In elementary school I too was convinced that “infrared” was the past tense of the verb “to infrare”, which was something that physicists did to light! Also, you have achieved a new height of delightfulness in this video. Bravo, and chag sameach!
I have English as a foreign language here and i definitely have made that mistake. Of course I'd complain that English spelling is rubbish at having too many letters he(a)re, and not enough the(y')re. But being French, I have no right to.
If you do the NYC video, don't forget the dental coronals. Everyone forgets the dentals and our wonderful affrications. It's not only about the vowels.
3:21 Do you know anything about the history of this particular sound change? I know that sound changes in Yiddish seem to have influenced Ashkenazi pronunciations of Hebrew (e.g, Bet -> Bes following the 2nd Germanic Sound Shift), that German orthographically has "eu" spelled /oi/ (which I suspect but don't know reflects a sound change in medieval German), that Yiddish generally has /oi/ in corresponding words, and also in at least some words where German has /au/, and that o often diphthongizes to schwa+u (as in some English dialects). This suggests o -> schwa+u -> oi in Yiddish (with the second step being part of the broader eu, au -> oi change), with Hebrew pronunciation following the Yiddish. Does that actually match sound changes documented in the literature? Also, do you know the mechanism of the change? Metathesis is the obvious explanation for eu -> oi specifically (via ue, perhaps?), but schwa and a don't seem particularly likely to turn into /i/ after the metathesis for the more general case.
I'm afraid I can't shed much light on the mechanism, but I'm curious if you can give some examples of german «eu» /oi/ being yiddish /oi/. As far as I'm aware, yiddish /oi/ seems to correspond to german «au», with german «eu» being yiddish /ai/, such as Deutsch being «דײַטש» /daitʃ/. (that's pretty much the only example I have, so I could well be wrong). Otherwise, yiddish /ai/ and /ei/ seem to correspond to german «ei» /ai/. Update: found a second example in german «neu» being yiddish «נײַ» /nai/.
1:39 - 1:49, O Language Jones, I don't remember pronouncing 'misled' as /ˈmɑj.zɔɬd̪/ when I first read it, but I do remember pronouncing 'infrared' as /ɪ̴nˈfɹɛɚd̪ᵗ/ when I first read it.
@@sjuns5159 It's meant to let you know I go from a voiced 'd' to an unvoiced 't' at the ends of syllables with 'd' with no vowels after them. It's kinda like what German does with words like 'schmidt' but the 'd' isn't said in German nowadays. The ɬ is used to let you know I velarize my 'L', like I recently learned Polish used to do, instead of what it now does, which is make the 'Ł' like a 'w'. Did I explain my self well enough?
About the yod and waw being used as long vowels, in some arabic texts where all vowels are annotated i see that long vowels are written as if they're a short vowel followed by the corresponding glide in the coda. For instance the long i in "kabir" is sometimes written with a kasrah on the B (so a short /bi/) as if the following ya is not a vowel but a /j/ that happens to be basically a homophone of a long /bi:/ is this how it originally developed or is it a reanalysis that happened later on? and was it the same for hebrew?
I had a funny joke about Matzoh balls and handsome Jewish men, but my straight Reform buddy is sitting here telling me to keep it to myself. He thinks Dr. Jones might not appreciate it. Damnit. Fine. Reining it in ... חג פסח שםח
Yeah, also as a Philadelphian I want a NYC video, and particularly one that talks about the relationship of the Philly white person accent I have to the New York one. I find people either treat them as the same accent, which they're not, or they go too strongly in the other direction and overstate the differences. It's cawwfee and byeahd and yuzz.
I grew up in St. Louis (well metro east), having but one year or hebrew education (in first grade) and then only until recently trying to learn Hebrew has been a little rough. I listen to a lot of shiurim on my Naki radio but often I hear multiple pronunciations of words and I am uncertain of which is correct. I daven nusach HaMizrach but I don't often hear Sephardic pronunciations its usually Ashkenazi. I listen to a lot of Yemenite tempo though...... sorry adhd I had a point. I am afraid my Hebrew pronunciation is all over the place but I am starting to think maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself because there seems to be a lot of variation. My Yiddish comes off Deutsche as I had studied German for a number of years. This has led me to not speak Yiddish other then a few words here and there peppered into my English conversations.
