# Pronunciation of Yiddish, Ladino, etc. and the traditional pronunciations of Hebrew



## Squee100

Did the pronunciation of Yiddish, Ladino, etc. inform the traditional pronunciations of Hebrew, or vice versa?


[Moderator edit: thread was renamed to a more meaningful title.]


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## Drink

It was a reciprocal process. They affected each other.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> It was a reciprocal process. They affected each other.


Could you explain in which way you think Hewbrew has phonologically influenced Yiddish? There is nothing I could think of. Lexically yes, but phonologically?


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Could you explain in which way you think Hewbrew has phonologically influenced Yiddish? There is nothing I could think of. Lexically yes, but phonologically?



First of all, it is inevitable in cases of language contact that the languages influence each other. So I would feel comfortable saying this even if there weren't any certain examples.

The only certain example I can think of is the addition of many new initial consonants and clusters (and possibly some medial and final ones):
- A distinction between /s-/ and /z-/
- A distinction between /sC-/ and /ʃC-/, for various consonants /C/
- Other initial clusters, such as /sχ-/ and /ʃχ-/, /gd-/ and /kt-/, and many others

But there are many more examples of things for which there is a reason to suspect a Hebrew origin, but can also be explained in other ways as well:
- The realization of /x/ as [χ]
- Loss of the affricates /pf/ and /kχ/ (although subsequently the /kχ/ cluster was reintroduced in Hebrew words)
- The reversal of word-final consonant devoicing
- A true voicing distinction, as opposed to a fortis/lenis distinction
- Loss of aspiration (possibly part of the above)
- Introduction of a large number of penultimately stressed words (as opposed to the Germanic initial stress, other than when there is an unstressed prefix)
- More widespread unstressed vowel reduction
- The vowel shift [aː] > [ɔː]
- The vowel shift [oː] > [ɔj ~ ej]
- The vowel shift [u(ː)] > [i(ː)] in some dialects

And that's only what I thought of off the top of my head.


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## berndf

I cannot see how any of this has anything to do with Hebrew. 


Drink said:


> A distinction between /s-/ and /z-/


Why would that be Hebrew influence? In words of German origin, there is no difference between the allophonic /s/-/z/ distributions in German and Yiddish. 


Drink said:


> A distinction between /sC-/ and /ʃC-/, for various consonants /C/


Where would that be except in loans?


Drink said:


> Loss of the affricates /pf/ and /kχ/


Never existed. Yiddish is derived from Middle and not from Upper German.


Drink said:


> - The reversal of word-final consonant devoicing
> - A true voicing distinction, as opposed to a fortis/lenis distinction
> - Loss of aspiration (possibly part of the above)


This is Eastern Yiddish and much more plausibly explained by Slavic influence. Loss of aspiration doesn't need explanation as it is native in the dialect Yiddish is derived from.


Drink said:


> - The vowel shift [aː] > [ɔː]


Rounding of long a is a common phenomenon in many Germanic languages, including many German dialects.


Drink said:


> - The vowel shift [oː] > [ɔj ~ ej]
> - The vowel shift [u(ː)] > [i(ː)] in some dialects


What is the connection with Hebrew? These shifts again do not exist in Western Yiddish and are better explained by local influence.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Why would that be Hebrew influence? In words of German origin, there is no difference between the allophonic /s/-/z/ distributions in German and Yiddish.



If you take the German component of Yiddish out and consider it alone, it would not be Yiddish anymore. Once Hebrew words are incorporated into the language and preserve certain phonological features, those phonological features become part of Yiddish as a whole. You have distinctions such as _ikh hob zikh far*z*amt_ ("I was late") and _ikh hob zikh far*s*amt_ ("I poisoned myself"). Why does it matter that _farsamt_ comes from a Hebrew word _sam_? Such distinctions are not possible (to my knowledge) in dialects of German. That said, once Yiddish phonology allows such consonant distinctions, there is nothing stopping German-origin words from evolving and coming to use such features. I know of at least one example, but there may be more: _se_ /sə/ is an alternative form of _es_ ("it"), used in certain positions.



berndf said:


> Where would that be except in loans?



Why would it need to be anywhere other than loans? See above. It's important to note that if such words were loaned into other dialects of German, they would likely have lost these features as they became integrated into German phonology, as happened to some degree in Western Yiddish (e.g. initial /tʃ/ > /ʃ/).



berndf said:


> Never existed. Yiddish is derived from Middle and not from Upper German.



Actually, Yiddish is derived from various dialects of OHG/MHG (and continued to be influenced by NHG). In Yiddish, features of both Central and Upper German are recognizable. But regardless, Yiddish words that come from Proto-Germanic initial _*p-_ certainly had [pf] at one point, which shifted to [f] (possibly, but not necessarily, due to Hebrew influence or Judeo-Romance influence).



berndf said:


> This is Eastern Yiddish and much more plausibly explained by Slavic influence. Loss of aspiration doesn't need explanation as it is native in the dialect Yiddish is derived from.



Or, it was a feature of Yiddish as a whole, but Western Yiddish was later influenced by NHG. How could you possibly know? I don't think we have hard evidence either way. I don't see how re-voicing of word-finally-devoiced consonants could be due to Slavic influence, since the largest influence came from Polish, Belarussian, and Russian, all of which have word-final devoicing.

Anyway, as I originally said, this was a list of features that could have been influenced by Hebrew, but may not have been. *There are alternative explanations for each one, but overall at least some of these features had to have been due to Hebrew influence.*



berndf said:


> Rounding of long a is a common phenomenon in many Germanic languages, including many German dialects.



