# The Ashkenazi Proununciation and Israeli Hebrew



## Squee100

What would happen if I went to Israel and started speaking with the Ashkenazi pronunciation? I prefer it to the standard.


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## ismiv

The Ashkenazi pronunciation is used in Israel only by Haredi people. Even they use it only in prayers, and a little when engaging in Torah learning (few words maintain the pronunciation in Haredi everyday-speech) Most Israelis, even if somewhat familiar with the pronunciation, couldn't use it themselves.

Therefore, talking this way wouldn't be understandable, and would be embarrassing for the speaker.


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## Squee100

May I ask why they couldn't use it?


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## origumi

Squee100 said:


> May I ask why they couldn't use it?


On the conceptual level - because this is not how Israelis speak.
On the practical level - see the difference list.
On the personal level - one shouldn't expect Americans to speak Chaucer English.


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## tFighterPilot

On a spiritual level - because it sounds funny.


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## MuttQuad

origumi said:


> On the conceptual level - because this is not how Israelis speak.
> On the practical level - see the difference list.
> On the personal level - one shouldn't expect Americans to speak Chaucer English.



Don't you think that the Ashkenazi pronunciation (the one most older Americans learned in Hebrew School) is much closer to the Sephardi -- differing only, as far as I know, in the pronunciation of patach/kometz and tess/tet than modern English is to Chaucer, which is neither pronounceable nor understandable to modern students without formal instruction?


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## MuttQuad

tFighterPilot said:


> On a spiritual level - because it sounds funny.



Doesn't sound the least bit funny to Americans who daven in an Orthodox shul or the way most Conservative congregations used to do. I can do it either way, depending on where I am; and it's not much of a problem.


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## tFighterPilot

MuttQuad said:


> Don't you think that the Ashkenazi pronunciation (the one most older Americans learned in Hebrew School) is much closer to the Sephardi -- differing only, as far as I know, in the pronunciation of patach/kometz and tess/tet than modern English is to Chaucer, which is neither pronounceable nor understandable to modern students without formal instruction?


Modern Israeli Hebrew is something between the Ashkenazi and Sepharadi pronunciation. So no, it's not closer. Perhaps it's a bit closer to Yemenite pronunciation.


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## Drink

MuttQuad said:


> Don't you think that the Ashkenazi pronunciation (the one most older Americans learned in Hebrew School) is much closer to the Sephardi -- differing only, as far as I know, in the pronunciation of patach/kometz and tess/tet than modern English is to Chaucer, which is neither pronounceable nor understandable to modern students without formal instruction?



You seem to be forgetting about _choylem_ vs. _cholam_, _seyder_ vs. _seder_, and the entirely different stress pattern. As well as some other quirks such as _Yankev_ for _Ya`akov_ and _mayse_ or even _manse_ for _ma`aseh_. Can you imagine someone saying "*o*nu makh*riz*im ba*zoys* al ha*ka*mas me*di*na ye*hu*dis b'*er*etz yis*ro*el, hi me*di*nas yis*ro*el."? It's the stress more than anything that makes it so different.

Also, Sephardi pronunciation preserves the emphatic/phraryngeal/laryngeal/whatever-you-wanna-call-it pronunciations of ח, ט, ע, צ, ק.


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## MuttQuad

You are writing a form of Ashkenazi that I haven't heard pronounced that way since I was a kid -- and then only by the much older men. By the time I attended Orthodox Hebrew Schools in the late 40s and early 1950s, nobody in America was being taught to speak that way. But the Orthodox and Conservative schools and congregations didn't teach/use what we called "Israeli" pronunciation back then. That was adopted later by the Reform and Conservative movements primarily.

My elementary school was part of Hunter College, and the Hunter students held a celebratory assembly in 1948 in  regard to the founding of the State of Israel. Our sixth-grade teacher allowed the Jewish kids in our class (quite a few) to attend; and I can assure you that when we joined with the college students to sing the Hatikva, the pronunciation was universally non-Sephardic -- but anything like what you transliterated.

