LL-L "Phonology" 2002.10.16 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 16.OCT.2002 (05) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Thomas Byro <thbyro at earthlink.net>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2002.10.14 (05) [E]

I don't know enough Yiddish to know how the language gets around the lack of
umlauts.  I recently read an article about the revival of Yiddish in the
states, not only as a spoken and written language but as a language of the
stage.  Yiddish once had a vibrant presence on the stage in New York.  The
article referred to the stage as Die Biehne.  This would be the same as the
Hochdeutsch name for the insect that produces honey.  I don't know how the
two are distinguished in Yiddish.

An article I read on the web suggested that Yiddish shares elements of
pronounciation found only in dialects in eastern Bayern and suggests that
this area is where most European Jews originated.  I would disagree with
this notion because it is allmost certain that Jews lived in Rhineland
cities such as Colonnia Aggripina during the Roman empire and probably
traded with the German tribes across the Rhine.This would have been before
Yiddish developed as a language. Has anyone ever searched for Jewish
artifacts in the later trading centers such as Hedeby, Birka, Hamburg, etc?
What language would such people have spoken?

Tom

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

But, Tom, Yiddish *does* have umlauting; e.g., (*_houz_ >) _hojz_ 'house'
(cf. German _Haus_, LS _Huus_) vs (*_häüzer_ >)_hajzer_ 'houses' (cf. German
_Häuser_, LS _Hüüs'_), _vort_ 'word' (cf. German _Wort_, LS _Woord_) vs
(*_vörter_ >) _verter_ 'words' (cf. German _Wörter_, LS _Wöör(d')_).  Like
most Germanic varieties of Eastern Europe, Yiddish changed the front rounded
vowels (ö and ü) into unrounded ones (e and i).

Just because a language does not use a pair of dots above the symbol for an
umlauted vowel does not mean that it does not have the phonological process
of umlauting.  So there is a difference between the phonological rule of
umlauting and the orthographic way in which it is represented
orthographically.  The same goes for English.  It started off with umlauting
(e.g., _man_ > _men_, _mouse_ > _mice_) but later (after French influx?)
stopped it.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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