# Dialects of Hebrew.



## Malki92

Hello,

Can someone explain to me all the different Hebrew dialects? How much do they differ and in what ways do they differ? Can people of other dialects understand each other fine? 

The more detailed response the better. 

Thanks!  

God bless you all.


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## arielipi

the dialects differ in tones, stressing of several words, the use of few different words. not something serious so we cant understand eachother.
for example, someone from lod will say kapara and ill say mami.


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## OsehAlyah

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in. But I'm not sure that the classification of dialects is correct, I think it is merely accents. So far I've heard of three that have been mentioned, in no particular order.
1. Ashkenazi
2. Sephardi
3. Yemeni


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## origumi

arielipi said:


> the dialects differ in tones, stressing of several words, the use of few different words. not something serious so we cant understand each other.
> for example, someone from lod will say kapara and ill say mami.


I don't think that the regional slang in Israel is rich enough to define dialects. Even more, I do not think that there are several modern Israeli Hebrew dialects. It's true that Jerusalemites may say _maataim_ instead of _mataim_ (200) or _chuku_ instead of _geresh_ (apostrophe), or that Galileans used to say _`akrab_ instead of _`akrav_ (scorpion). There are more such examples. Yet this is not enough to claim the existence of Galilean or Jerusalemite dialects.

Going back into history - Ashkenazi or Yemenite Hebrew are certainly different dialects, sometimes not mutually intelligible (to each other and to modern Hebrew). Same about several other communities. Can we regard the Israeli-Yemenite Hebrew as a dialect? I don't think so. The 2nd and 3rd generations may maintain the accent (e. g. ח and ע) but lost many original features. Same about young orthodox Ashkenazi Israelis who still pray in genuine Ashkenazi dialect but speak mostly modern Hebrew (when they don't speak Yiddish).


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## arielipi

That was what i was saying,its not enough to call it a dialect, but in due time it can cause dialects like you have in the usa.


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## tFighterPilot

arielipi said:


> That was what i was saying,its not enough to call it a dialect, but in due time it can cause dialects like you have in the usa.


First of all, the USA is much larger. Secondly, the time the dialects were being formed was before the Telephone and Radio were invented, so there was no verbal communication between the regions. Nowadays, when physical distance means very little, I don't see how regional dialects could be formed.


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## arielipi

According to you all dialects should have been absorbed by what we are fed in news/tv/radio/movies etc


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## origumi

arielipi said:


> According to you all dialects should have been absorbed by what we are fed in news/tv/radio/movies etc


Unfortunately this is exactly what happens to the diaspora Hebrew dialects. The US is much larger - I guess there's a certain critical mass (number of people, dispersing, isolation) required to enable multi-dialect situation. In the past every two villages could have their own speech (see the example of Neo-Aramaic), today the mass media is gravitational.


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## JaiHare

I've heard that people from Jerusalem have weird expressions. One example is the use of מציצה for a lollipop! Yes, that's what I've heard! Obviously, that wouldn't be acceptable anywhere else!!


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## arbelyoni

> I don't think that the regional slang in Israel is rich enough to define dialects. Even more, I do not think that there are several modern Israeli Hebrew dialects.


I agree, the linguistic differences between different Hebrew speakers can be defined as sociolects, ethnolect, jargon etc but by no means dialects. There's only one standard Modern Hebrew.


> I've heard that people from Jerusalem have weird expressions. One example is the use of מציצה for a lollipop!...


Yes, מציצה is unique to Jerusalem (highly stigmatized, though). This site lists more Jerusalemite slang words.


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## arielipi

thats what i said, it isnt now but it does have the potential to become


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## arbelyoni

> thats what i said, it isnt now but it does have the potential to become



I think that's very unlikely, unless at some point in the future there'll be several communities of Hebrew speakers isolated from one another.


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## arielipi

USA citizens are not isolated anymore, and everyone watches tv there, according to you dialects should have been gone by now and only what they hear would exist.


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## arbelyoni

> USA citizens are not isolated anymore, and everyone watches tv there,  according to you dialects should have been gone by now and only what  they hear would exist.