Sure, but perhaps it wouldn't have happened in Yiddish in particular if it hadn't been due to Hebrew influence. Or perhaps it would have happened. See above.



berndf said:


> What is the connection with Hebrew? These shifts again do not exist in Western Yiddish and are better explained by local influence.



What local influence, exactly? I can't think of any local languages that would have caused these shifts. Again, not all of Yiddish had to go through these shifts for it to be considered Hebrew influence. And again, it could have happened in all of Yiddish, but reversed in Western Yiddish due to NHG influence. As for what the connection with Hebrew is:

Yemenite Hebrew also experienced a shift from [oː] to [øː ~ eː]. Thus, it is conceivable that this shifted began in an earlier variety of Hebrew, from which both Yemenite and Ashkenazi Hebrew are derived. In Yiddish, [øː] would have shifted back to [oː] in Western Yiddish, to [ɔj] in Central and Southeastern Yiddish, and to [ej] in Northeastern Yiddish.

There is evidence that in Babylonian Hebrew, the short /u/ was realized as [y]. It is conceivable that the ancestor(s) of Ashkenazi Hebrew could have had a similar phenomenon. Of course, this shift only took place in Central and Southeastern Yiddish, but so what?


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## berndf

A word like _ferd = horse _is a completely regular loan from Upper German _pferd_ into Middle German (the native word is _perd_). Hebrew influence on _pferd _would more likely have produced *_perd_. So, that is actually of a counter example to a possible Hebrew influence on Yiddish. Morphological Upper German influence (like the _-l_ diminutive in Eastern Yiddish and the _-she_ diminutive in Western Yiddish) is a post-split phenomenon and are therefore not an indication of Upper German origin of Yiddish.

The marked difference in pronunciation between Hebrew loans into Yiddish and Askkenazi Hebrew (for which Weinreich coined the terms _Merged Hebrew_ and _Whole Hebrew_) indicates the lack of Hebrew or Aramaic influence on Yiddish rather than the opposite.

/s/ where /z/ or /ʃ/ would be expected in German occurs loans from various languages, not only from Hebrew (e.g. סטודענט ,סאָציאַל or סטיל). The most obvious explanation is spelling pronunciation. Yiddish speaking communities had already in the Middle Ages high literacy rates when only very few Christians could read or write.

A shift from [øː] to [oː] in Western Yiddish is a little convincing ad hoc assumption, as there is no paradigm in any language or dialect of the region were Western Yiddish was spoken. At least I am not aware of any.

The reversal of final obstruent devoicing admittedly lack a clear explanation. Drawing from this lack of a better explanation the conclusion that it would be due to Hebrew, for which there is otherwise only little, if any, evidence, is not very plausible although, of course, it remains a possibility.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> A word like _ferd = horse _is a completely regular loan from Upper German _pferd_ into Middle German (the native word is _perd_). Hebrew influence on _pferd _would more likely have produced *_perd_. So, that is actually of a counter example to a possible Hebrew influence on Yiddish. Morphological Upper German influence (like the _-l_ diminutive in Eastern Yiddish and the _-she_ diminutive in Western Yiddish) is a post-split phenomenon and are therefore not an indication of Upper German origin of Yiddish.



So are you saying that all words in Yiddish that derive from what in PG was initial _*p-_ were loaned into Yiddish from Upper German? That's a bit preposterous. What happened to all the "native" words like _**perd_? As for its Hebrew origin, the possibilty I am describing is that /pf/ was lost because it did not exist in the phonemic inventory of the Jews who started speaking German. Why in initial position it always became /f-/ and in other positions always /p-/ is another matter (and I guess it's plausible that /pf/ only existed in initial position in the first place). The fact that in traditional Hebrew /f/ did not occur initially is irrelevant because allophony of /p/ and /f/ was no longer productive. And I never said that the only evidence of Upper German origin is the diminutive.



berndf said:


> The marked difference in pronunciation between Hebrew loans into Yiddish and Askkenazi Hebrew (for which Weinreich coined the terms _Merged Hebrew_ and _Whole Hebrew_) indicates the lack of Hebrew or Aramaic influence on Yiddish rather than the opposite.



Not really. "Merged Hebrew" represents the true descendant of Proto-Ashkenazi Hebrew, while "Whole Hebrew" represents educated spelling pronunciation.



berndf said:


> /s/ where /z/ or /ʃ/ would be expected in German occurs loans from various languages, not only from Hebrew (e.g. סטודענט ,סאָציאַל or סטיל). The most obvious explanation is spelling pronunciation. Yiddish speaking communities had already in the Middle Ages high literacy rates when only very few Christians could read or write.



Of course loans from other languages preserved the distinction, because the distinction had become part of the phonology. If Hebrew had not influenced Yiddish phonology, סאָציאַל might have been pronounced with /z-/ and סטודענט with /ʃt-/. Furthermore, other than Slavic, Hebrew is the only possible source for these distinctions, given that they did not exist in Judeo-Romance or Judeo-Greek. And since these distinctions are universal even in Western Yiddish, Slavic is also out of the question. As for it being a spelling pronunciation, perhaps it is, but it is nonetheless influence from the spelling of Hebrew words.



berndf said:


> The reversal of final obstruent devoicing admittedly lack a clear explanation. Drawing from this lack of a better explanation the conclusion that it would be due to Hebrew, for which there is otherwise only little, if any, evidence, is not very plausible although, of course, it remains a possibility.



It could be explained by paradigm leveling. But that could have been triggered by Hebrew allowing word-final voiced consonants.

But again, most important is the bold sentence in my previous post.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> I am describing is that /pf/ was lost because it did not exist in the phonemic inventory of the Jews who started speaking German.