I collected quite a few records by Israeli pop singers of some years ago such as Yehoram Gaon, Margalit, etc., and, as far as I can assume, their pronunciation was standard for Israelis at the time. It sounded like that of any Israelis I have happened to meet in person -- but that hasn't been too many other than a few UN representatives one of which, Moshe Kidron, I interviewed for radio broadcast, and the time when Netanyahu davened at my shul for the High Holidays some years ago. 

Of course, a lot of Americans speak differently from others -- sometimes, although not so much in recent TV and Internet years -- almost unintelligibly to each other, such as down-East Maine vs. deep South.


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## Drink

MuttQuad said:


> You are writing a form of Ashkenazi that I haven't heard pronounced that way since I was a kid -- and then only by the much older men.


You should visit your local Chabad house. This sort of pronunciation is still in use by most chassidim (of course it even varies by the dialect of the region the particular chassidic sect originated in).



MuttQuad said:


> I can assure you that when we joined with the college students to sing the Hatikva, the pronunciation was universally non-Sephardic -- but anything like what you transliterated.



Firstly, Hatikva even today in Israel is still sung with the Ashkenazi penultimate stress. Secondly, can you transliterate that same quotation in the version of Ashkenazi pronunciation that you are referring to, including the stress? I would like to see what you are talking about.


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## MuttQuad

Drink said:


> You should visit your local Chabad house. This sort of pronunciation is still in use by most chassidim (of course it even varies by the dialect of the region the particular chassidic sect originated in).
> 
> 
> 
> Firstly, Hatikva even today in Israel is still sung with the Ashkenazi penultimate stress. Secondly, can you transliterate that same quotation in the version of Ashkenazi pronunciation that you are referring to, including the stress? I would like to see what you are talking about.



I have no contact with Chasidim, Chabad or otherwise. However, when my wife was hospitalized, her roommate was a Satmar, and their women used to visit and speak and sing in Yiddish or, for a Hebrew nigun, in an accent that was totally strange to my ears. The Ashkenazi I heard and learned in several Hebrew Schools was that of non-Chasidic Orthodox Jews, from the Rabbis on down through the congregants.

Transliteration is far from my forte, so I wouldn't want to attempt it -- especially given that there is no _universally accepted_ transliteration system for Hebrew of any variety. However, from what your version seems to sound like, it's what I used to hear from men of my father's generation, probably mostly from Williamsburg; and it was and is foreign to me. You can hear the Ashkenazi pronunciation of which I speak in some of the cantorial recordings of such as the Koussevitzky brothers, the Brothers Zim (né Zimel), Harold Klein, etc.


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## ismiv

MuttQuad said:


> I have no contact with Chasidim, Chabad or otherwise. However, when my wife was hospitalized, her roommate was a Satmar, and their women used to visit and speak and sing in Yiddish or, for a Hebrew nigun, in an accent that was totally strange to my ears. The Ashkenazi I heard and learned in several Hebrew Schools was that of non-Chasidic Orthodox Jews, from the Rabbis on down through the congregants.
> 
> Transliteration is far from my forte, so I wouldn't want to attempt it -- especially given that there is no _universally accepted_ transliteration system for Hebrew of any variety. However, from what your version seems to sound like, it's what I used to hear from men of my father's generation, probably mostly from Williamsburg; and it was and is foreign to me. You can hear the Ashkenazi pronunciation of which I speak in some of the cantorial recordings of such as the Koussevitzky brothers, the Brothers Zim (né Zimel), Harold Klein, etc.



Chasidim in Israel do use pronunciation which is quite different from the one Drink wrote about, and it might be the one you heard from the women in the hospital.

 Here is a modern Chasidi song, sung in exactly this pronunciation. starting from 0:40 it's possible to hear the words clearly. The text is:

ואפילו בהסתרה שבתוך ההסתרה בודאי גם שם נמצא השם יתברך

And here is another, even better example (1:00)

<<link removed>>
 The words are:


צמאה לך נפשי, כמה לך בשרי, בארץ ציה ועיף בלי מים.כן בקודש חזיתיך לראות עוזך וכבודך.

Now I dare Drink to give us the Atikva version of this!