That's not what I said. Researches show that while local dialects and accents in the US are in decline, regional accents actually thrive. Still, the different dialects of the USA would not have been formed if it hadn't been for physical and cultural isolation of past populations. Such isolation does not exist in Israel as we know it.


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## arbelyoni

A bit off topic, but it is worth mentioning one case of regional differences in the Bible:
"And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan" (Judges 12:5-6).

Apparently there were different accents in the United Monarchy: the Ephraimites pronounced [ʃ] as [s].


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## Albert Schlef

The inability to tell between א/ע and ח/ה is mentioned in the Mishna already:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/hebrewbooks_org_42526_38.pdf


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## Malki92

Hi again everyone. Thank you all for the excellent and very insightful replies! I sort of have a followup question based on some of the comments here, which is:

Do you think that some of the sounds are preserved in other Semitic languages, specifically Arabic? Granted we have different dialects of even Arabic and they pronounce letters differently from region to region. However, from what I understand _sometimes_ when Arab-Israelis speak Hebrew they will pronounce the ע as ع and etc. If there is an Arab influenced dialect of Hebrew (whether they're Palestinians speaking Hebrew, Jews from Arab countries such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen or etc..) How do they pronounce the letters in the Hebrew alphabet? In a correspondence with Arabic letters, like maybe ح = ח...

I hope I'm inline with the rules here. I know this may sound like a separate question but I believe it's relevant. 

Thanks again.


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## arielipi

temanim(yemenis) are more known to have the a'yin and h'et.
Sephardim after them(though not franks,those being ruled by french).
some Ashkenazim(religious) want to speak correctly so they try to say a'yin and h'et.


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## tFighterPilot

I speak with ח,ע,ר,ק,ט when no one's around.


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## arielipi

אתה מתכוון לחארטה אולי?
ממתי יש הבדלים בין ק וכ וט ות
אתה ערבי?


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## origumi

tFighterPilot said:


> I speak with ח,ע,ר,ק,ט when no one's around.


LOL.

I always wondered if any Hebrew speaker still can pronounce ק and ט as we used to in the east before modern Hebrew. Not on the individual level, these sounds can be learned, but as the common way of speaking in a certain community.


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## Albert Schlef

origumi said:


> LOL.
> 
> I always wondered if any Hebrew speaker still can pronounce ק and ט as we used to in the east before modern Hebrew. Not on the individual level, these sounds can be learned, but as the common way of speaking in a certain community.



I live in a city that has many Yemenites. A common salutation they use is "יום טוב", and their "ט" is clearly distinct from "ת".



tFighterPilot said:


> I speak with ח,ע,ר,ק,ט when no one's around.



Really? Out of curiosity: what "ethnic group" do you belong to?



arielipi said:


> ממתי יש הבדלים בין ק וכ וט ות



אתה משהו! Sometimes after I read your posts I look at the "18" number in your age field. It gives me some comfort.



shaliach said:


> However, from what I understand sometimes when Arab-Israelis speak Hebrew they will pronounce the ע as ع and etc. [...] ح = ח...



My impression is that Arabs pronounce Hebrew like Ashkenazim. I wonder what their Hebrew teachers tell them (maybe something along of "ח should actually be pronounced like ح, but you better pronounce it like خ or else people will think you're riffraff").


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## origumi

Albert Schlef said:


> אתה משהו! Sometimes after I read your posts I look at the "18" number in your age field. It gives me some comfort.


It's not so much a matter of young age. I guess that 95% of Israelis would stare at you blankly if you'd tell them that ט and ת or כ and ק have different sound. The other 5% are either immigrants from the East and therefore tend to be of age 60+, or language/linguistics students.


