Philosopher,
1. Why can’t a Yemenite speak Persian or any other language? The Yemenites I have known, though, call their language Yemenite. In fact, each Arab country has its own dialect of spoken Arabic. Someone once told me that he had an aunt who was a professor of Arabic. After the Six-Day War, she tried to speak the literary Arabic she knew in the Old City market. Her interlocutor told her that he did not understand English.
2. I would imagine that descendants of Persian Jews in Israel use the Israeli pronunciation as that is how they are used to speaking.
3. Yemenites differentiate between ח and כ as well as ק and כּ. The ת is pronounced like “th” in English. This is probably the original pronunciation as this is how it is transliterated in English (e.g. Ruth). Most likely the Ashkenazim softened it to “s” and the Sephardim hardened it to “t”. BTW, originally the Ashkenazim pronounced צ like a hard “s”, as do some Eidot haMizrach. Two of the Baalei Tosafot are רבי אליעזר ממץ (in French it is pronounced Messe) and השר מקוצי (Coucy). This is obviously the original pronunciation as “stadium” in the Gemara is אצטדיון (the א was added because our ancestors could not pronounce a sheva nach at the beginning of a word). There are also some communities that pronounce ד (without a dagesh) like “the” in “breathe” – which is the only way to elongate it (SA OC 61:6).
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