Avi: There was disdain on the part of SOME for the language. I believe it is in “The Middle Gate” where Joseph Patai, a Hungarian poet and scholar, wrote that as a boy, his very pious grandmother slapped him for speaking to her in “זשאַרגאָן.” Like many Hungarian Jews under Emperor Franz Joseph I, she spoke German at home. Further, the letter עי”ן has the voiced nasal sound /ng/. Few Ashkenazim observed this feature, though R’ Haskel Lookstein, who is an outstanding בעל נוסח and בעל תפילה and uses the הברה אשכנזית (or did years ago), gives the slightest hint of it when he davens נעילה (he also differentiates the חי”ת from the כ”ך, but leaves the קו”ף as is). Look up “Eighteen Treatises from the Mishna” by D. A. Sola and M. J. Raphall [1843]. This was the very first partial English translation of the Mishnah. True to the Spanish-Portuguese tradition (though Raphall was very much Ashkenazic), the שמע is transliterated “Shemang.”
That aside, as we post-Holocaust Jews will forever be engaged in a program of spiritual and intellectual reclamation, it remains one of the great tragedies of Jewish life, born of ignorance and shortsightedness, to jettison the fruits of a thousand years of East, Central, and West European Jewish culture just because we would rather turn away. It is a dismissive and quite cruel הסתר פנים to our forebears of which I want no part.
DaMoshe: That is such a presumptive thing to say to anyone whose late parents or immediate relatives spoke Yiddish. We are supposed to be רחמנים בני רחמנים.
SQUARE_ROOT: As in, “If I haven’t heard of it, it must be meritless.” As someone who has taught Yiddish as well (as Hebrew and English) for years, your “Yumptif” remark is way off. It would be “Yoƞtif.” The /m/ and /n/ are both nasal consonants, and the shift from the alveolar to the bilabial sound occurs in the colloquial speech of hundreds of languages.
spot on: The ק״ג /aw/ vowel and חולם /oʊ/ diphthong are two distinct sounds.
As I have been saying for years, מען קען זיַין מוטער נישט ליבּן אויבּ ער האַסט איר שטימע צוגליַיך.