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## origumi

I don't think there's any question that Ashkenazi pronunciation is about as Drink demonstrated above, with regional and temporal variations of course. I guess the pronunciation described by MuttQuad is Ashkenazi "polluted" by modern or some other Hebrew dialect. I also guess that many ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel and abroad drift toward Modern Hebrew pronunciation, no matter how conservative they are.


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## MuttQuad

>>
Here is a modern Chasidi song, sung in exactly this pronunciation.  starting from 0:40 it's possible to hear the words clearly. The text is:

ואפילו בהסתרה שבתוך ההסתרה בודאי גם שם נמצא השם יתברך

And here is another, even better example (1:00)

<<link removed>>

The first cite had no link, but I did listen to the second one. Definitely not the pronunciation to which I was accustomed at shul and school. One big giveaway is the "oy" for "o" -- as in "koydesh." 

Chalillah li to dispute what we know here as Israeli pronunciation with a native Israeli. I get my impressions largely from recordings. Here are two that, insofar as I know, present moderns Israeli Hebrew pronunciation:

<<links removed>>
With the Chasidim, I expect there are variations from sect to sect and from location to location; but it's not something I have much personal knowledge about.

Thanks for the info. I'm glad to continue learning about these things.


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## ismiv

Squee100 said:


> May I ask why they couldn't use it?



I admit I find it hard to understand your question, and the argument that had followed it. but I'll try to do my best.

like almost every other country in the world, Israel has an official language. This includes the vocabulary and the way to pronounce the words. There is no need for more than one pronunciation system.

Historically (that's my weak side, so correct me for any inaccuracies) Jewish people in Europe talked in Yidish (and the local languages) Hebrew was used only for religious purposes. The Ashkenazi pronunciation was never the "natural" way to speak Hebrew, because Hebrew was not spoken in the last centuries. As I said before, even the ultra (and add another ultra if you'd like) orthodox in Israel today don't use Ashkenazi pronunciation in everyday matters. That's not because they've gone modern, but because there is no point speaking a language in a way it was never spoken in. Never in history did somebody say *KA*mo* o*ile lis*o*ya lirusholoyim" ("Kama ole lisoa leyerushalayim", what is the fare to Jerusalem) and there is no reason to start now.

As it happens, most Israelis don't visit ultra-orthodox synagogues regularly, and therefore they are familiar with the pronunciation even less. Should the Israeli education system have done more to teach kids how Jews used to pray and still pray today? that's a whole other discussion. I don't think that it's that important, especially since there are at least three distinct pronunciations which are different from the Israeli one.


<<links removed>>
(the first sentece in this:   תורה ציווה לנו משה מורשה קהילת יעקב)
<<links removed>>


And anyway, there are much more important things to improve in our education system.

Hope that helped


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## ismiv

MuttQuad said:


> >>
> Here is a modern Chasidi song, sung in exactly this pronunciation.  starting from 0:40 it's possible to hear the words clearly. The text is:
> 
> ואפילו בהסתרה שבתוך ההסתרה בודאי גם שם נמצא השם יתברך
> 
> And here is another, even better example (1:00)
> 
> <<link removed>>
> 
> The first cite had no link, but I did listen to the second one. Definitely not the pronunciation to which I was accustomed at shul and school. One big giveaway is the "oy" for "o" -- as in "koydesh."
> 
> Chalillah li to dispute what we know here as Israeli pronunciation with a native Israeli. I get my impressions largely from recordings. Here are two that, insofar as I know, present moderns Israeli Hebrew pronunciation:
> 
> <<links removed>>
> 
> With the Chasidim, I expect there are variations from sect to sect and from location to location; but it's not something I have much personal knowledge about.
> 
> Thanks for the info. I'm glad to continue learning about these things.



In Israel most of the Hasidim pray (and learn Torah) in the pronunciation used in that song. However, they don't use it in everyday speech.

