Talk:Yiddish phonology

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Linguistics: Phonetics

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vowels

The I and U vowels presented here are not what is taught for standard yiddish (this has I as in english "bit" klal yiddish is like spanish "i" close to "ee" in beat. Simmilar situation with U

Oah vey???

Does Klein really transcribe oy as /ɔə/? That seems quite, um, idiosyncratic. —An gr 21:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, (s)he transcribes it as /ɔɜ/. Not much of an improvement, is it? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:25, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not a great picture, but I think it's a she. Can we use a different source that says what people expect to see? —An gr 21:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Firespeaker and I have been discussing this page a bit on my talk page. If you've got a better source, please bring it to the table. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't know what you consider a better source, but I certainly have other sources, though not by phoneticians. Uriel Weinreich in both Modern English-Yiddish, Yiddish-English Dictionary and College Yiddish says simply that ױ is "shorter than oy in boy". Birnbaum in Grammatik der Jiddischen Sprache describes ױ as "Kurzes ungespanntes o und kurzes gespanntes i, ungefähr wie eu in ‚Eule‘" ["short lax o and short tense i, approximately like eu in 'Eule'"], suggesting [ɔi]. W. B. Lockwood in Lehrbuch der modernen jiddischen Sprache says "wie deutsches eu" ["like German eu"]. So that's at least one native Yiddish speakers (Birnbaum) saying in print that the ױ diphthong ends in a high front vowel, and another (Weinreich) strongly implying it. —An gr 22:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Birnbaum's native language was German, I believe. He learned Yiddish as an adult. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.186.215.227 (talk) 01:53, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More Than One Yiddish

There are two Yiddishes North and South.

For example Northern Yiddish spoken in Lithuania would say - Du bist ayn klayner bruter. Whereas a Southern Yiddish speaker in Poland would say - Dee bist ein kleiner breeter. It relates to the Hebrew phonology as well.--Saxophonemn (talk) 04:34, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That looks almost entirely like phonological differences (or at least, the differences seem to be the result of different phonological changes). — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:33, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A question about the high-front vowel(s) of Yiddish

High there, most sources describe the Yiddish vowel system as containing only one high-front vowel phoneme (spelt with 'yud'). However, in her book "Phonetik des Jiddischen" (2008), Ane Kleine shows that instances of this allegedly one and the same phoneme cluster around two distinct acoustic centers, one clearly front and the other slightly more retracted. Kleine's book is in German, so it is hard for me to follow, but if I understand her correctly, she herself is puzzled by this contrast. I am an Israeli phonetician, and I used to hear Yiddish a lot as a child, but far less frequently when I grew older (my mother is a native speaker and she used it with her parents until they died, her own accent was heavily influenced by Hebrew, so she is not a reliable phonetic source). I do remember, as part of the Yiddish I did hear (or better, 'overhear'), some sort of 'retracted [i]', actually not too far from 'barred i' (high central vowel), along side a rather front [i]. For example, the word 'shpatsiren' (to travel) has the front [i] in its stressed syllable, while the word 'tsimer' (room) has the retracted [i] in its stressed syllable. Now, I have absolutely no idea whether the partition is allophonic and conditioned by environment, or phonemic, and if it is phonemic, to what extent it relates to the tense-lax contrast in German. Also, if it is phonemic, I wonder to what extent this is related to the vowel system of Polish (a 6-vowel system that has precisely this additional contrast, between the vowels spelt 'i' and 'y'). I should say that, since my family is Polish from all sides, most of the Yiddish I heard was Polish Yiddish, and all of the elderly Yiddish speakers I knew were Polish/Yiddish bilinguals. If anyone knows more about this issue and can contribute either in the conversation or as part of the entry text, I would be grateful. Roy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.36.107 (talk) 19:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Roy, sorry to be answering 7 years later. The distinction you refer to is a phonemic one, present among most speakers of the Polish and Ukrainian dialects of Yiddish, but not the Lithuanian one. This was due to a merger in the Lithuanian dialect, in fact a total loss of length distinctions in that dialect, which is essentially the basis for the YIVO standard of Yiddish. The distinction corresponds closely to a one in the source German dialects of Yiddish, and there is moreover great parallelism between Yiddish and modern German in the distribution of these vowels. I am not in a position to rule out Slavic influence in their manner of realization, but I would note that in Slavic loanwords their distribution does not follow that of i and y in Polish, both of which most often correspond to a short, retracted i in Yiddish.

To hear samples of different authentic Yiddish dialects, classified by location, go to eydes.de. Outside of the larger cities, there was less bilingualism in Polish/Russian and correspondingly less Slavic influence in phonology.

I haven't seen Kleine's book, but I believe the version of Standard Yiddish she studied is that spoken by younger people who learned Yiddish in day schools in Argentina. Many such students will have been taught Lithuanian Yiddish in school but may have heard Polish or Ukrainian Yiddish at home or in the community. So she may be observing the effect of a substratum dialect or of cross-dialect interference in bidialectal individuals, or the adoption by some of a non-Lithuanian feature in a speech community which adheres to Lithuanian Yiddish in most respects. 24.50.191.229 (talk) 06:04, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Velar Fricative?

Under Velar/Uvular, for Fricative, the table has χ, not x. But Yiddish is represented in both those articles. Voiceless uvular fricative has בוך [bʊχ]. But Voiceless velar fricative has איך [ix]. Which is correct? If both, that should be expanded upon in this article.

Phonetic realization of l

Under "Consonants" it says "The /l – ʎ/ contrast has collapsed in some speakers." So what was the contrast originally? I would guess that /l/ is used initially and /ʎ/ elsewhere? Or does it depend on the preceding or following sound? --Nu komms du (talk) 18:31, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Found the answer in Kleine where she quotes Katz: "Many older speakers born in Eastern Europe still distinguish a ‘hard’ froem a ‘soft’ palatalized ל. The distinction, common in the Slavonic environment, is rapidly losing ground in modern spoken Yiddish. ‘Soft l’ is heard most often before י".

Kleine, Ane (2008): Phonetik des Jiddischen. Hamburg. P. 178.

Katz, Dovid (1987): Grammar of the Yiddish Language. London. P. 31.Nu komms du (talk) 15:21, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Does Litvish Yiddish raise /ɛ/ to [e] before e.g. /nʲ/ like Russian?

This may be a stupid question, but does Litvish Yiddish raise /ɛ/ to [e] before e.g. /nʲ/ like Russian? Squee3 (talk) 01:40, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Four types of affricates

I am a bit confused about the four types of affricates. Kleine's descricption is not really helpful here (as in the case [ɣ], which I could only sort out with the help of Katz's book). The table in Kleine's article only has sibilants, and just three sets /s, sʲ, ʃ/. The palatalized postalveolars [t͡ʃʲ d͡ʒʲ] are mentioned along with three other types in the "Affricates"-section, but the [ʃʲ ʒʲ]-part of these affricates comes out of the blue, without any match in the tabulated inventory. So I wonder, what's the exact nature and status of these four affricates? Since palatalized consonants in Yiddish have entered via Slavic loanwords, it's a bit surprising to see that Yiddish has more affricate sets than Slavic languages (like Polish/Belorusian/Ukrainian with three full sets). Katz only has [t͡s] (plus voiced variant [d͡z] due to regressive assimliation), but that's maybe a spelling-oriented interpretation, since only tsade has the "perfect one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound" which Katz claims for Yiddish (Katz 1987:2). Unfortunately, I don't have access to Jacobs (2005), which might have more info about. Can anyone knowledgeable help? –Austronesier (talk) 12:38, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]