-stein names: -stine, or -steen?

[FRITZ JUENGLING]

This interchange has mystified me for years.  (BTW, Rodgers and Hammer__?  I've heard both pronunciations).
The German word for 'stone' was not 'stin' (I think you want a long vowel), but 'stein', most likely pronounced something like English 'stain.'  Maybe Yiddish developed from a German dialect that smoothed the diphthong.  But the diphthong was original in Germanic. Middle High German /ei/ remains in Yiddish, but spelled <ey>, so, we should expect 'shtine.' I don't know much about the history of Yiddish and nothing about its dialects, but I'd be curious to know whether '-steen' is found in European Yiddish or only American Yiddish.  Maybe '-steen' is some sort of American development, based on spelling pronunciation.  I think I may have come across mispronunciations of German names before.
Fritz Juengling


>>> mspahn at LOCALNET.COM 01/10/06 08:35PM >>>
It has been explained to me (correct me if this understanding is wrong)
that both the Yiddish and the German word for "stone" was
originally "stin", but that in German there was a vowel shift
to the "stine" pronunciation, while the Yiddish pronunciation
remained "steen".  That is why a name like Bernstein is
pronounced sometimes German-style as "Bern-stine"
and sometimes Yiddish-style as "Bern-steen".

In any case, "Ram-steen" is an unambiguously wrong pronunciation
for the purely German word "Ramstein".  The TV cop show
'Law and Order' is set and filmed in New York City, which
has a high Jewish population.  My guess is that the actress who was
called upon to pronounce the word "Ramstein" pronouced it
following the pattern of Jewish surnames spelled "-stein" but
pronounced "-steen".

-- Mark Spahn  (West Seneca, NY)