By the way, the different pronunciations are all mentioned here (in the Features section)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Hebrew

They call the Chasidi one Polish-Galician (which is probably a much more accurate definition)


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## MuttQuad

>>
By the way, the different pronunciations are all mentioned here (in the Features section)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Hebrew

They call the Chasidi one Polish-Galician (which is probably a much more accurate definition)
<<

Thanks for the link. The Wikipedia article was most informative,  although some of it did not gibe with my experience here in New York  growing up. I am sorry that someone removed the links I supplied, which  were to song tracks of a couple of my favorite Hebrew songs as sung by  Naomi Shemer and Yehoram Gaon, in which I take the pronunciation to be  standard Israeli, One was "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav," the other  "Hamilchamah Ha'achronah."

The terms I heard used were "Galitzyana" and "Litvak," but they were used primarily to distinguish notably different _Yiddish_ dialects of Austrian.German and Polish/Lithuanian/Latvian Jews.

In the Hebrew schools I attended (Orthodox) and all of the Orthodox synagogues in which I prayed, the major exceptions between the way Hebrew was pronounced and the Israeli version was the use of "aw" as in "lawyer" for kometz  rather than using "ah" as in tra-la" for both kometz and patach, plus the pronunciation of the dagesh-less tav  as a sibililant. As far as I know, that is still the practice among American Orthodox -- at least of the older generations; and I think it is what you would hear in synagogues such as Park East, 5th Avenue, Young Israel, etc. It used to be standard in Conservative congregations, but that has mostly changed over to the Israeli usage.


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## Drink

Firstly, I want to correct my transliteration above: ha*ka*mas should have been ha*ko*mas.



MuttQuad said:


> I have no contact with Chasidim, Chabad or otherwise.



Which is why I recommend that you visit one once just to listen to their pronunciation (if you feel that that is a worthy use of your time). The Chabad chassidim are very welcoming and you wouldn't feel out of place.



MuttQuad said:


> However, when my wife was hospitalized, her roommate was a Satmar, and their women used to visit and speak and sing in Yiddish or, for a Hebrew nigun, in an accent that was totally strange to my ears. The Ashkenazi I heard and learned in several Hebrew Schools was that of non-Chasidic Orthodox Jews, from the Rabbis on down through the congregants.



Yes the Satmar would have said "*u*ni makh*ri*zim ba*zoys* al ha*ku*mas me*di*na ye*hi*dis b'*eyr*etz yis*ru*el, hi me*di*nas yis*ru*el".



MuttQuad said:


> Transliteration is far from my forte, so I wouldn't want to attempt it -- especially given that there is no _universally accepted_ transliteration system for Hebrew of any variety. However, from what your version seems to sound like, it's what I used to hear from men of my father's generation, probably mostly from Williamsburg; and it was and is foreign to me. You can hear the Ashkenazi pronunciation of which I speak in some of the cantorial recordings of such as the Koussevitzky brothers, the Brothers Zim (né Zimel), Harold Klein, etc.



I just listened briefly to the Koussevitzky brothers (I could not find the other two on YouTube) and their pronunciation is exactly the one I was describing in my transliteration (e.g. "ri*boy*noy shel *oy*lom"). It may be worth mentioning that in liturgical usage, the stress may be changed either to fit the melody or to fit the stress marks in the Torah or Siddur, and also there may be less vowel reduction in unstressed syllables.



ismiv said:


> Chasidim in Israel do use pronunciation which is quite different from the one Drink wrote about, and it might be the one you heard from the women in the hospital.
> 
> Here is a modern Chasidi song, sung in exactly this pronunciation. starting from 0:40 it's possible to hear the words clearly. The text is:
> 
> ואפילו בהסתרה שבתוך ההסתרה בודאי גם שם נמצא השם יתברך
> 
> And here is another, even better example (1:00)
> 
> <<link removed>>
> The words are:
> 
> 
> צמאה לך נפשי, כמה לך בשרי, בארץ ציה ועיף בלי מים.כן בקודש חזיתיך לראות עוזך וכבודך.
> 
> Now I dare Drink to give us the Atikva version of this!



I'm not sure what you mean by "the Atikva version of this". I'd be happy to give it once I understand what you are referring to. Do you mean a transliteration of the Hatikva in an Ashkenazi accent (and if so, which one?), or do you mean a transliteration of that line you quoted in a Hatikva-style accent?


