LL-L "Phonology" 2002.10.14 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 14.OCT.2002 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Kate Gladstone <kate at global2000.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.10.13 (11) [E]

Tom - I do, indeed, want to know:

> what the word OK means and how it came about ...

Re your inquiry about:

> why Yiddish lacks the umlauts?.  And how Yiddish gets around the
> difficulties posed by this lack?

I speak (some) Yiddish, I know several fluent speakers, and to none of us
has it ever occurred that an umlaut-less language suffers "difficulties."
        (This reminds me of the time that a native speaker of Spanish asked
me how we English-speakers could possibly understand each other, what with
"a" often sounding like /e:/, "e" often sounding like /i:/, and "i" often
sounding like /a:i/ .)

> 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".

In fact, Yiddish carries this form of umlauting further than Standard German
does ... the word "tog" (= 'day') forms its plural as 'teg', and the word
"hunt" (= 'dog') forms its plural as "hint":
         somewhat as if a variety of German existed somewhere which formed
these words as "Tag/Täg - Hund/Hünd". (Does such a variety of German exist?)

Conversely, some Yiddish words lack umlauting where Standard German would
have it: e.g., where Standard German has "schlafen/er schläft", Yiddish (at
least in the central Polish variety I heard sometimes as a child) has what
Standard German orthography would transcribe as "schlufen/er schluft".

> I don't know if yiddish didn't carry the typical
> German kind of "ue" and "oe" umlaut sounds,

Yiddish, indeed, does not have these sounds:

if we used Standard German orthography to spell the sounds of the Yiddish
equivalent of "ich höre" ('I hear'), the Yiddish version would look like
"ich
here" ...

(by the way, in reading the above example please also note that Yiddish
(unlike
Standard German) pronounces the final consonant of "ich" with the
consonant-sound
that in Standard German does not occur in "ich" but does occur in "ach".
(This
probably has less to do with the fact that Hebrew - or German - spelling
treats
these sounds as identical than it has to do with the fact that Yiddish split
off from Standard German before the "ich"-sound became established as an
allophone
of the "ach"-sound.

> 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_.

There also exists a "soft n", generally transcribed as "ny" and spelled in
Yiddish with the equivalent Hebrew letters - e.g., in the (probably
originally-Slavic)
  Yiddish word "paskudnyak," meaning "scoundrel".

Yours for better letters,
Kate Gladstone - Handwriting Repair
kate at global2000.net
http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair
325 South Manning Boulevard
Albany, New York 12208-1731 USA
telephone 518/482-6763

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

Although Yiddish has no official place at Lowlands-L, what Kate and I have
been mentioning here (i.e., palatalized /l/ and /n/ in this case) is a good
example of foreign phoneme adoption.  As I see it, when contact with another
language is casual (and few speakers learn it), foreign sounds tend to be
converted to native phonemes or phoneme sequences (e.g., French _restaurant_
> English "résteront", written <restaurant>), but when knowledge of the
foreign language becomes common (as in the case of Russian proficiency among
Yiddish speakers in much of what used to the Soviet Union), or foreign
pronunciation becomes fashionable/prestigeous, then, if this prevails for
long enough and there are many such loan words, the foreign phoneme may
become internalized, i.e., added to the native phoneme inventory.

How about thinking about such examples in the Lowlands languages?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

P.S.: Folks, please keep subject lines apart.  The subject of "O.K." should
be posted separately under "Etymology."  Sorry to sound so bureaucratic.

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From: Daniel Prohaska (daniel at ryan-prohaska.com)
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.10.13 (08) [E]

Kate writes:

< 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. >

Dear Kate,

Just a minor clarifications. If my interpretation of your terminology is
correct you refer to the umlaut-sounds as the /Ö/ and /ö:/ in <Klöppel>
and <König>, and the /Ü/ and /ü:/ in <küssen> and <Füße>. I would call
them "front rounded vowels", as /o/,/e/ and /i/ are also sound that
partially arose by way of umlaut. In German they are mostly the result
of various umlaut-processes during the Middle ages. They are not,
however the sole source of <ü> and <ö>. I´m sure Ron can supply you with
examples of <ö> and <ü> in German from processes of later rounding etc.
(I can`t think of one now).

Umlaut is the process by which a root-vowel with primary stress has been
influenced by the quality of the vowel in the following unstressed
syllable. In both High and Low German these processes were so common,
that they were grammaticalised once the unstressed following vowel had
lost its quality and had become "schwa", the neutral central vowel.
Thereafter the i-Umlaut became a grammatical marker, i.e for plurals or
subjunctives. Ther are other umlaut processes but the i-umlaut, the
a-umlaut for example, which changed a /u/ in the stressed syllable to
/o/ in case /a/ was found in the following syllable. Tjis is how the
short /O/ phoneme came to exist in the Germanic languages. I will
exemplify both umlauts with an example:

I will use the reconstructed Germanic word *gultha-z = "gold"

a-umlaut:   early change from *gultha-z > *goltha- in West
Germanic giving: <gold> in Ger., Eng., etc.

the same root had also an adjectice ending in -ín-

i-umlaut: Old High Germ. <guldín> > H./L. Germ. <gülden>,
Old Engl. <gylden> > Engl. <gilded>

(This is a rough generalisation, the umlaut processes can be quite
complex, with primary and seconady umlaut, changes throughout the
different evolutionary stages of the languages etc., but they would go
too far here).

< In any case, don't other related languages exist (other
varieties/close >
< relatives>
< of German) that also lack umlaut-sounds>

Oll surviving Germanic languages had umlauts originally. It is one of
the characteristic features of the modern Germanic languages (the
exception being the extinct Eastern Germanic dialects like Gothic). Many
umlaut processes have been neutralised in the Frankish, (to some extent
the East Frisian) and English/Scots dialects, especially concerning
i-umlaut. German (both High and Low) generalised i-umlaut as one of its
many plural markers, and is an important part of its morpho-phonology.

The front rounded vowels /ü/ and /ö/ that you are referring to, have
been derounded in many Germanic dialects, including English/Scots, North
Frisian. In fact very many German dialects have derounded front vowels:
Most of the central, eastern and upper German dialects (though not in
High and Highest Allemannic). Most of central and eastern Austria has
developed "new" front rounded vowels from the vocalising of following
/l/, i.e. Viennese /gÖ:t/ HGerm. "Geld" = money. North Frsian and Scots
also have "new" front rounded vowels,  which did not arise through
umlaut.

Oh my god! I`ve been blabbering!

Yours Dan

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