Maybe I haven't been clear enough. _pf _does *not *exist in Middle *German* and never has. Nothing to do with Jews whatsoever. Upper German words with _pf _are *regularly* loaned as _f_ into Middle German (and Low German as well). Again, nothing to do with Jews. I am a native German speaker and I pronounce _Pferd_ like _Ferd_ and everyone in my family does. I am not a Jew and I have had no contact with either Hebrew or Yiddish before the age of about 15. _pf _only exits intervocalically in Middle German and only in loans. That is possible because a word like _Apfel _is syllabified as _Ap-fel _and therefore has no _pf_-cluster. But no dialect speaker from the Middle Rhine region, where Yiddish originated, uses this. _Apfel _is _appel/eppel_. Yiddish has _Pferd=ferd_ and _Apfel=epl_. This has always be so in that area and still is today; in German, not only in Yiddish. No theory of any influence whatsoever is needed.


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## Drink

I don't doubt that if a word like _Pferd_ were loaned into a dialect without /pf/, like Central German (let's reserve the word "Middle" for the temporal meaning as in MHG, just for clarity's sake), then it would become _Ferd_. What I do doubt is that _all_ such words could possibly have been loaned without _any_ of the "native" /p-/ forms surviving at all. And even if that were, why were _none_ of the words with medial /-pf-/ loaned into Yiddish or its source dialect (which as you say would have surived as /-p.f-/ by putting the syllable boundary between them)? Therefore, this aspect of Yiddish must have come from Jews adopting Upper German directly.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> What I do doubt is that _all_ such words could possibly have been loaned without _any_ of the "native" /p-/ forms surviving at all.


That is exactly what happened. Central and Low German have no _pf _cluster and it is a awkward tongue-twister for them and they invariably drop the _p_ of *any* _pf_-cluster. *Any* word that is spelled _pf-_ in (Central German based) modern Standard German are by necessity Upper German loans into Central German.


Drink said:


> But that could have been triggered by Hebrew allowing word-final voiced consonants.


Why would that reversal of final obstruent devoicing have taken place centuries after Yiddish evolved, if it were Hebrew influence. Not very plausible.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> That is exactly what happened. Central and Low German have no _pf _cluster and it is a awkward tongue-twister for them and they invariably drop the _p_ of *any* _pf_-cluster. *Any* word that is spelled _pf-_ in (Central German based) modern Standard German are by necessity Upper German loans into Central German.



I think you are simply misunderstanding me. I'm trying to ask you, how is plausible that _all_ "native" _perd_-words were replaced by _ferd_-words by loaning from another dialect?



berndf said:


> Why would that reversal of final obstruent devoicing have taken place centuries after Yiddish evolved, if it were Hebrew influence. Not very plausible.



Who said it was centuries later? And even if it was, presumably there was a time when Yiddish's German component and Ashkenazi Hebrew were kept phonologically distinct, and the phonological merger took place gradually over a long period of time. Only when that merger was complete was it possible to re-voice final obstruents in the German component.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> I think you are simply misunderstanding me. I'm trying to ask you, how is plausible that _all_ "native" _perd_-words were replaced by _ferd_-words by loaning from another dialect?


Of course not. We are only talking about words here that:
1) Have an original West-Germanic _p_.
2) Satisfied the phonological conditions of Upper German _p_-affricatisation.
3a) The Upper German affricated form became predominant in common German, i.e. ended up spelled with _pf_ in standard German.
3b) Ended up with _f _in Yiddish.

We would only have an issue if group 3b) contained a significantly group of words that are not contained in 3a). As a matter of fact, I am not aware of _any _such word (on the contrary, there are word in 3a) that are not contained in 3a), e.g., German _Apfel - _Yiddish _epl_) and I doubt very much you will find many. For all words that are contained in 3a) and in 3b) the sequence Upper German _pf_ > Central German _f_ > Yiddish _f_ is the obvious explanation.

And even if there were some influence of a third language (e.g. Italian because medieval Jewish immigration into Germany was mainly from northern Italy), it would not be Hebrew as _ferd _is phonologically impossible in Hebrew.


Drink said:


> Who said it was centuries later?


Old Yiddish texts, like the Wormser Machsor , still show final obstruent devoicing in all its glory, e.g., _tak_ (_day_) instead of _tag_.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Old Yiddish texts, like the Wormser Machsor , still show final obstruent devoicing in all its glory, e.g., _tak_ (_day_) instead of _tag_.



You are shooting yourself in the foot. If you are to go by written language, then Old Yiddish (what Weinreich calls "Written Language A") also clearly shows "pf" (spelled פפֿ). But luckily, these two things are not conclusive evidence of anything. There is a distinct possibility that the orthography of literary Old Yiddish was influenced by the literary German of that period, which generally showed both word-final devoicing (_tac_) and the /pf/ affricate (_pferd_).



berndf said:


> Of course not. We are only talking about words here that:
> 1) Have an original West-Germanic _p_.
> 2) Satisfied the phonological conditions of Upper German _p_-affricatisation.
> 3a) The Upper German affricated form became predominant in common German, i.e. ended up spelled with _pf_ in standard German.
> 3b) Ended up with _f _in Yiddish.
> 
> We would only have an issue if group 3b) contained a significantly group of words that are not contained in 3a). As a matter of fact, I am not aware of _any _such word (on the contrary, there are word in 3a) that are not contained in 3a), e.g., German _Apfel - _Yiddish _epl_) and I doubt very much you will find many. For all words that are contained in 3a) and in 3b) the sequence Upper German _pf_ > Central German _f_ > Yiddish _f_ is the obvious explanation.



