Hebrew didn’t have written vowels. YHWH is the English equivalent of the Hebrew letters and God’s name was never meant to be unpronounceable judging by the thousands of times it’s used in Scriptures.
That’s right... Hebrew doesn’t have written vowels. A few diacritics can suggest what vowels can exist between consonants. But I was trying to explain how there simply aren’t any vowel combinations which can make sense of YHWH. The problem is that all four letters are “semi-vowels,” which are consonants which behave as vowels in certain ways. I’m oversimplifying it, partially because I never studied it too deeply and partly because I don’t remember it so clearly, but it’s something close to this: You can precede a semivowel, with another semivowel (Netanyahu, for instance), or follow it with a semivowel, but you can’t do both. (There’s all sorts of exceptions and complications, though, which are beyond my expertise.)
Consider this: You can put an ‘r’ after another consonant (”pray”) or before one, (”bard”), but you don’t put one between two consonants (”brd”). You don’t think of it as pronounceable. Try it. Did you just say “brd” or “bird”? Before you say “bird,” what sound did you make to indicate an “i”? NONE! We insert an “i” even though we don’t say an “i” because “brd” is supposed to be unpronounceable!
LIkewise, the Masoretes were able to insert vowel diacrits into YHWH, but those diacrits are not otherwise ever used between those letter combinations. Hence, even though the diacrits would otherwise suggest “Yahu,” (indeed, this is used for “God” in names such as Netanyahu) it’s translated as “Jeho.” The problem is that HW suggests “ehowa,” contradicting “Yahu.” Likewise, the WH suggests “weh,” but the HW suggests “ehowa.”
Thus, people can argue between Yahweh and Jehovah, but they are both absolutely impossible.