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## MuttQuad

>>I just listened briefly to the Koussevitzky brothers (I could not  find the other two on YouTube) and their pronunciation is exactly the  one I was describing in my transliteration (e.g. "ri*boy*noy shel *oy*lom").  It may be worth mentioning that in liturgical usage, the stress may be  changed either to fit the melody or to fit the stress marks in the Torah  or Siddur, and also there may be less vowel reduction in unstressed  syllables.<<

I must have picked a couple of the wrong cantors -- memory is not what it used to be, although I have heard and known personally all the five I mentioned. So, I did re-run an iTune track I have of Jan Peerce singing "Shiroh," and his is definitely the pronunciation to which I was referring. For example, he sings "shiroh," "shir chodosh," not "shir chadash," "nogiloh" instead of "nagila," etc. No "oy" for "oh." I thought I was mentioning cantors who had "cleaned up" that stuff since the days of Yussele Rosenblatt, Moishe Oysher,  and that era. 

Most of my other recordings are presently located where they're hard for me to reach, and neither my turntable nor my tape cassette player seem to be in good shape these days.

Paul and Sol Zimel were cantors in New York synagogues and made quite a few recordings of liturgical and popular Hebrew material under the name "The Brothers Zim."

Chag sameach!


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## Drink

MuttQuad said:


> I must have picked a couple of the wrong cantors -- memory is not what it used to be, although I have heard and known personally all the five I mentioned. So, I did re-run an iTune track I have of Jan Peerce singing "Shiroh," and his is definitely the pronunciation to which I was referring. For example, he sings "shiroh," "shir chodosh," not "shir chadash," "nogiloh" instead of "nagila," etc. No "oy" for "oh." I thought I was mentioning cantors who had "cleaned up" that stuff since the days of Yussele Rosenblatt, Moishe Oysher,  and that era.



So if I understand correctly, you are referring to almost the same exact accent that I was referring to, with the only difference being that the "oy"s were cleaned up to plain "o"s (and any "ay"s from gutturals such as "maylo" for מַעְלָה were cleaned up to plain "a"s). I consider this a minor difference since as I said before the most noticeable feature in my opinion is the stress, which was not changed.

So does this seem natural to you: "*o*nu makh*ri*zim ba*zos* al ha*ko*mas me*di*no ye*hu*dis b'*er*etz yis*ro*el, hi me*di*nas yis*ro*el."?


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## ismiv

Drink said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by "the Atikva version of this". I'd be happy to give it once I understand what you are referring to. Do you mean a transliteration of the Hatikva in an Ashkenazi accent (and if so, which one?), or do you mean a transliteration of that line you quoted in a Hatikva-style accent?



I don't know why I wrote Atikva. I meant to ask if you could transliterate this piece of Ben Gurion's speech with Hasidic pronunciation, which by now you've already done


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## MuttQuad

>>
So if I understand correctly, you are referring to almost the same exact  accent that I was referring to, with the only difference being that the  "oy"s were cleaned up to plain "o"s (and any "ay"s from gutturals such  as "maylo" for מַעְלָה were cleaned up to plain "a"s). I consider this a  minor difference since as I said before the most noticeable feature in  my opinion is the stress, which was not changed.

So does this seem natural to you: "*o*nu makh*ri*zim ba*zos* al ha*ko*mas me*di*no ye*hu*dis b'*er*etz yis*ro*el, hi me*di*nas yis*ro*el."?
<<

Allowing for the ever-present problems of transliteration, yes, it does sound natural with respect to how we read Hebrew when I was a youngster. And If Ben Gurion spoke that way, so did a lot of other Jews of the time. It was what was being taught in the Hebrew schools of the time and used by most Orthodox and Conservative American congregations of the time.

In fact, the drill books for beginners at Hebrew schools in those circles had drills to be read aloud: kometz aleph boh,  patach aleph bah; kometz beis boh, patach beis bah, etc.

