segol/tsere in Yiddish and Jewish English

[Sarah Benor]

A colleague asks this question:

"Native modern orthodox Torontonians have a very markedly distinct
pronunciation of 'sheva brachos' as 'shave-a brachos.' Is this the
same thing as the popular pronunciation of "Pesach" as "Pay-sakh,"
which my sources tell me is that hungarian/galitzianer segol
stretching into a tzerei, and then migrating right into popular
american Jewish English? Or might there be something else going on?"

My initial thought is that it began as a recent hypercorrection in
North America from someone who wanted to sound more Ashkenazic. It's
not listed in Beider's (2015: 317-318) list of segol words pronounced
as tsere (including peysekh, kheyder, tsedeykes). But I'm wondering if
anyone has evidence of this pronunciation (sheyve) in Europe or
elsewhere.

Thanks,
Sarah Benor

[Andrey Rozenberg]

Dear Sarah,

there are two relatively independent phenomena concerning realization of historical segol and tsere in Yiddish:
1. southern dialects of Eastern Yiddish (poylish/galitzianer) have three distinct stressed phonemes for originally unstressed segol and close-syllable tsere /e/, originally stressed segol /ey/ and open-syllable tsere /ay/. Their (originally stressed) segol didn't merge with tsere: it was diphthongized to /ey/ in these dialects, while tsere shifted to /ay/. In the North-Eastern dialects (litvish) the historical segol (and close-syllable tsere) remained monophthong (the two segol-phonemes in fact merged in classical litvish), while tsere remained /ey/.
2. there is a group of historical segolates for which the rules in 1. don't apply (the ones listed in Sasha Beider's recent book, "nonconformist segolates" of Dovid Katz) - those in which segol corresponds to ay in the South and ey in the North (ca. 25% of segolates with historical segol), and those in which tsere corresponds to ey/e (I think, there are only two such words).

Phonetics (of stressed vowels) of Ashkenazic Hebrew is in theory simpler: segol is always /ey/ in the South, /e/ in the North, tsere is /ay/ in the South, /ey/ in the North. These rules also contaminated a small subgroup of Yiddish segolates causing variation in their pronunciation ("wavering segolates" of Prof. Katz, there are, I believe, about four of them).

In this light, sheyve in "sheyve brachos" resembles the expected reflect of (originally stressed) segol, both in Southern Ashkenazic Hebrew and Southern Yiddish. Since the phrase is strictly speaking not Yiddish, we should not expect it to be a nonconformist segolate from the North. Moreover, שבע (a different word but the same historical shape), as part of the names בת שֶבַע and אלישֶבַע is pronounced as /sheyve/ in the South and /sheve/ in the North (see Sasha's Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given names or Weinreichs "שרייב אָן גרייזן"). So, if it were sheyve bruchos, it would have been a perfect match to hungarian/galitzianer pronunciation, but "brachos" is clearly a mishmash, so one might suspect other factors at play with sheyve as well (i.e. desire to sound more 'Ashkenazic' as you suggest).

Best regards,
Andrey

-- 
Andrey Rozenberg

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Faculty of Biology
Haifa 3200003, Israel

[Andrey Rozenberg]

Sorry, here is LTR version:

Dear Sarah,

there are two relatively independent phenomena concerning realization of historical segol and tsere in Yiddish:
1. southern dialects of Eastern Yiddish (poylish/galitzianer) have three distinct stressed phonemes for originally unstressed segol and close-syllable tsere /e/, originally stressed segol /ey/ and open-syllable tsere /ay/. Their (originally stressed) segol didn't merge with tsere: it was diphthongized to /ey/ in these dialects, while tsere shifted to /ay/. In the North-Eastern dialects (litvish) the historical segol (and close-syllable tsere) remained monophthong (the two segol-phonemes in fact merged in classical litvish), while tsere remained /ey/.
2. there is a group of historical segolates for which the rules in 1. don't apply (the ones listed in Sasha Beider's recent book, "nonconformist segolates" of Dovid Katz) - those in which segol corresponds to ay in the South and ey in the North (ca. 25% of segolates with historical segol), and those in which tsere corresponds to ey/e (I think, there are only two such words).

Phonetics (of stressed vowels) of Ashkenazic Hebrew is in theory simpler: segol is always /ey/ in the South, /e/ in the North, tsere is /ay/ in the South, /ey/ in the North. These rules also contaminated a small subgroup of Yiddish segolates causing variation in their pronunciation ("wavering segolates" of Prof. Katz, there are, I believe, about four of them).

In this light, sheyve in "sheyve brachos" resembles the expected reflect of (originally stressed) segol, both in Southern Ashkenazic Hebrew and Southern Yiddish. Since the phrase is strictly speaking not Yiddish, we should not expect it to be a nonconformist segolate from the North. Moreover, שבע (a different word but the same historical shape), as part of the names בת שֶבַע and אלישֶבַע is pronounced as /sheyve/ in the South and /sheve/ in the North (see Sasha's Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given names or Weinreichs "שרייב אָן גרייזן"). So, if it were sheyve bruchos, it would have been a perfect match to hungarian/galitzianer pronunciation, but "brachos" is clearly a mishmash, so one might suspect other factors at play with sheyve as well (i.e. desire to sound more 'Ashkenazic' as you suggest).

Best regards,
Andrey

On 07/01/2018 05:37 PM, Sarah Benor wrote:

[Andrey Rozenberg]

LTR is left-to-right: my previous e-mail automatically got incorrect text direction.

On 07/03/2018 02:51 AM, Dan Nussbaum wrote:

For what does LTR stand?

Daniel Nussbaum II, M.D., FAAP
Retired Developmental Pediatrician
Rochester, New York

Tone can be misinterpreted in email. Please read my words with warmth, kindness, and good intentions.

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