Oh vs Oy

Baruch Atah H-shem El-keinu Melech Ha’olam Hamotzi Lechem Min Ha’aretz (chew, chew, chew, swallow)

ok squeak- what was it you needed to say

This is so confusing!

PM, I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree. 🙂

I spoke several times to a world renowned professor of the Hebrew language, who is also a phenomenal talmid chacham about this issue. He basically laughed, explaining through numerous examples that language is and always was dynamic. Pronunciation of any language continuously changes over time due to a multitude of factors, and therefore there is no such thing, nor can there be such a thing as a “correct” pronunciation. Everyone’s minhag is legitimate;sfard, syrian,teimani, hungarian, litvish, yekke, you name it. Live and let live, and don’t use it as an exclusionary tool.

I suppose the Oy versus Oh pronounciation is similar to any country or area location with accents and pronounciations.

You have Drawls, Midwest, Southern, Brooklyn, Boro Park (kidding!)and at the same time you have English, Queen’s English, Estuary etc.

People will always strive to imply their regional accent is the correct one, the original one, the most eloquently ennounciated and so on so I guess the Oy versus Oh is much the same.

But, in the end does it make us any better of a person? Methinks not. Who really cares? I’ll tell you – only the person who thinks he is better than the next man.

The awful thing is that many a shidduch is based on the Hebrew accent or pronounciation of the boy/family. Sad.

onlyemes, do they also make sure the words are pronounced properly with the correct accent on the correct syllabul? or are they more into being yeshivish??

Many of the posts here have brought out very valid points.

Essentially, there is no need for two consonants or vowels if the two sound identical. Hence, letters like sav, samach, sin, must have sounded different from each other at one time. So too with kaf and kuf, het and chaf and the like. Some groups, all of North African or Oriental origin (syrian, egyptian, yemenite)distinguish between these sounds, although these differences are inaudible to the untrained Anglo-Saxon ear. What we are left with is what we were taught as children, and that should be good enough. A little tolerance goes a long way.

As far as accenting the proper syllable, it seems that at least several hundred years ago, the Hebrew language as davened with or as learned with among ashkenazim, moved into a “mil-el” pronunciation. SHAbbos, TOrah, LUlav, SHOfar are all accented mil-el, but proper grammar would demand mil-ra, as in shaBBOS, luLAV, etc… Consequently, it is extremely common to hear all types of ashkenazic Jews, misnagdish and certainly chassidish, accenting mil’el as opposed to mil-ra when they daven. Is it grammatically “correct”?

I say, no, it is not, but so what? They know what they mean, God certainly knows what they mean, their intentions are pure, that’s the way they were taught by erliche yidden, so lay off, it is perfectly fine. My only exception would be when the misplaced accent changes the meaning of the word, a famous example coming up in Parshas Balak, “Ki lo NAchash be’yaakov” needs to be read mil-el, as NAchash means “magical incantations”, which is pshat in the posuk. To read it naCHASH would mean “snake”, which is clearly mistaken .

When I was in school one of my teacher(a rebbe/rabbi) told us a long time ago everyone use to pronounce everything OH and then the Perushim came along and they were vrey makpid on a lot of things like dikduk so then we changed the havarah from oh -> oy

we wanted to show that we are nothing like the perushim so we now-the men pronounce it as Oy-it is really Oh-if you go to a yekkee shul I belive that they pronounce everything/ lot of words as OH!

Oomis your memory bank serves you well – Yekkes do pronounce the choilom as Ow. Very distinct old Germanic pronounciation it is indeed.

tb- these two letters -ow- have two different sounds that they can make.

~a~

How does one say ??? ???? in the German dialect?

OP, note the eleventh commandment: You shall not mess with other people’s religion. And don’t even think of chastising those who insert a dagesh under the dalet of “echad”.

Interesting thread. Oomis, I read an old post of yours and was wondering-

You stated that when the world was divided during Dor Haflaga, Hebrew was one of the 70 languages. I guess you meant Lashon Kodesh. Hebrew as we speak it is an invention of Ehud ben Yehuda, based in part on Lashon Kodesh. Is Lashon Kodesh in fact one of the 70 languages, or is it a separate entity?

Oomis also stated that someone had to be speaking Lashon Kodesh in order for it to survive. While this is true of our basic world languages like Inuit and Welsh, I’m not sure this is the case with Lashon Kodesh. This is the language of the Torah through which the world was created. Does it have an eternal existence outside of humans speaking it?

I would be very interested in answers from any esteemed YWC linguists that want to make this clear. Including oomis, if you like!