/ay/

[Mike Salovesh]

Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:
>
> "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> writes:
>
> >>>>>
> >Same syllable is difficult.
>
> RH gives /'taig l at x/ or so for "taiglach"/"teiglach".
> <<<<<
>
> My grandmother and my mother-in-law always used /ey/, ['tejglax] or maybe
> ['tejgl at x]. Is RH reliable here, or did someone read transliterated Yiddish
> as if it were German?
>
> -- Mark

RH is half-reliable. Both variants exist in 20th/21st century Yiddish.

The two pronunciations reflect  a dialect difference that Yiddish speakers often
attribute to the difference between Lithuanian and Russian Jews.  The contrast
between /ey/ and /ay/ serves as a modern equivalent of the Biblical
"shibboleth". (So do several ways of alternating /s/ and /S/ [read "sh"] in the
Yiddish word for Sabbath.  I've heard that called the difference between
shabbashdiche people, shabbasdiche people, and sabbasdiche people.)

I only knew three of my grandparents; my father's father died years before I was
born.  In the limited case of taiglach/teiglach, those three grandparents had
four different pronunciations. I had to learn to be very careful which I asked
for in whose presence.

-- mike salovesh   <salovesh at niu.edu>   PEACE !!!

        IN MEMORIAM:     Peggy Salovesh
        25 January 1932 -- 3 March 2001