BTW, Biblical Hebrew, like Arabic was a six vowel system: three vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ with two varieties, short and long. This morphed into an eight vowel system as such: short /i/ and /ai/ diphthongs morphed to /e/, long /a/, short /u/ and /au/ diphthong morphed to /o/, then long /a/ that didn't morph to /o/ AND /o/ that morphed from short /u/ in closed syllables morphed to /ɔ/... In some places short /a/ morphed to /ae/, This change is unique to Tiberian Hebrew and classic Yemenite Hebrew doesn't reflect it. Finally unstressed open syllables too far from the stress (eg, the first syllable in a trisyllabic ultimate) got reduced to shcwa... This leaves us with: /i/ - chiriq, /e/ - tzere, /u/ - qibbutz/shuruq (a shuruq if there's a waw afterwards, qibbutz otherwise), /a/ - patach, /ɔ/ - qamatz, /o/ -cholam, and /ae/ segol... Sephardic and Modern Hebrew pronounce segol as tzere an qamatz as either cholam or patach depending on what it originated from...
Is that really how charcuterie is pronounced back in the states? I moved to france when I was 20 and I realized I will never be able to pronounce some of the french ones I learned here with an american accent, one of them being my married last name. My sisters have done "le-noy" and "le-nor" for Lenoir.
The "infrared" thing was definitely not just you. There are some weirder, actually ambiguous examples out there, too. The world of chemistry gives us periodic acid (which in fact is consistently an acid), as well as atoms that are unionized (but won't ever go on strike).
FYI, "kosher" is a Hebrew word, it just means something else... specifically, "fitness"... So "machón kosher" or "cheder kosher" would be the Hebrew word for a gym...
@@bdarci First, I did say they're different words. Second, no, they're spelled the same. Vowels in hebrew don't appear in spelling. And while you CAN spell it with a waw (and most probably will) you don't have to (in fact, in the dictionary it's spelled without)...
The modern Hebrew alphabet is not an immediate descendent of the phonecian alphabet, its derived from imperial aramaic which in turn comes from phonecian. There is an older hebrew script called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet immediately derived from phonecian and its descendant is used by samaritans today
I go to a Spanish church and if I were to say "matzo" in Spanish I'd say "matzá", as "la matzo" would sound funny (even if held in la mano). But usually it's called "pan sin levadura".
Messiah actually does not end with a heh, but a chet. It's pronounced "mashiACH" in Hebrew and spelled like this: מָשִׁיחַ And yes, there's a weird exception that makes the final חַ pronounced "ach" instead of "cha". Hebrew has so many odd exceptions...
3:11 Well, not "the merger", but the merger in your accent. The cot/caught merger is not universal across English accents, and it is one of the factors which make the speech of Americans so hard to understand.
Fun fact: the Dutch word "jambe" (iamb) is a trochee ([ˈjɑmbə]), while "trochee" is an iamb ([tʀɔˈχej]). I guess that still makes it easier to learn though, just remember it's the wrong way round.
When people ask me how various words from Hebrew are "really spelled," my standard answer is "in another alphabet."
And yes for a NY accent video!
I would love to learn more about NYC pronunciations. Chag Pesach Sameach
In elementary school I too was convinced that “infrared” was the past tense of the verb “to infrare”, which was something that physicists did to light! Also, you have achieved a new height of delightfulness in this video. Bravo, and chag sameach!
Definite yes for a New York accent video!!
You are the only other person I've encountered who thought there was a verb to misle.
I came to the comments to say the same! I absolutely thought "misled" was the past tense of "misle". It wasn't just me!!!
I had a teacher with the same opinion. It's not completely crazy
It was “mizzled” to me.
I have English as a foreign language here and i definitely have made that mistake. Of course I'd complain that English spelling is rubbish at having too many letters he(a)re, and not enough the(y')re. But being French, I have no right to.
I still remember being laughed at when I read "mizzled" about sixty years ago.
Me too!!!
I never had that one but I was laughed at by a girlfriend for pronouncing “gamut” like “guh MUTT”
I was never confused by “misled” or “infrared” but I thought “disheveled” was related to “upheaval” for the longest time, and I pronounced it as such
Haha, when I was a kid, I used to think they were singing "phenomena!" in that song, too.
Aww, baby linguist me ftw.
חג פסח שמח אותך!
YES! Please make a New York pronunciation video.
I'm so happy you introduced "hoigh on the boireh oilam" to the masses
"Charcuterie" I just fell even more in like with your channel. If they could even just get closer to a ū -ish sound...
If you do the NYC video, don't forget the dental coronals. Everyone forgets the dentals and our wonderful affrications. It's not only about the vowels.
