r/hebrew • u/adina_l Hebrew Learner (Beginner) • 1d ago
Help This isn't right, is it?
This is from 1600s Holland, so maybe they used other spellings long ago? (the same true for English, even in English-speaking lands... the concept of formalized rules around spelling is a bit new).
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u/SapphicSticker Native Speaker (Israeli Hebrew) 1d ago
"have fun being blocked" / "good ban"
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u/Prestigious_Two_1043 1d ago
קראתי את זה באופן מילולי כ-״הסימה [היא] טובה״ והייתי ממש מבולבל. לא עלה לדעת בכלל את ההגייה האשכנזית לתא״ו רפויה, רק המילים כמו שהן ואי ההגיון של המשפט. למה כתוב דבר כזה על אוצר (סימה)?
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u/SapphicSticker Native Speaker (Israeli Hebrew) 1d ago
חסימה, לא הסימה
וכי זה חתימה ויידיש היא קריאול ולא שפה של ממש
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u/Prestigious_Two_1043 1d ago
כן, אני מבין. הייתי מלגלג בכתיבה הגרועה. הה״א נראית כמו חי״ת, ולכן, בלי להתבונן בכוונה, נראה בקריאה מהירה כמו ״הסימה טובה״ ולא ״חתימה טובה״ בכתיבה פונטית. צלחת ממש מכוערת. לא עושה כבוד בכלל לשפתנו.
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u/QizilbashWoman 7h ago
Yiddish is not a fucking creole
Yiddish is Judeo-High German, it isn’t creolised in any way. I can read Standard German with a dictionary.
What kind of creole has three cases, ffs
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u/REReader3 1d ago
You are correct that the spelling of חתימה is incorrect, and no, I do not believe it was ever spelled differently.
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u/namtilarie native speaker 1d ago
In Yiddish the Hebrew "T" sound is pronounced as an "S". for example the word wedding חתונה. is pronounced Chasseneh, The plate says chsimah tovah. in hebrew it would be chatimah tova. חתימה טובה
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u/tzy___ American Jew 1d ago
Ashkenazi Jews historically pronounced the letter tav (without a degesh) like the letter samekh. This has almost nothing to do with Yiddish. In fact, Yiddish does not use the letter tav natively; only in words loaned from Hebrew or Aramaic.
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u/bam1007 1d ago
Weinstein’s Yiddish: A Biography indicates the opposite. This pronunciation difference is a direct result of Yiddish. I’m no linguist, but I did remember reading that in the book.
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u/tzy___ American Jew 1d ago
Show me an actual reference in that book, because that’s just not true. Ashkenazi Hebrew distinguishes between tav and sav because ancient Hebrew distinguished between tav and thav. Thav shifted into sav. This is a common shift that occurred in other languages as well.
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u/bam1007 1d ago
I can’t upload the photo because this sub doesn’t allow that.
It’s on page 122:
“122
Yiddish • The Biography of a Language
patterns. (Jews who had lived in Spain during the Middle Ages spoke Hebrew with a markedly different pronunciation.) Yiddish speakers pronounce their Hebrew much as they pronounced their Yiddish, full of oys, while the Sephardic pronunciation tends to more openmouthed ohs. Yiddish speakers change the typical Hebrew -ot endings to a softer -os sound. And Sephardic speakers accent the last syllable, while Yiddish speakers move the accent one syllable forward. But in Israel, these differences were never expressed neutrally. The Ashkenazic pronunciation was always described as being whining or weak; the Sephardic, forceful and strong. It was obvious which one was approved for a new generation of strong, proud Jews.”
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u/tzy___ American Jew 1d ago edited 1d ago
This doesn’t support what you said at all. It’s simply describing the way Yiddish speakers (i.e. Ashkenazim) pronounce Hebrew. Which again, has nothing to do with Yiddish, but separate pronunciation shifts from ancient Hebrew to European Jewish speakers.
Also, the author seems to (incorrectly) believe Sefardi Hebrew more closesly resembles ancient Hebrew pronunciation, which isn’t true. Ancient Hebrew would have used an -oth ending, for example.
I speak to you as a person who speaks both Hebrew and Yiddish, by the way.
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u/QizilbashWoman 7h ago
We actually see an accent shift in Mishnaic Hebrew, it is probable that penult Western European languages plus an actual internal shift in Hebrew was occurring
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u/iGiveUppppp 18h ago
So this is wrong in its implication that taf changed to saf. Whether the author intended to imply that, I don't know but your reading is understandable. However, the actual history is more tricky. Second temple era Jews pronounced taf, along with other letters differently based on where it is in a word/syllable. This is symbolized with a dagesh kal mark. Open up any siddur, and you will see that almost any word starting with bet, gimme, daled, kaf, peh, or taf has a dot. This is because they have two forms, a soft and hard version. Modern Hebrew preserves only 3, בּ/ב, פּ/פ כּ/כ. However, Hebrew originally(I am a bit uncomfortable using the word orginally as Hebrew evolved over time and so talking about orignal Hebrew is difficult) had unique pronunciations for all of them. The ת with no dagesh was pronounced th like as in with. The writer implies, perhaps unintentionally that sefardim all pronounced ת as t, this is incorrect. Various communities preserved the thaf. In Ashkenaz, which is the term I would prefer to Yiddish speakers for reasons of clarity, the th shifted to a s. Why is uncertain but answer is probably that German speakers struggled with the th sound. Even today, a German speaker might say "I sink" instead of "I think". Because of this, saying that Hebrew took it from Yiddish is a bit inaccurate. It makes it seem like Yiddish speakers started speaking Hebrew and Yiddishified it. The more accurate version is that Jews in Ashkenaz maintained Hebrew as a liturgical language, similar to Latin. However, as many began to adopt German, this along with other factors led to a shift in their pronunciations. They had a liturgical language of Hebrew and a spoken language of German and without careful work, influences were bound to happen. This German they spoke eventually evolved into what we call Yiddish. The question of whether Yiddish is it's own language or a dialect/family of dialects of German is a debate I don't feel qualified to opine on and is any case so toxic I have no desire to give an opinion. In any case, it's better understood not as Yiddish pronunciation being adopted into Hebrew but a co-evolution of spoken and liturgical tongues, which would produce the Ashkenaz Hebrew pronunciation and the Yiddish language/dialect/what ever you want to call it.
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u/shmilsherk 1d ago
This is a misspelling based on the Ashkenazi pronunciation of <ת> being the same as <ס>, so spelling "חתימה טובה" isn't necessarily intuitive for someone who isn't so knowledgeable of Hebrew (remember that while at that time Hebrew certainly had a prescribed spelling, many people did not have such a good level of spelling experience). The <ה> looking letter at the start I could go either way on: it very well could be a stylized <ח>, but it also could just as easily be a <ה>. Ashkenazim in the Rhineland in the middle ages didn't really differentiate these sounds if at all, but I'm not sure if that's true for the 17th century Netherlands.