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## berndf

This discussion makes me wonder, if we actually know how emphatics were pronounced in classical (Biblical of Mishnaic) Hebrew or in other NW-Semitic languages, for that matter? We just assume it would be through velarization/pharyngealization as in Arabic. Some researchers doubt that. This realization in Yeminite Hebrew and modern Aramaic may well be due to many centuries of dominance of Arabic in the region. Arabic is unique among Semitic languages in having developed voiced emphatics, not even other Arabian language ever had that. Many scholars believe that the original Semitic emphatics were ejective as they still are in S-Semitic languages. This makes voiced emphatics practically impossible.


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## origumi

We're not in the EHL so I guess that an explanation to berndf's terminology is needed (hopefully citating 4 paragraphs is permitted).


> *The voiceless, voiced, and emphatic sounds*
> 
> Like many languages, the Semitic languages have consonants belonging  to a “voiceless series” (pronounced without vibration of the vocal  cords, as in English _p, t, k_) and a “voiced series” (the pronunciation of which is accompanied by a buzzing of the vocal cords, as in English _b, d, g_).
> 
> In addition, the Semitic languages employ a third series known as  “emphatic.” The exact nature of emphasis in the Semitic protolanguage  remains debated, because the attested languages have two distinct modes  for producing these sounds. An example of the first mode occurs in  Arabic, where the emphatics _ṭ_, _ḍh_ (from proto-Semitic *_ṭh_), _ṣ_, _ḍ_ (from proto-Semitic *_ṣ́_)  are produced with the rear part of the tongue raised toward the roof of  the mouth, giving the sounds a “darkened” effect. Likewise, in  Classical Arabic the emphatic *_ḳ_ is realized as a _q_, a _k_-like sound produced farther back, in the uvular area.
> 
> In contrast to this first, “Arabic” mode, the emphatics of the Ethiopic and Modern South Arabian groups are made with an “ejective” pronunciation. For instance, in producing an ejective _t_ the airstream is closed off simultaneously by the front of the tongue (as in the case of a nonejective _t_)  and by the vocal cords, and the release of the closure at the tongue is  accompanied by a slight burst from the air contained between the two  points. This ejective manner of articulating the emphatics is more  likely to have been the state of affairs in proto-Semitic.
> 
> In Hebrew and several varieties of Aramaic, the stop consonants—those  in which the flow of air is entirely shut off by the tongue or lips—of  the voiceless and voiced groups (that is, of _p, t, k, b, d, g_) become “weakened” in the position following a vowel, changing their pronunciation to _f, th, x, v, dh, gh_, respectively. This “positional variant” of the sound is transcribed by means of underlining (_p, t, k, b, d, g_), as in the Hebrew _kåbed_ ‘he was heavy’ and _yi-kbad_ ‘he will be heavy.’ This weakening contrasts with the corresponding emphatic stops (_ṭ, ḳ_), for which the fully closed articulation of the sound is retained.


http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked...8602/The-voiceless-voiced-and-emphatic-sounds


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## arielipi

i clearly meant the spoken hebrew, not the correct one, as do i give all my answers here with that agenda.
so yes, theres no difference between tet and tav now, nor kof and kaf
@Albert
plus, nice taking out the question coming a line after that.
When i come across tzvuim and mitnasim people, it gives me discomfort to get to know another one.
and no,arabs dont have israeli accent.


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## Albert Schlef

arielipi said:


> @Albert
> plus, nice taking out the question coming a line after that.
> When i come across tzvuim and mitnasim people



I think you understood my comment (#22) in a very wrong way: that *I* think ح speaking people are riffraff. No. I said that might be the Arabs' conclusion/observation about Israelis' attitude. (Let's not discuss whether there is, or isn't, some truth in their conclusion, as it's off-topic here.)

(As for the comment I made about your age: I'll explain that in a private email next week; I shouldn't have mentioned it here. I apologize.)


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## tFighterPilot

Albert Schlef said:


> Really? Out of curiosity: what "ethnic group" do you belong to?


3/4 German, 1/4 Dutch. In the current generation, though, it means next to nothing. There's practically no linguistic difference between someone who's grandparents are from Poland and someone who's grandparents are from Iraq.


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## Albert Schlef

tFighterPilot said:


> 3/4 German, 1/4 Dutch.