Need that new york breakdown!
3:21 Do you know anything about the history of this particular sound change?
I know that sound changes in Yiddish seem to have influenced Ashkenazi pronunciations of Hebrew (e.g, Bet -> Bes following the 2nd Germanic Sound Shift), that German orthographically has "eu" spelled /oi/ (which I suspect but don't know reflects a sound change in medieval German), that Yiddish generally has /oi/ in corresponding words, and also in at least some words where German has /au/, and that o often diphthongizes to schwa+u (as in some English dialects). This suggests o -> schwa+u -> oi in Yiddish (with the second step being part of the broader eu, au -> oi change), with Hebrew pronunciation following the Yiddish. Does that actually match sound changes documented in the literature?
Also, do you know the mechanism of the change? Metathesis is the obvious explanation for eu -> oi specifically (via ue, perhaps?), but schwa and a don't seem particularly likely to turn into /i/ after the metathesis for the more general case.
I'm afraid I can't shed much light on the mechanism, but I'm curious if you can give some examples of german «eu» /oi/ being yiddish /oi/. As far as I'm aware, yiddish /oi/ seems to correspond to german «au», with german «eu» being yiddish /ai/, such as Deutsch being «דײַטש» /daitʃ/. (that's pretty much the only example I have, so I could well be wrong). Otherwise, yiddish /ai/ and /ei/ seem to correspond to german «ei» /ai/.
Update: found a second example in german «neu» being yiddish «נײַ» /nai/.
@@ryalloric1088 Interesting. My knowledge of Yiddish is fairly rudimentary, so I may have misremembered some details.
@@JonBrase Mine too.
1:39 - 1:49, O Language Jones, I don't remember pronouncing 'misled' as /ˈmɑj.zɔɬd̪/ when I first read it, but I do remember pronouncing 'infrared' as /ɪ̴nˈfɹɛɚd̪ᵗ/ when I first read it.
What does the little superscript t do? Never seen that. (I'm assuming your ɬ is supposed to be an ɫ btw)
@@sjuns5159 It's meant to let you know I go from a voiced 'd' to an unvoiced 't' at the ends of syllables with 'd' with no vowels after them. It's kinda like what German does with words like 'schmidt' but the 'd' isn't said in German nowadays. The ɬ is used to let you know I velarize my 'L', like I recently learned Polish used to do, instead of what it now does, which is make the 'Ł' like a 'w'. Did I explain my self well enough?
YES to a New York accent breakdown video!
About the yod and waw being used as long vowels, in some arabic texts where all vowels are annotated i see that long vowels are written as if they're a short vowel followed by the corresponding glide in the coda. For instance the long i in "kabir" is sometimes written with a kasrah on the B (so a short /bi/) as if the following ya is not a vowel but a /j/ that happens to be basically a homophone of a long /bi:/
is this how it originally developed or is it a reanalysis that happened later on? and was it the same for hebrew?
This was a DELIGHT--and I learned a lot! Thank you!
How is it that I'm just discovering your channel now? This is excellent content.
Chag Kasher v'Sameach (or whatever is the proper transliteration)
Hey! There's a vowel here is one of the best things I've heard in a while
I had a funny joke about Matzoh balls and handsome Jewish men, but my straight Reform buddy is sitting here telling me to keep it to myself. He thinks Dr. Jones might not appreciate it.
Damnit. Fine. Reining it in ...
חג פסח שםח
Tell the joke!
Yes to the New York accent video!
Yeah, also as a Philadelphian I want a NYC video, and particularly one that talks about the relationship of the Philly white person accent I have to the New York one. I find people either treat them as the same accent, which they're not, or they go too strongly in the other direction and overstate the differences. It's cawwfee and byeahd and yuzz.
Happy Pesach!
Amen
I grew up in St. Louis (well metro east), having but one year or hebrew education (in first grade) and then only until recently trying to learn Hebrew has been a little rough. I listen to a lot of shiurim on my Naki radio but often I hear multiple pronunciations of words and I am uncertain of which is correct. I daven nusach HaMizrach but I don't often hear Sephardic pronunciations its usually Ashkenazi. I listen to a lot of Yemenite tempo though...... sorry adhd I had a point. I am afraid my Hebrew pronunciation is all over the place but I am starting to think maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself because there seems to be a lot of variation. My Yiddish comes off Deutsche as I had studied German for a number of years. This has led me to not speak Yiddish other then a few words here and there peppered into my English conversations.