I still think you're missing my point. How do you explain the _absence_ of _perd_-words in Yiddish (i.e. words that had PWG initial _*p-_ that survived as _p-_ in Yiddish)? It doesn't make sense that the source dialect of Yiddish discarded _all_ words with initial PWG _*p-_, only to reborrow them all from another dialect, and furthermore that it did so _only_ for words where the PWG _*p_ was initial.

Generally, when you have a regular rule like that _*p_ always became _f_ initialy and remained _p_ elsewhere, postulating that all words where _*p_ was initial just happened to be borrowed from another dialect is a bit farfetched.



berndf said:


> And even if there were some influence of a third language (e.g. Italian because medieval Jewish immigration into Germany was mainly from northern Italy), it would not be Hebrew as _ferd _is phonologically impossible in Hebrew.



Well it was from both Italy and France, I believe. But yes, exactly, as I said Hebrew is not the only possible explanation. And again, as I have already said, if ferd was not possible in earlier varieties of Hebrew, it had become possible in Mishnaic times or up to a few centuries after.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> How do you explain the _absence_ of _perd_-words in Yiddish (i.e. words that had PWG initial _*p-_ that survived as _p-_ in Yiddish)?


What absence? Yiddish has enough words with surviving West-Germanic initial _p_. The_ p->f s_hift only affects words that where the same development happened in German as well. I still challenge you to give me a single counter-example, i.e. where the outcome in modern German is _p_ but _f_ in Yiddish.


Drink said:


> it had become possible in Mishnaic times or up to a few centuries after.


It wasn't possible in original Hebrew as it didn't have an _f_ and it wasn't possible in post-Mishnaic Hebrew either because it violated Aramaic allophonic distribution rules which it had adopted by then.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> What absence? Yiddish has enough words with surviving West-Germanic initial _p_. The_ p->f s_hift only affects words that where the same development happened in German as well. I still challenge you to give me a single counter-example, i.e. where the outcome in modern German is _p_ but _f_ in Yiddish.



I challenge you to give me one Yiddish word with surviving West-Germanic initial _p_.

As for your challenge, I don't understand what modern German has to do with it; as literacy rates increased, modern German was influenced by standard literary German, which has _pf_.



berndf said:


> It wasn't possible in original Hebrew as it didn't have an _f_ and it wasn't possible in post-Mishnaic Hebrew either because it violated Aramaic allophonic distribution rules which it had adopted by then.



It's debatable whether this allophonic distribution in Hebrew originated in Aramaic or not (and whether it was before or after Hebrew ceased to be a daily spoken language). But regardless, I'm talking about the period of Hellenization and later Latinization.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> I challenge you to give me one Yiddish word with surviving West-Germanic initial _p_.


Of the top of my head:
_Plagen [zich] _(hard work, suffer)
_Platsen_ (_blow up_)

Both satisfy my conditions 1) and 2) and belong neither to group 3a) nor to group 3b).


Drink said:


> I don't understand what modern German has to do with it


This:


berndf said:


> Central and Low German have no _pf _cluster and it is a awkward tongue-twister for them and they invariably drop the _p_ of *any* _pf_-cluster. *Any* word that is spelled _pf-_ in (Central German based) modern Standard German are by necessity Upper German loans into Central German.





Drink said:


> It's debatable whether this allophonic distribution in Hebrew originated in Aramaic


Not really.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> _Plagen [zich] _(hard work, suffer)



This didn't exist in West Germanic, so it doesn't satisfy your first condition. According to Wiktionary, it was "chiefly Central German", which means that it was borrowed into Upper German (sometimes retaining _p-_, and sometimes shifting to _pf-_).



berndf said:


> _Platsen_ (_blow up_)



According to Wiktionary, this word shifted to _*bl-_ sometime between PG and OHG, so it doesn't satisfy your second condition.



berndf said:


> This:
> 
> 
> berndf said:
> 
> 
> 
> Central and Low German have no _pf _cluster and it is a awkward tongue-twister for them and they invariably drop the _p_ of *any* _pf_-cluster. *Any* word that is spelled _pf-_ in (Central German based) modern Standard German are by necessity Upper German loans into Central German.
Click to expand...


Modern Standard German was influenced by the literary MHG, which was based on Upper German and had _pf_. Phenomena of literary German are much less likely to have impacted spoken Yiddish before modern times.



berndf said:


> Not really.



If linguists debate it, it must be debatable. But anyway it's irrelevant here, so you can pretend I didn't say that. The slightly more relevant part is "and whether it was before or after Hebrew ceased to be a daily spoken language". But even so, as I just said, even regardless of that, I'm talking about the period of Hellenization and later Latinization.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> This didn't exist in West Germanic, so it doesn't satisfy your first condition.


It is certainly West Germanic but not Proto-Germanic as it is an early Latin loan and doesn't exist in other Germanic branches. But that doesn't matter. Everything that happened before the second consonant shift is irrelevant to this discussion.


Drink said:


> this word shifted to _*bl-_ sometime between PG and OHG,


it has not "shifted", it had a variant.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> It is certainly West Germanic but not Proto-Germanic as it is an early Latin loan and doesn't exist in other Germanic branches. But that doesn't matter. Everything that happened before the second consonant shift is irrelevant to this discussion.



The Wiktionary entry I referenced says that this word came from Latin in the Early MHG period, which is after the second consonant shift had completed.



berndf said:


> it has not "shifted", it had a variant.



Ok, but it is nonetheless possible that the Yiddish word came from the _bl-_ variant, but the _b-_ subsequently became _p-_, as in many other words (such as _puter_ = "butter").


