Judaize

[Wilson Gray]

I think that y'all both need a little Snow on y'all's roofs. Surely, I
can't be the only participant old enough to recall when the stem was
normally spelled _Judae-_ and the semi-learned, such as your humble
correspondent, used the pronunciation, [dZudeIzm], while wondering why
the learned, among them the few Jews of his acquaintance, preferred
the pronunciation, [dZudiIzm]?

I didn't give up that pronunciation, "JEW-day-ism," until I noticed,
ca.1974, that a friend of mine, whose parents spoke "Iddish" aas they
say in Russian and some other languages, at home and were from
Nizhnii-Novgorod - for some reason, I was never able to persuade her
that that town was, at the time, the Soviet city called "Gorkii" -
always said "JUDY-ism."

IAC, I eventually concluded that she, a speaker of ordinary, standard
AmE with no local, regional, or ethnic accent that I could discern,
surely must know the pronunciation of the name of her own religion
better than I. OTOH, IIRC, it was about this same time that I noticed
that the spelling had shifted from "Judaeism" to "Judaism."

FWIW, at Harvard, in my days at Widener Library, the staff, whether
Jewish or not, used the spelling, "Judaeica (Division)" - and probably
still do, Harvard not likely to spend any money on anything as trivial
as retagging tens of thousands of books and changing hundreds of
thousands of records to match that retagging, especially since the
endowment is on the verge of bankruptcy :-) - and the pronunciation,
"Jew-DAY-icka."

-Wilson

-Wilson

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at wayne.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Judaize
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm surprised nobody else has responded to this, but the origin of the /i/ (tense high front vowel) pronunciation seems to me to be at least in part by analogy with 'Judaism', which I, and many others pronounce
> [dZudiIzm], especially, as Mark notes, when the relevant syllable is unstressed.
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
> Faculty Liaison, C&IT
> and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
> +1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
> +1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)
>
> ----- "Mark Mandel" <Mark.A.Mandel at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>> From: "Mark Mandel" <Mark.A.Mandel at GMAIL.COM>
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Sent: Monday, November 9, 2009 2:36:00 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
>> Subject: Re: Judaize
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Mark Mandel <Mark.A.Mandel at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Judaize
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 8:44 AM, David Barnhart
>> <dbarnhart at highlands.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > I was struck very early this morning with the seeming contrast
>> between the
>> > spelling of Judaize and the pronunciation /-i:-/ variant.
>>
>> That is,  /'dZu:.di.aIz/, yes? MW Online uses e with macron for the
>> 2nd
>> vowel, but in this context its quantity has to be short.
>>
>> > The variant is recognized by MW3 and NOAD and AHD and RHU.   Other
>> variants
>> > are schwa and /-ei-/.   WBD has only /-i:-/.   ACD has only /-i-/,
>> probably
>> > corresponding to schwa.  OED has only /-ei-/.
>> >
>> > My question is this: where did the /-i:-/ variant come from?
>>
>> /eI/ -> /i/ seems like a normal qualitative reduction under
>> destressing, vs.
>> only /ei/ when stressed in "Judaic". MW and OED have the same sets of
>> vowels
>> in "Judaism".
>>
>> m a m
>>
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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