Yiddish Internationalisms 1: Vowels

A guide to pronouncing internationalisms (words from Latin and Greek) in Yiddish, with their cognates in English and Spanish. Yiddish internationalisms are pronounced in a way that does not exactly match any other language but is closest to their pronunciation in the Slavic languages, German and Israeli Hebrew. As you will hear in this film the English pronunciation of internatioanlisms is very different from how these words are pronounced in many European languages. Yiddish in America has been heavily influenced by American English and if you speak Yiddish as your first language from a "heimishe" background you may notice that your pronunciation of these words is sometimes closer to American English than to the normal/"correct" Yiddish pronunciation. The pronunciations I use are the ones that were used in literary Yiddish in Europe, as well as almost all spoken dialects in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Lithuania. The Yiddish spoken in Russia was heavily influenced by Russian in its pronunciation of internationalisms, especially during the Soviet era so my pronunciation does not match this Russified Yiddish. This pronunciation, as well as the Americanized pronunciations are not usually viewed as being "correct", although they have been/are more common in colloquial speech in certain places.
The pronunciation of Yiddish internationalisms is a fascinating subject for comparative linguistics, as well as sociolinguistics and human migration.

[@yellowmustang71]

why do both of his videos have exactly 101 dislikes LOL. This is good. I didn't know that French and English share vowel sounds, and that the rest of Europe was the same for their vowel sounds. That's very good to know, when it comes to speaking a european language

[@ikhveysnit]

@yellowmustang71 Thanks for your kind words. My account was hacked a while back and a bug was installed which "disliked" every film 101 times. Very strange. You'd think that if they wanted to go through all that effort they would have just deleted them all....

[@ikhveysnit]

@gftruman Other than these two videos the Yiddish I speak is much closer to Romanian Yiddish than standard Yiddish. With internationalisms there is no difference by dialect except for a few words like "problem" which is pronounced "probleym." The rest are all pronounced the same. The older words vary by dialect. Your Yiddish sounds like Polish or Hungarian, where are you learning it?

[@Camsynth]

אַ דאַנק פֿאַר די ווידיאס. ביטע מאַכן מער!