Shibboleth is pronounced just like it is spelled, but some languages do not have an “sh” phoneme. In the story, soldiers used the word shibboleth to identify foreigners trying to sneak into their territory. If they pronounced it “sibboleth,” then the person was exposed as a foreigner.

Modern Greek is one such language. I introduced my friend Sharon to some Greek relatives, and they called her “Saron” so we all started calling her “Sauron.”