At the time, there may have been more Jews in the US using that pronunciation than there were in Israel using the Sephardic version. Of course, things have changed a great deal over the years. Leaving out the Chasidim and the ultra-old (even older than I) who would say boyker or elokeinee, what I heard as school and shul was akin to what you wrote. It was common practice in most of the non-Chasidic Jewish communities _of the time_ -- but I am over a half century older than you, so my memories go back longer, but I still recall clearly what was happening in the Orthodox and Conservative communities 50 or 60 years ago -- at least in the New York area.

The changes in practice and pronunciation have been enormous. The synagogue to which I now belong called itself Conservative in the 1950s, but the only differences from Orthodox were mixed seating and a lack of "duchening." 

Today, there's a female rabbi, women in the choir, women with aliyot, Israeli pronunciation of the liturgy, instrumental music at some services, etc.; and it's the same physical place with the same name -- still calling itself Conservative. And the same sort of thing is true of most other Conservative congregations with which I've had any contact. It's a different world now than it was then -- in a great many ways besides the switchover of a great many American Jewish communities from Ashkenazic to Israeli pronunciation.


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## Drink

MuttQuad said:


> And If Ben Gurion spoke that way, so did a lot of other Jews of the time.



He did not actually speak that way (or at least not by the time of the declaration of independence, since I don't know how he spoke in private in the decades before). I was using the quote as an example of how silly it would sound to speak Modern Hebrew in an Ashkenazi accent.


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## MuttQuad

Drink said:


> He did not actually speak that way (or at least not by the time of the declaration of independence, since I don't know how he spoke in private in the decades before). I was using the quote as an example of how silly it would sound to speak Modern Hebrew in an Ashkenazi accent.



It didn't sound silly at the time to those of us who learned it that way. Of course, it was primarily for liturgical and Torah  study purposes. The rabbis and teachers did, though, use it as a language of communication when they didn't want the students to know what they were saying.


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## Drink

MuttQuad said:


> It didn't sound silly at the time to those of us who learned it that way. Of course, it was primarily for liturgical and Torah  study purposes. The rabbis and teachers did, though, use it as a language of communication when they didn't want the students to know what they were saying.



I wouldn't consider that "Modern Hebrew", but just plain old Ashkenazi Hebrew.


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## ismiv

MuttQuad said:


> It didn't sound silly at the time to those of us who learned it that way. Of course, it was primarily for liturgical and Torah  study purposes. The rabbis and teachers did, though, use it as a language of communication when they didn't want the students to know what they were saying.





MuttQuad said:


> It didn't sound silly at the time to those of us who learned it that way. Of course, it was primarily for liturgical and Torah study purposes. The rabbis and teachers did, though, use it as a language of communication when they didn't want the students to know what they were saying.



MuttQuad, I would never argue that one pronunciation is inherently right, while others are unatural\silly\funny. And I don't think Drink was trying to argue that either. Of course, every pronunciation would sound natural to someone who's used to it. 


But the question this post was about wasn't whether Ashkenazi pronunciation could have been hypothetically the natural one (like it was, to some degree, in your school and Beit Kneset) but whether it could be accepted today, in Israel as normal Hebrew. To this the answer is: absolutely not! and it doesn't matter at all which pronunciation is better, more natural or cooler for that matter. The only relevant question is whether Israelis (and everyone who's used to the Spharadc pronunciation) would be able to accept it as alternative. Every Hebrew speaker who wrote in this thread "it's funny, silly" etc. is a living answer to this question. 

When Drink, or I, or every other modern-Hebrew speaker hear the declaration of independence in Ashkenazi pronunciation it sounds very funny to us, because it is so *different *from what we are used to. The modern language of the declaration, combined with this strange pronunciation is just weird for us, especially since we've listened many times to the declaration cited in modern Hebrew. The Ashkenazi pronunciation couldn't replace the usual one, no more than could medieval English be restored to everyday use. It's not because one is better than the other, but because people don't just start  to talk in another, very different way.


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## MuttQuad

I think it is misunderstander what I am trying to say. That is, simply that years ago the most common American pronunciation of Hebrew was the Ashkenazi version to which I've referred. I have no doubts about the Israeli version having come to dominance in more modern times -- it just wasn't in common usage here when I was growing up. 

