterating names like Akiva and Avdimi according to how they'd have been pronounced, assuming an f sound in those names, too.
>Concerning Rab with a b, don't forget that this is the Sefardi pronunciation among European Sefardim and partly in North Africa as well. Rabh is learned 19th century, probably still pronounced -b,
I'm not sure about that. It's meant to recognize the aspiration of the beis, and the same way /ph/ is meant to sound like "eff," I assume that /bh/ is, at least sometimes, meant to sound like "vee." Also, this was written in the 17th century, not the 19th. Also, I think it's more learned early 20th century than learned 19th, but that's just pedantry.
>Rauf is interesting. I suppose this spelling was chosen, maybe inadvertently, to make sure the vowel of father is used, not the one of bad, though words such as laugh show that this isn't ideal.
I guess. I assume, at least in the sample I provided in my update, that this was an orthography of an immigrant German Jew, or at least a descendant of one. So I'm not sure where that fits in, except maybe the German komatz rounding out to the German chaulam.
Seems to me that "rauf" is the equivalent of "rov," and is an attempt to convey a pronunciation that we would now more likely spell "rawf," not "rowf." The German komatz, as far as I know, does not generally "round out" to a chaulam.
Nineteenth century Hebrew transliterations can be a hoot. One of my favorites is the old Greenwich Village synagogue, "Darech Amuno."
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