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## Drink

By the way, another Upper German feature of Yiddish is the lack of high-vowel lowering, as in forms like _zun_, _fun_, _kummen_, _kinig_, _zin_, compared to Central German _Sonne_, _von_, _kommen_, _König_, _Senn_.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> The Wiktionary entry I referenced says that this word came from Latin in the Early MHG period, which is after the second consonant shift had completed.


Since _pflagen _and _vlagen _are also attested, this can hardly me the whole story. We are only lacking OHG attestations.


Drink said:


> high-vowel lowering, as in forms like _zun_, _fun_, _kummen_, _kining_, _zin_


You are mixing different things here. The high vowel in only original in _zun_. In _fun_ it was originally _a_. The lowering of _ü_ to _ö_ in _König _is post-MHG (16th century); maybe Dutch or Danish influence? Don't know.

Anyway, we are drifting away into detail with little relevance to the topic. Let's leave it at that.


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## Ihsiin

Drink said:


> First of all, it is inevitable in cases of language contact that the languages influence each other. So I would feel comfortable saying this even if there weren't any certain examples.



But there was no _real_ language contact between Hebrew and Yiddish. As you know, Hebrew had died out as a spoken language long before Yiddish ever came to be. It is very unlikely that a liturgical language will have any real influence on the phonology of a living language. It seems to me that your subsequent assertions are rather tenuous.


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## Drink

Ihsiin said:


> But there was no _real_ language contact between Hebrew and Yiddish. As you know, Hebrew had died out as a spoken language long before Yiddish ever came to be. It is very unlikely that a liturgical language will have any real influence on the phonology of a living language. It seems to me that your subsequent assertions are rather tenuous.



To understand this, you have to be familiar with traditional Jewish life. I don't know how liturgy works with in Christianity or Islam, but in traditional Judaism, every individual (or at least every male individual) from a very young age prays three times a day in Hebrew, saying various blessings throughout the entire day (such as before eating anything), and spends hours a day studying Hebrew and Aramaic texts out loud with a partner, and then debating them (mostly in the vernacular, but leaving many words untranslated). Students at yeshivas would even spend their entire day doing this, every day for years. Yes, maybe spoken Hebrew was not used for _communication_, but it was certainly "spoken", in a certain sense of the word, and had plenty of opportunity to influence the vernacular. In this way, Hebrew was not only in contact with Yiddish at its formation, but remained in contact throughout the entire history of Yiddish.

If you don't believe me, please visit an English-speaking Orthodox Jewish community and tell me their English is not influenced by Hebrew (and by Ashkenazi Hebrew, no less; not the "living" Israeli Hebrew).


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## Ihsiin

Yes, this is precisely what I mean by liturgical use. It occurs to me that Hebrew does not play a greater role in the life of a devout Jew than Arabic plays in the life of a devout Muslim, yet we do not expect (nor do we see) Arabic influencing the phonology of Muslim communities who have not had contact with the spoken language. I have known a number of English-speaking Jews throughout my life, some more devout than others, and I have never detected anything in their accents that would make them distinct from the continuum of London tones.

The fact that we come down to the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew kind of demonstrates the lack of that influence, since Ashkenazi itself is a pronunciation tradition purged of the Hebrew and Aramaic features that would be impossible (or very difficult) for German/Yiddish speakers to handle, that is to say emphatics, pharyngeals and interdentals, to say the least. The dynamic is clear - the spoken language dominates the phonology of the liturgical language, which is what we expect and what we see throughout the world.

It occurs to me that the evidence you present subsequently is rather tenuous. Your discussion over the word _perd_/_ferd_ is rather telling in this case. As has been established, the sequence _f-_ is forbidden in both the phonologies of Hebrew and Aramaic, so it makes no sense to ascribe the existence of this sequence in Yiddish to Hebrew (or Aramaic influence). It further occurs to me that your conviction is based more on supposition that anything else, on the notion that Hebrew _must_ have had an influence on the phonology of Yiddish because Hebrew plays a substantial role in lives of devout of Jews. On this point, of course, I disagree, and it would seem that the subsequent evidence is lacking.


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> and I have never detected anything in their accents that would make them distinct from the continuum of London tones.


It should be noteded though that the the all but complete disappearance of specifically Jewish vernaculars that cold be observed throughout Western Europe happened as a consequence of the emancipation of the 18th and 19th centuries. Jewish vernaculars usually only survived when not based on the language of the country like Ladino in the Netherlands. This is also why Western Yiddish became extinct in Germany first.

The easy of this transition adds further to the implausibility of Drink's basic assumption that phonological limitations of a non-vernacular language, which above all is a pure papeloshen and not a mameloshen, should restrict the phonological inventory of speakers in their vernacular languages.


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## Drink

Ihsiin said:


> Yes, this is precisely what I mean by liturgical use. It occurs to me that Hebrew does not play a greater role in the life of a devout Jew than Arabic plays in the life of a devout Muslim, yet we do not expect (nor do we see) Arabic influencing the phonology of Muslim communities who have not had contact with the spoken language.



In that case, I _would_ in fact expect to see Arabic influencing the phonology of Muslim communities who have not had contact with the spoken language. If "we" don't see it, perhaps "we" haven't looked hard enough.



Ihsiin said:


> I have known a number of English-speaking Jews throughout my life, some more devout than others, and I have never detected anything in their accents that would make them distinct from the continuum of London tones.



First of all, when speaking to non-Jews, Jews are likely to tone down the Jewish features of their language. Second of all, some things you wouldn't notice unless you were specifically listening for any differences. Third of all, the Jews with the most distinctive language are the ones sometimes known as "ultra-Orthodox" (not to stereotype, but these are the ones that often wear black hats).