And is a person like you truly able to "speak with ח,ע,ר,ק,ט when no one's around", or was it a joke? (I'm asking our of genuine curiosity; I won't rebuke you if it was a joke.)



tFighterPilot said:


> In the current generation, though, it means next to nothing. There's practically no linguistic difference between someone who's grandparents are from Poland and someone who's grandparents are from Iraq.



I guess you're right. I'm in my thirties, my grandparents are Yemenites (my germanic nickname here is fake), and as time passes my ח and ע become less and less pronounced. I'm witnessing my ח and ע merging (they'e becoming like ה). Sometimes the ח comes out as something resembling כ). I'm exactly like a בן גליל from the Mishna!


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## tFighterPilot

Albert Schlef said:


> And is a person like you truly able to "speak with ח,ע,ר,ק,ט when no one's around", or was it a joke? (I'm asking our of genuine curiosity; I won't rebuke you if it was a joke.)


Completely serious. Sometimes I also talk with my close family that way, but not to other people. I also grown to dislike listening to singers who sing without ח and ע. It leaves me with much fewer options...





> I guess you're right. I'm in my thirties, my grandparents are Yemenites (my germanic nickname here is fake), and as time passes my ח and ע become less and less pronounced. I'm witnessing my ח and ע merging (they'e becoming like ה). Sometimes the ח comes out as something resembling כ). I'm exactly like a בן גליל from the Mishna!


That is something I did notice among young Yemenites. It's quite unfortunate really. BTW, I never thought you're anything but a Yemenite.


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## rayloom

arbelyoni said:


> Yes, מציצה is unique to Jerusalem (highly stigmatized, though). This site lists more Jerusalemite slang words.



It's also what's used in Arabic for a lollipop. May I ask why it's stigmatized?



berndf said:


> This discussion makes me wonder, if we actually know how emphatics were pronounced in classical (Biblical of Mishnaic) Hebrew or in other NW-Semitic languages, for that matter? We just assume it would be through velarization/pharyngealization as in Arabic. Some researchers doubt that. This realization in Yeminite Hebrew and modern Aramaic may well be due to many centuries of dominance of Arabic in the region. Arabic is unique among Semitic languages in having developed voiced emphatics, not even other Arabian language ever had that. Many scholars believe that the original Semitic emphatics were ejective as they still are in S-Semitic languages. This makes voiced emphatics practically impossible.



Actually when it comes to modern South Arabian, they pronounce emphatics pretty much like in Arabic. That could be also attributed to the dominance of Arabic in the region.
You can find many videos of Modern South Arabian languages in Youtube, you'll have to search in Arabic though. Apparently Saudi and Yemeni channels find it amusing that there are (ethnic) Arabians who don't speak Arabic!
One of these videos is (not surprisingly) called سعوديون لا يتكلمون اللغة العربية (Saudi's that don't speak Arabic), which is a report on the Mehri tribes in Saudi (population in Saudi around 20,000 according to the report). The report wrongfully says that Mehri descends from Himyaritic (an Old South Arabian language), which is contrary to modern linguistic views, however Himyaritic is used for anything related to Ancient Yemen, just like Pharaoic is used (in Arabic) for anything related to Ancient Egypt. 
The only peculiar feature in the video, was the guy's pronunciation of the ص צ in the Arabic word _maṣdar_ as _masdar_ (non-emphatic s). The rest of the emphatics appear to be pharyngealized.


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## origumi

rayloom said:


> It's also what's used in Arabic for a lollipop. May I ask why it's stigmatized?


In other parts of Israel metzitza would mean fellatio.


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## arielipi

m-tz-tz forms words related to sucking. Imagination Ignited! engines up! blow the torches! :ifyouknowwhatimean:


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## rayloom

origumi said:


> In other parts of Israel metzitza would mean fellatio.





arielipi said:


> m-tz-tz forms words related to sucking. Imagination Ignited! engines up! blow the torches! :ifyouknowwhatimean:



Ah I see.
Well it has the same range of meanings as English "suck" and Arabic root "mṣṣ".


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