Dictionaries tell us that the interjection/exclamation
hallelujah is pronounced ˌhælɪˈluːjə (or -lə-). However, this is
a word probably more often sung than spoken, and we all know
that in singing strange things happen to pronunciation. From the
point of view of English, hallelujah is a strange word anyway.
Apart from foreign proper names, it is the only word in which
the spelling <j> corresponds to the pronunciation j (palatal
semivowel). It has an alternative form, alleluia, which comes to
us via Greek rather than direct from Hebrew and lacks this
spelling oddity. In the choir I belong to we are already gearing
up for our Christmas show, and one of the works we will be
performing is Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, which is why I am
thinking about this word. (The title itself is phonetically
interesting, since it normally undergoes so-called stress shift
to ˈHallelujah ˈChorus, in accordance with the usual rule.) One
thing that happens in singing is that vowels that would be weak
in ordinary speech tend to becom