Soc.Culture.Jewish Newsgroups Frequently Asked Questions and Answers URL: www.scjfaq.org/faq/19-02.html

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Question 19.2:
Why is "shabbat" spelled sometimes shabbath, shabbath, shabbos, shabbes?

The Hebrew word is as follows, and it's pronounced in various ways:

      ___  __   _ _ *
      |  | . |  | | |
     _|  | __|_ |/_/
  	    T    --

"Shabbos" and "Shabbat" are examples. The final letter in the word is pronounced as "s" by Ashkenazis, as "t" by Sephardim, and as "th" by Yemenites and (according to some scholars) speakers of Hebrew around the year 3700. "Sabbath" is an anglicization of the Hebrew. Ephraimites may have been the actual source of this variant, as in Judges 12, it is reported that they were not able to pronounce the letter shin. Another possibility relates to the Greek alphabet, which has no "sh" sound, so in the Greek New Testament, which is primarily where the word would have been exposed to a Gentile audience, it was written with a sigma. It's all the same word, and the pronunciations are used interchangeably in this FAQ. Same with Kashrus/Kashrut/Kashruth.

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