reversal of merger (Yiddish)

[Alan R. King]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I (Alan King) wrote:

>>In "Polish" Yiddish
>>there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in
>>the other varieties ["Ukrainian", "Lithuanian"], in which final voiced and
>>voiceless consonants contrast.

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal replied:

>It is interesting to note that standard Ukrainian (as opposed to
>Polish, Russian and Bielorussian) also maintains the voiced-voiceless
>ditinction word-finally.  Whether in Ukrainian this is an archaism or
>an innovation is hard to say (the spelling is obviously influenced by
>Russian, and there aren't that many undeclinable words in Slavic to
>begin with), but my guess would be that's it's a retention.  I don't
>know about Lithuanian, but Latvian also does not devoice final voiced
>consonants.

This is not to belittle Miguel's welcome observations, just to put them
into full perspective.  The traditional, popular dialect division names
"Polish", "Lithuanian" and "Ukrainian" only reflect very partially indeed
the full territorial reality of Yiddish in its original habitat.  Each
dialect was spoken across various national and linguistic borders (the
former have constantly varied anyway!) and together they cover the whole
area between Riga and Bucharest, Warsaw and Odessa.  By no means all parts
of "Ukrainian" Yiddish had contact with Ukrainian as a coterritorial
language, nor of "Lithuanian" Yiddish with Lithuanian.  Hence my scare
quotes throughout, though it didn't point this out explicitly.  Thus the
question of contact or areal relations between Yiddish and the various
non-Jewish East European languages is a pretty complex one.  But yes, of
course such comparisons are relevant, potentially highly so.  In many ways
across the lexicon and syntax, Slavic etc. influence on Eastern Yiddish is
in evidence, providing yet another source of differentiation between
Yiddish and German, even though Yiddish retains a majority of basic
Germanic characteristics at all levels, of course.