We've got to get you to Kol Tzedek.
Mine was outlier. I still want to say OUT-lee-uhr.
BTW, Biblical Hebrew, like Arabic was a six vowel system: three vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ with two varieties, short and long.
This morphed into an eight vowel system as such: short /i/ and /ai/ diphthongs morphed to /e/, long /a/, short /u/ and /au/ diphthong morphed to /o/, then long /a/ that didn't morph to /o/ AND /o/ that morphed from short /u/ in closed syllables morphed to /ɔ/...
In some places short /a/ morphed to /ae/, This change is unique to Tiberian Hebrew and classic Yemenite Hebrew doesn't reflect it.
Finally unstressed open syllables too far from the stress (eg, the first syllable in a trisyllabic ultimate) got reduced to shcwa...
This leaves us with:
/i/ - chiriq, /e/ - tzere, /u/ - qibbutz/shuruq (a shuruq if there's a waw afterwards, qibbutz otherwise), /a/ - patach, /ɔ/ - qamatz, /o/ -cholam, and /ae/ segol...
Sephardic and Modern Hebrew pronounce segol as tzere an qamatz as either cholam or patach depending on what it originated from...
Is that really how charcuterie is pronounced back in the states? I moved to france when I was 20 and I realized I will never be able to pronounce some of the french ones I learned here with an american accent, one of them being my married last name. My sisters have done "le-noy" and "le-nor" for Lenoir.
So if you spell it with a German Z and an a with no H, you can spell it “maza”, thereby making a new tradition of passover tostadas.
The "infrared" thing was definitely not just you. There are some weirder, actually ambiguous examples out there, too. The world of chemistry gives us periodic acid (which in fact is consistently an acid), as well as atoms that are unionized (but won't ever go on strike).
פסח שמח!
חג סמח
@@languagejones6784 *שמח
FYI, "kosher" is a Hebrew word, it just means something else... specifically, "fitness"...
So "machón kosher" or "cheder kosher" would be the Hebrew word for a gym...
They are different words and spelled differently in Hebrew.
@@bdarci First, I did say they're different words.
Second, no, they're spelled the same. Vowels in hebrew don't appear in spelling. And while you CAN spell it with a waw (and most probably will) you don't have to (in fact, in the dictionary it's spelled without)...
@@adrianblake8876 They are not spelled the same. They start with different letters in Hebrew.
@@bdarci What are you talking about!? They have the same tri-consonantal root...
כָּשֵׁר and כֹּשֶׁר
See, same letters only niqqud differs...
@@adrianblake8876 you are absolutely right. I don’t what I was thinking.
The modern Hebrew alphabet is not an immediate descendent of the phonecian alphabet, its derived from imperial aramaic which in turn comes from phonecian. There is an older hebrew script called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet immediately derived from phonecian and its descendant is used by samaritans today
I go to a Spanish church and if I were to say "matzo" in Spanish I'd say "matzá", as "la matzo" would sound funny (even if held in la mano). But usually it's called "pan sin levadura".
5:00 Heh --- so that's why Isaiah, Sarah, Hannah, Torah etc. are spelt that way. (But not Messiah --- thank you, dfs-comedy, for your correction.)
Messiah actually does not end with a heh, but a chet. It's pronounced "mashiACH" in Hebrew and spelled like this: מָשִׁיחַ
And yes, there's a weird exception that makes the final חַ pronounced "ach" instead of "cha". Hebrew has so many odd exceptions...
0:45 You most definitely pronounce /ɑ/ not /ɔ/.
3:11 Well, not "the merger", but the merger in your accent. The cot/caught merger is not universal across English accents, and it is one of the factors which make the speech of Americans so hard to understand.
אַ פֿריילעכן פּסח!
גוט יום טוב!
איר טועה, העברעאיש האט אויפגעהערט צו רעדן ביזן זמן חז"ל, אחוץ לימוד הרבנות.
Of course not pronounced with a profound American accent, bus Kosher with an o is originally from Yiddish.
5:50 English didn't voice that t to a d. Americans are to blame for that.
3:31 shoulda put a trigger warning for extreme amounts of cringe
shva
It's only fitting that charcuterie is butchered in English.
Fun fact: the Dutch word "jambe" (iamb) is a trochee ([ˈjɑmbə]), while "trochee" is an iamb ([tʀɔˈχej]). I guess that still makes it easier to learn though, just remember it's the wrong way round.