User blog comment:B214/General Discussion/@comment-26821288-20161021084047

I don't know if it's intentional at all, but the way Ishibumi wrote Leviathan in Japanese has something quite unique in it. It's related to the original word, the Hebrew word: לִוְיָתָן. Let me explain.

So the first letter, ל, is read like L, and has a vocalization on it, which is read like I, so it's read Li. The second letter, ו, is read like V, in modern Hebrew (it was actually read like W, originally, but in modern Hebrew, this pronunciation got lost and most people talking Hebrew don't even know about this, so it's quite okay to read it like V nowdays), and has a silent vocalization on it. The next letter, י, is read like Y/I (it depends), specifically this time, it's more of a Y, and it has a vocalization on it, which is read like A, so it's read Ya. The next letter, ת, can sound both Th and T depending on whether it has a Dagesh or not (with Dagesh, it's T, without Dagesh, it's Th), and it has a vocalization on it, which is read lika A. Here, it doesn't have a vocalization, so the right way to read it is Tha. The last letter, ן, which is a נ that is used as the final letter of the word, is read like N, and as most Hebrew last letters, it has no vocalization, so it's silent.

So the reading for is is about something like Li-V-Ya-Tha-N > Livyathan. Pretty much something like that. That's how it sounds. So in Japanese, it would probably be written something like Ri-Vi-A-Sa-N. Something about there. But there's a catch. It's not like the case of the letter ו, but the original pronunciation of ת also got somewhat lost. Nowdays, almost no Hebrew speaker will pronounce a Dagesh-less ת as Th, but rather pronounce both Dagesh-less ת and ת with Dagesh, as T. So a Hebrew speaker who will pronounce this word, won't pronounce this Livyathan, but rather Livyatan. And in Japanese, Livyatan would probably be written something like Ri-Vi-A-Ta-N, which is pretty much how Ishibumi writes Leviathan in Japanese, from what I saw.

Wow. I wrote much more than I though I would ever will. lol.

P.S. A "Dagesh" is some kind of a Hebrew emphasis. But it's not simply an emphasis, it has more to it, so instead of writing the word Dagesh as "emphasis", I wrote it as "Dagesh".