origin of dese dem dose in NYCE

[Victor Steinbok]

It would be too strong a claim to say that no Polish Gentiles immigrated
to NYC, but far greater numbers of them went to other places, especially
compared to Polish Jews.

Yiddish has dialects, just like any other language. To some extent,
these are influenced by the local languages which many Yiddish speakers
used regularly. I've witnessed a number of disagreements on Yiddish
pronunciation between people whose families came from Poland/Lithuania
and Russia/Ukraine or from German-speaking territories, although most of
those concerned vowels, not consonants. My grandparents' families came
from different regions (more North/South than East/West) and they could
understand each other perfectly, but my early childhood recollections
are that they sounded somewhat different when they spoke Yiddish. The
differences aren't quite as drastic as between Ashkenaz, Sephard and
Yemenite Hebrew, but why would one assume no geographic variation or no
second-language influence? It's much harder to tell today, with native
Yiddish centers being NYC and Israel, rather than Vienna, Lwow and
Odessa. But does it mean that those differences never existed? There are
plenty of dialects in England over a smaller territory. So why not Yiddish?

     VS-)

On 2/11/2012 7:38 PM, Dan Nussbaum wrote:
> Do you mean no Polish Gentiles immigrated to New York City?
>
>
> Also, since Yiddish was the first language of most Eastern European Jews, why would the language of their neighbors influence their pronunciation of any language other than those neighbors.
>
>
> Dan Nussbaum

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