Although scholarly academic writings generally follow a standardized system of rendering Hebrew sounds and letters into Latin letters (i.e., the alphabets used in English and other European languages), many of the works that you will be consulting do not reflect this system, especially in editions that are aimed at traditional Jewish audiences.

  The problem is the result of the different pronunciations that are in use among Jews. Thus, the first tractate of the Mishnah might be rendered "Berakoth" in an academic publication, "Berakhot" or "Berakhot" according to the "Sepharadic" ("Spanish") tradition that forms the basis of modern Israeli Hebrew, and "Berochos" in the Central- or Eastern-European ("Ashkenazic") tradition that dominates most contremporary Orthodox seminaries. The complexity is further compounded by the inconsistent phonetic systems among the diverse European languages (e.g., the letter "s" might be pronounced in German as either an English "sh" or "z").