I can give you a concrete example. From the _Handbook of Jewish Languages_, in the chapter "Jewish English" by Sarah Bunin Benor (emphasis mine):


> Loanwords are generally integrated into English sentences phonologically and morphosyntactically, with a few exceptions. The phoneme /x/, not part of the native English phonemic inventory, is used in words from Hebrew and Yiddish (*and occasionally words from non-Jewish languages, like Javier and Bach*).



Also note, that this phoneme she talks about is is really a uvular [χ], not the velar [x] used in Scottish English, for example. Where do children learn this sound? I can give my personal perspective since I myself pronounce _Bach_ with [χ]. I didn't learn it from my parents, who speak Russian and use the velar [x] (which I use myself in words I loan from Russian, so I have both /x/ and /χ/ as separate phonemes in my English). I didn't learn it from my grandparents who had Yiddish-speaking parents, because my grandparents themselves use the Russian [x] in words they loaned from Yiddish, rather than the Yiddish [χ]. I learned it from learning Hebrew in a Jewish after-school program (and not from native speakers of Israeli Hebrew). So how did I come to pronounce the German name _Bach_ with /χ/, when most Americans pronounce it with /k/, my parents and grandparents pronounce it with [x], and Standard German has [x]? Because I knew the /χ/ sound from learning Hebrew. Thus, Hebrew influenced my pronunciation of an English word that has no connection to Hebrew. This is an exact parallel to the initial /s-/ and /z-/ distinction in Yiddish that I discussed above.

(Continued below to avoid 10000 character limit)


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## Drink

Ihsiin said:


> The fact that we come down to the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew kind of demonstrates the lack of that influence, since Ashkenazi itself is a pronunciation tradition purged of the Hebrew and Aramaic features that would be impossible (or very difficult) for German/Yiddish speakers to handle, that is to say emphatics, pharyngeals and interdentals, to say the least. The dynamic is clear - the spoken language dominates the phonology of the liturgical language, which is what we expect and what we see throughout the world.



Saying that Ashkenazi Hebrew could not have phonologically influenced Yiddish because its phonology has become identical to Yiddish is really a circular argument. Even though the majority of Yiddish and Ashkenazi Hebrew phonology is clearly Germanic, Yiddish has many phonological features that are not found in other dialects of German or other surrounding non-Jewish languages. Some of these features may have simply evolved on their own, while others may have originated in Ashkenazi Hebrew. And once again, there was a long period of time before Ashkenazi Hebrew became completely phonologically identical to Yiddish. During that period of time, it is inevitable that they influenced each other.

Even the fundamentals of Ashkenazi Hebrew have changed drastically over time. There is clear evidence that the Hebrew pronunciation originally brought to German-speaking territory, was of the Southern Palestinian tradition (also known simply as Palestinian; which also gave rise to Sephardi Hebrew). Later, scholars brought over the Northern Palestinian tradition (also known as Tiberian), and rabbis from the yeshivas of Babylonia brought over the Babylonian tradition. Ashkenazi Hebrew follows mostly the Northern Palestinian tradition, with a few likely influences from the Babylonian tradition. Here is a quote from Max Weinreich's _History of the Yiddish Language_ (English edition from 2008), in section 7.4.2:


> There is another phenomenon in Ashkenazic Loshn-koydesh [i.e. Hebrew and Aramaic] in the Old Yiddish period which has to be pointed out here. THe phoneme that in contemporary Ashkenazic Loshn-koydesh, depending on the Yiddish dialect, is either /u/ or /y, i/ was, in the period of Old Yiddish and up to the Middle Yiddish period, divided into two series: _shvues_ (with a _shurek_ [i.e. long _ū_]), for example, was in the entire area of Ashkenaz with /u/ and _sukos_ (according to Hebrew grammar written with a _kubbuz_ [i.e. short _u_] under the _samekh_ [i.e. the letter _s_]) was in the entire area of Ashkenaz with a /y/. There does not appear to any similarity to this phenomenon, either in Sepharad or in Palestine (from which the Ashkenazic pronunciation is said to be derived, according to the prefiguration theory), while there is in Yemen (7.6.1). Why in the Old Yiddish period, and what is the relation between Yemen and Ashkenaz?



And then in section 7.6:


> The specialized literature speaks of the Babylonian reading system as a six-vowel system, for Babylonia has only one vowel for _patah_ [i.e. short _a_] and _segol_ [i.e. short _e_]—realized apparently as /a/, if we may rely on the present Yemenite reading. But we shall soon see (7.6.2) that the Tiberian _kubbuz_, realized as /u/, is split in two in the Babylonian reading system: _shurek_, realized as /u/, and _kubbuz_, realized as /y/.



And then in sections 7.6.1-2:


> 7.6.1 In the territory of ancient Babylonia, among the Jews of Iraq, the _kamez_ [i.e. long _ā_] is now read as aː among the Yemenites as ɔ. We know from cultural history that Jewish Yemen is an offshoot of Babylonia. In the course of the centuries the Yemenite Jews were isolated both from other Jewish settlements and from the coterritorial population to a larger extent than the Jews in Iraq. We may therefore assume that the old Babylonian reading tradition was better preserved in Yemen than in the territory of Babylonia proper.
> 
> 7.6.2 Up until now we have discussed the _shurek_ only as a plene variant of the _kubbuz_. There are a considerable number of cases in the Masora [i.e. vocalization tradition of Hebrew] where the same word is sometimes written plene and sometimes defective (for example, _gblt_ in Deuteronomy 32:8; _gblvt_ in Job 24:2; and _gbvlt_ in Isaiah 10:13; it is the same form of the plural “boundaries”), and whether _shurek_ or _kubbuz_ it is realized in the same way: u among the Sephardim and the northern Ashkenazim, i, y among the southern Ashkenazim, except among Yemenites. Among them the equivalent of _shurek_ is /u/, the equivalent of the _kubbuz_ is /y/. There are reliable, although not sufficiently detailed reports that the same distinction is also manifest in Baghdad (that is in post-Babylonian territory proper) and in Shiraz (in the Persian province of Fars, that is, in the Babylonian sphere of influence). The conclusion is therefore merited that in the Babylonian reading there was a seventh phone that grew out of the graphic split _shurek_ ~ _kubbuz_.
> 
> ... The bifurcation of _shurek_ ~ _kubbuz_ into a contrast /u ~ y/ must have taken place before Yemen was isolated from Babylonia, that is, no later than the twelfth century. This is confirmed by the evidence of Ashkenaz (7.4.1): the same contrast /u ~ y/ is found in Ashkenazic Hebrew in the Old Yiddish and up to the Middle Yiddish periods. An influence of Yemen on Ashkenaz is unthinkable, for from the beginning and up to the second half of the nineteenth century the two territories had no contact with each other. Conceivable, the phenomenon /u ~ y/ arose in Ashkenaz entirely independently of Yemen, but what could have been the impetus for such innovation? With much more justification we may conceive of the situation thus: The phenomenon existed among the Babylonians and thence passed over (through migration of the actual users) to Yemen and to Ashkenaz (by Babylonian scholars and teachers). Because this is not the only Babylonian trait found in the Ashkenazic reading since the Old Yiddish period, we must arrive at the conclusion that /u ~ y/ as the realization of _shurek_ ~ _kubbuz_ was also brought to Ashkenaz by the “Babylonian renaissance,” which we place in the thirteenth century (7.13.1).



I think it's fairly conceivable that the /i(ː) ~ y(ː)/ found in dialects of Yiddish for etymological /u(ː)/ originated precisely because of this Babylonian Hebrew influence, as [y] for short /u/ was generalized in some dialects of Ashkenazi Hebrew to [yː] for long /uː/, and then to both of these phonemes in the vernacular Yiddish (with a subsequent shift [y(ː)] > [i(ː)] in most places, merging with /i(ː)/). Otherwise, the only explanation is that the [u(ː)] > [y(ː)] shift happened spontaneously (which is possible, as it has happened in many other languages, but less likely in my opinion, because there is a better explanation). I also suspect that shift in dialects of Yiddish [oː] > [ɔj ~ ej] had a similar origin, due to the similarity to the Yemenite Hebrew realization of /oː/ as [øː ~ eː].



Ihsiin said:


> It occurs to me that the evidence you present subsequently is rather tenuous. Your discussion over the word _perd_/_ferd_ is rather telling in this case. As has been established, the sequence _f-_ is forbidden in both the phonologies of Hebrew and Aramaic, so it makes no sense to ascribe the existence of this sequence in Yiddish to Hebrew (or Aramaic influence). It further occurs to me that your conviction is based more on supposition that anything else, on the notion that Hebrew _must_ have had an influence on the phonology of Yiddish because Hebrew plays a substantial role in lives of devout of Jews. On this point, of course, I disagree, and it would seem that the subsequent evidence is lacking.



I agree that we got carried away with _perd_/_ferd_, which was one of my weakest examples (which is why I agreed to stop debating it). I guess that when you present several points at once, it's human nature for a critic to jump at the weaker ones and ignore the stronger ones. But the fact remains that I presented features that are undeniably due to Hebrew influence, the most significant of which is the initial /s-/ and /z-/ distinction.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> It should be noteded though that the the all but complete disappearance of specifically Jewish vernaculars that cold be observed throughout Western Europe happened as a consequence of the emancipation of the 18th and 19th centuries. Jewish vernaculars usually only survived when not based on the language of the country like Ladino in the Netherlands. This is also why Western Yiddish became extinct in Germany first.



It should be noted that of all Jewish vernaculars, only Yiddish and Ladino (and perhaps Jewish Neo-Aramaic can be included in this) survived for long periods of time outside the territory in which the parent language continued to be spoken. Most other Jewish vernaculars, even major ones like Judeo-Arabic, died out when the speakers left their native territory. This does not mean that these vernaculars were not distinctive from the surrounding varieties of the language.



berndf said:


> The easy of this transition adds further to the implausibility of Drink's basic assumption that phonological limitations of a non-vernacular language, which above all is a pure papeloshen and not a mameloshen, should restrict the phonological inventory of speakers in their vernacular languages.



I wasn't assuming that they should restrict, but that they could restrict. And that probably would not occur through later influence, but right from the time this vernacular is adopted a group of Jews (even if this group of Jews later merges with an older population of Jews that already spoke the language). Again, it's a possibility, not a necessity, and it was one of my weakest examples.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> And I never said that the only evidence of Upper German origin is the diminutive.


I did. I mentioned it because it is an unmistakable evidence of Upper German influence. The interesting thing now is that Western Yiddish has the _-she_ diminutive, which is Frankish and typical for the Middle Rhine region.

An interesting question now arises (to which I have no answer):

Did Yiddish evolve as a single dialect that then split and absorb different regional influences or
Did Western and Eastern Yiddish evolve independently, the former from Rhine Frankish and the latter from Uppen Frankish and Northern Bavarian roots and its commonalities are due to continued contact and mutual influencing?


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## berndf

Drink said:


> But the fact remains that I presented features that are undeniably due to Hebrew influence, the most significant of which is the initial /s-/ and /z-/ distinction.


Slightly rephrased I would grant you a point here: The high number of Hebrew loans made execptions from the allphonic distribution rule (which exist in German too but much fewer) so abundant that [ s ] and [z] should properly be regarded as distinct phonemes rather than as allophones.

