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I was reading Torah recently and someone came up and asked me how I pronounced Yissachar. I didn't realize there were multiple ways of reading the name. He told me there was a dispute and so he wanted to know how my tradition pronounced it. I told him I never received any specifics about it.

I then googled and found this article: http://hirhurim.blogspot.co.il/2008/05/yisachar-or-yisaschar.html

however this article seems to be traditional rather than tradition based. And by that I mean that it seems like scholars are reading back into a discrepancy rather than having a solid tradition passed down. Since I know Yemenites did an excellent job passing down tradition, I want to know if they also have multiple ways of pronouncing the name during a Torah reading.

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    IIRC the disputes about this word date back to Ben Asher and Ben Naftali. As you expected, all the modern "traditions" that aren't just "Yissakhar" are questionable late variants which should probably be forgotten about, though just relying on the Yemenite way (whatever it may be) is quite a bit shortsighted. Yemenites for instance don't have Ta'am Tachton despite that being the Ma'aravai tradition.
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented Dec 2, 2017 at 22:43
  • related judaism.stackexchange.com/q/4290/759
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented Dec 2, 2017 at 22:44
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    For the record, neither in the Aleppo, nor in the Leningrad codex are there any dots on the second ש, which implies that it shouldn't be pronounced (OK, there's a mysterious one at Chronicles I. 6:57). The better question is whether it is with a dagesh or not.
    – Kazi bácsi
    Commented Dec 2, 2017 at 23:00
  • would this not be similar to yavorakhkho unlike how i hear ashkanazim pronounce yovarakhakho. teimonim say yissokhor not yisoskhor
    – MoriDowidhYa3aqov
    Commented Dec 3, 2017 at 4:22
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    It would appear Masoretes agreed on pronunciation. They differed on the qere vocalization: BA preferred יִשָּׂשכָר, BN יִשְׁשָׂכָר and a third named משה מוחה spelled it as יִשְׂשָׂכָר.
    – Argon
    Commented Dec 5, 2017 at 5:21

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Based on this video of Yemenite Torah reading (at 1:45), the Yemenite pronunciation is Yisachar, omitting the second ש, as is the prevalent practice in other communities.

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