You folks grew up where the Israeli version was the only one around, so perhaps the version we used to use would sound silly to you. However, I find the major differences, mostly between one vowel and one consonant, i.e kometz and tet, (an, perhaps, the way "resh" and "ayin" are sounded) to be far less severe than some seem to think, although the overall aural effect is quite distinctive. I mean, the comparison between modern English and Chaucer is a stretch with reference to the comparison between the obsolete Ashkenazic pronunciation and that of modern Hebrew, in my view.

If you want to hear a really strong aural difference, try listening to the English of America compared to the way it's sounded in places like India, Jamaica, or Scotland.  

I'm not the one who proposed that an Ashkenazic Hebrew might be used in Israel today. Except maybe for some remaining liturgical use here, it's gone. goodbye, from mainstream American usage.


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## ismiv

Drink said:


> So does this seem natural to you: "*o*nu makh*ri*zim ba*zos* al ha*ko*mas me*di*no ye*hu*dis b'*er*etz yis*ro*el, hi me*di*nas yis*ro*el."?



It occurred to me you forgot to mention yet another difference between the pronunciations: "me*di*no" should be "me*di*n*e*" as in shive - שבעה teyre - תורה tahyne - טענה sooke - סוכה.

If the pronunciation was used in Israel today, this difference would have bearing on many words: hanine - חנינה kabole - קבלה  (as in school admission, receiving something, and the Kabbalah learning) shmire - שמירה etc. 

I'm not sure what the general rule here, but I'm certain that all the words I mentioned and many more are pronounced this way in prayers and Torah learning by non-Hasidic Haredim (while Hasidim would say kaboole for קבלה and sikke for סוכה !)


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## Drink

MuttQuad said:


> However, I find the major differences, mostly between one vowel and one consonant, i.e kometz and tet, (an, perhaps, the way "resh" and "ayin" are sounded) to be far less severe than some seem to think, although the overall aural effect is quite distinctive.



As I said before, most of the effect comes not from the differences in vowels or consonants, but from the differences in the stress pattern.



ismiv said:


> It occurred to me you forgot to mention yet another difference between the pronunciations: "me*di*no" should be "me*di*n*e*" as in shive - שבעה teyre - תורה tahyne - טענה sooke - סוכה.
> 
> If the pronunciation was used in Israel today, this difference would have bearing on many words: hanine - חנינה kabole - קבלה  (as in school admission, receiving something, and the Kabbalah learning) shmire - שמירה etc.
> 
> I'm not sure what the general rule here, but I'm certain that all the words I mentioned and many more are pronounced this way in prayers and Torah learning by non-Hasidic Haredim (while Hasidim would say kaboole for קבלה and sikke for סוכה !)



Actually, in that "cleaned-up" form of Ashkenazi Hebrew, there is no vowel reduction. If you noticed, in my previous transliterations, I left it as "a". The actual sound of this reduced vowel is somewhere in between "e" and "a" and depends on the speaker.


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## Dashem

ismiv said:


> It occurred to me you forgot to mention yet another difference between the pronunciations: "me*di*no" should be "me*di*n*e*" as in shive - שבעה teyre - תורה tahyne - טענה sooke - סוכה.
> 
> If the pronunciation was used in Israel today, this difference would have bearing on many words: hanine - חנינה kabole - קבלה  (as in school admission, receiving something, and the Kabbalah learning) shmire - שמירה etc.
> 
> I'm not sure what the general rule here, but I'm certain that all the words I mentioned and many more are pronounced this way in prayers and Torah learning by non-Hasidic Haredim (while Hasidim would say kaboole for קבלה and sikke for סוכה !)


This is how these Hebrew words sound in Yiddish. In the liturgical use the kamatz is "oh": medino, toyro, sooko, etc.


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## Drink

Dashem said:


> This is how these Hebrew words sound in Yiddish. In the liturgical use the kamatz is "oh": medino, toyro, sooko, etc.


Ashkenazi Hebrew has several registers. There is liturgical, in which these words are medino, toyro, etc., and there is casual, which is used for studying, in which these are in fact medine, toyre, etc. And it's not even quite so fixed, because even in liturgical contexts, the casual pronunciation might slip in, and vice versa.


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