In this context, I have to questions you might be able to answer:
How striktly are distinctions followed. With less educated speaker, especially illiterate speakers, how frequently did [ S ]-[z] confusions occur (like _zusim_ instead of _susim_)?
Do you know the situation in Western Yiddish?

The reason for my second question has again to do with Central and Upper German influence. As you probably know, [z] does not exist as a sound and if Eastern Yiddish were based on Upper German, as you seem to think, than all words of German origin containing a [z] would then have to be regarded as loans, which would be a bit of a problem.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> I did. I mentioned it because it is an unmistakable evidence of Upper German influence. The interesting thing now is that Western Yiddish has the _-she_ diminutive, which is Frankish and typical for the Middle Rhine region.



There is also the _-(t)ye_ (I forget where Weinreich says it was found), as in _shtibye_, which is reminiscent of the Dutch diminutive _-tje_. I presume it's found in dialects of German as well? Eastern Yiddish also rather quickly adapted several Slavic diminutives (such as _-ke_, _-(e)nʹke_, and _-(e)nyu_), and even adapted the _-l_ diminutive to have two degrees _-l_ and _-ele_, to reflect the Slavic diminutive degrees of _-k-_ and _-čk-_, as in Russian _ruka_, _ručka_, _ručečka_, parallel to Yiddish _hant_, _hentl_, _hentele_.



berndf said:


> An interesting question now arises (to which I have no answer):
> 
> Did Yiddish evolve as a single dialect that then split and absorb different regional influences or
> Did Western and Eastern Yiddish evolve independently, the former from Rhine Frankish and the latter from Uppen Frankish and Northern Bavarian roots and its commonalities are due to continued contact and mutual influencing?



I don't think Yiddish was ever a single dialect, nor ever two disctinct dialects. It was a dynamically changing language. First Jews settled in one German-speaking city and acquired the dialect of that city (and as expected created idiosyncracies based on the former vernacular and Hebrew). Then another group of Jews settled in another city and acquired its dialect. And so on. And meanwhile, Jews in different cities maintained contact with each other and with Jews outside the German-speaking world. Throughout history, there were many internal migrations of Jews between areas of the German-speaking world, and new Jews arriving from outside the German-speaking world. Eventually Slavic-speaking Jews (whose language is often called "Knaanic") adapted Yiddish as well. And when Yiddish speakers moved beyond the boundaries of the non-Jewish-German-speaking world, this process continued; they maintained contact and all influenced each other (even bringing Slavicisms to Western Yiddish, for example). Even when Yiddish-speaking Jews came to Poland, there were already non-Jewish German-speakers there with whom influence was exchanged.



berndf said:


> Slightly rephrased I would grant you a point here: The high number of Hebrew loans made execptions from the allphonic distribution rule (which exist in German too but much fewer) so abundant that [ s ] and [z] should properly be regarded as distinct phonemes rather than as allophones.
> 
> In this context, I have to questions you might be able to answer:
> How striktly are distinctions followed. With less educated speaker, especially illiterate speakers, how frequently did [ S ]-[z] confusions occur (like _zusim_ instead of _susim_)?
> Do you know the situation in Western Yiddish?



I'll bring up an example I found in Weinreich, the significance of which I only realized today after looking into its origin. The Yiddish imperative of the verb _zayn_ "to be" is _zay_ with /z/. However, there is the expression _say ... say ..._ "either ... or ...", which is etymologically that same imperative, but is pronounced with /s/ (the historical reason for which I do not know for sure). A distiction such as this one could not have possibly originated in the written, and so it must have originated in the spoken language. This is pretty good evidence in my opinion, that even less educated, less literate speakers had this disctinction. Now I do not know whether this example is applicable to Western Yiddish; I will continue to peruse Weinreich to try to find out (I'm actually very impressed with how much tangible historical evidence he is able to present of pronunciation changes, at least for Ashkenazi Hebrew).



berndf said:


> The reason for my second question has again to do with Central and Upper German influence. As you probably know, [z] does not exist as a sound and if Eastern Yiddish were based on Upper German, as you seem to think, than all words of German origin containing a [z] would then have to be regarded as loans, which would be a bit of a problem.



To clarify again, I do not think Eastern Yiddish was "based on" Upper German. I was only pointing out shared features. In fact, it seems from Weinreich that most of the shared features with Upper German likely came from East Central German (which according to Weinreich is a dialect that was formed when Upper German, West Central German, and Low German dialects came together in Silesian-speaking territory; I don't have the book in front of me right now, so don't quote me on that). But as Weinreich repeatedly points out, no single dialect of German is able to explain all (or even the majority of) the German-component features of any dialect of Yiddish.

Another feature of Austrian/Bavarian German in Central Yiddish is the second-person plural pronoun _ets_/_enk_ and the present tense verb forms in _-ts_ that go along with it (all derived from the old dual).


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## berndf

Drink said:


> which according to Weinreich is a dialect that was formed when Upper German, West Central German, and Low German dialects came together in Silesian-speaking territory; I don't have the book in front of me right now, so don't quote me on that). But as Weinreich repeatedly points out, no single dialect of German is able to explain all (or even the majority of) the German-component features of any dialect of Yiddish.


Yes, the influence of Eastern German dialects on Eastern Yiddish is obvious to anybody how has an ear for them. But that is only Eastern Yiddish and, as I said, centuries later.


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## Drink

Another important thing that I forgot to say is that looking at Western and Eastern Yiddish as separate independent things is oversimplistic. There is actually a nice continuum between Western Yiddish and Central Yiddish and many shared features between Western and Central Yiddish.


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