LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.10.13 (11) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 13.OCT.2002 (11) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
 L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic
               V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Thomas Byro <thbyro at earthlink.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.10.13 (10) [E]

OK.  My assumption had been that the lack of umlauts was restrictions
imposed on Yiddish by the Hebrew alphabet.  I didn't realize that ways had
been found around this difficulty.  Now I am back to square one, wondering
why Yiddish lacks the umlauts?.  And how Yiddish gets around the
difficulties posed by this lack?  But I am straying far from the subject
matter of this discussion forum.

As an aside, does anyone want to know what the word OK means and how it came
about?  I noticed my cousin Horst using it while speaking German, and his
native language is Plattdeutsch.

Tom

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From: Stan Levinson <stlev99 at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.10.13 (10) [E]

Folks,
Of course Yiddish has "umlauts", it just doesn't
realize them as "ue" (I'll avoid diacriticals in case
it doesn't read right on all browsers) or "oe".  The
plural of "buch" in yiddish is "bicher".
I don't know if yiddish didn't carry the typical
German kind of "ue" and "oe" umlaut sounds, but it may
also have been affected in Eastern Europe by the lack
of those sounds in the contact languages viz. Polish,
Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian (I don't know ANYTHING
about Lithuanian)?  No?
Stan

> From: Kate Gladstone <kate at global2000.net>
> Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.10.13 (08)
> [E]
>
> Thomas writes:
>
> > [because] Yiddish was written in the Hebrew
> alphabet.  This
> > means that the umlaut sounds had to be dropped
> because no Hebrew symbol
> for
> > these sounds exists.
>...> In any case, don't other related languages exist
> (other varieties/close
> relatives
> of German) that also lack umlaut-sounds ... yet that
> use the Roman alphabet
> and have never used any other? If so, then tracing
> the lack of umlauts in
> one of these languages to Hebrew spelling (an
> explanation that cannot apply
> to the others) seems (to me) rather implausible and
> unconvincing.

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Kate:

> Yet Yiddish has other sounds for which no Hebrew letter exists

I forgot to mention the "soft l" (a palatalized version, vs. a "thick" one,
a contrast like in Russian and Gaelic) that some Eastern Yiddish dialects
have acquired due to Slavonic (probably Russian) influence.  Uriel Weinreich
kindly distinguishes it by means of an apostrophe after the _lamed_.

As Stan pointed out above, Yiddish does have umlauting like all (?) Germanic
languages, but, as in English, the front rounded vowels have become
unrounded: /ü/ > /i/, /ö/ > /e/.  (I will add an example of the latter to
Stans example above: _loch_ 'hole' > (*_löcher_ >) _lecher_ 'holes' (with
the _ch_ *always* "back" as in Dutch, never as in German _ich_ and
_Löcher_).  In most dialects (with the exception of "Litvak," i.e.,
Lithuanian East Yiddish) the /ü/ > /i/ shift has become further obscured
because /u/ has come to be pronounced as [i]; e.g., (_buch_ >) _bich_ 'book'
> (*_bücher_ >) _bicher_ 'books', but this does not affect the spelling.
Old West Yiddish (at least) seems to have had /ü/.

Now, as an enthusiast of Jewish languages, especially of Yiddish (from which
I have translated into Lowlands Saxon [Low Saxon]), I would love to go on
about this, but wearing my hat as the moderator of Lowlands-L I have to say
_genug shoyn mit yidish_ ("enough already with Yiddish"), since the language
does not qualify as a Lowlandic one.

Well, perhaps Tom will lead the way to a Lowlands-specific Jewish variety.
However, frankly, I am pessimistic.  Northern Germany and the Netherlands
tend to be included in the area of (now extinct) West Yiddish, but West
Yiddish was imported to that region from the south, primarily in the 17th
century, and it therefore seems to be German-based rather than Saxon-based.
Having said all this, I'd just love to be proven wrong in this instance.

Cheers!
Reinhard/Ron

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