Last updated: 2020-06-19
Background
Language Family: Indo-European / Germanic / West / High German / Yiddish
- Though Yiddish descends from Germanic language, it borrows elements extensively from Hebrew, Aramaic, Romance languages, and Slavic languages, including the use of the Hebrew script. Yiddish has two major distinct dialects: Eastern and Western. Where dialects diverge, I will favor the Eastern dialect, as it is more broadly spoken and contains more words of Slavic origin than Western Yiddish (Kleine 2003, 261).
- Only the Romanized representation of Yiddish is addressed here.
Phonology
Consonants
|
|
Place of Articulation
|
|
Manner of Articulation
|
Labial
|
Alveolar
|
Postalveolar
|
Palatal
|
Velar
|
Uvular
|
Glottal
|
|
Stops
|
p b
|
t d
|
|
|
k ɡ
|
|
|
|
Affricates
|
|
ts
|
tʃ dʒ
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fricatives
|
f v
|
s z
|
ʃ ʒ
|
|
|
χ
|
h
|
|
Nasals
|
m
|
n
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Flaps
|
|
ɾ
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Approximants
|
|
l
|
|
j
|
|
|
|
|
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.
|
Vowels
|
|
Front
|
Central
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Back
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|
High
|
ɪ
|
|
ʊ
|
|
Mid
|
ɛ
|
|
ɔ
|
|
Low
|
|
a
|
|
|
Diphthongs
|
|
/aɪ/, /ɛɪ/, /ɔɪ/
|
Alphabet
- Yiddish has both a Hebrew script and a Romanized script. Because the Hebrew alphabet (an abjad) contains diacritics which differentiate between letters but are not always recorded in written Yiddish, the Hebrew alphabet cannot be used to construct a rule set with a one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Therefore, only the Latin script is addressed here.
- In some dialects, ⟨r⟩ is more accurately a trill [r] or [ʀ] (ibid.).
|
Grapheme
|
Phoneme
|
|
a
|
/a/
|
|
b
|
/b/
|
|
d
|
/d/
|
|
e
|
/ɛ/
|
|
f
|
/f/
|
|
g
|
/ɡ/
|
|
h
|
/h/
|
|
i
|
/ɪ/
|
|
k
|
/k/
|
|
l
|
/l/
|
|
m
|
/m/
|
|
n
|
/n/
|
|
o
|
/ɔ/
|
|
p
|
/p/
|
|
r
|
/ɾ/
|
|
s
|
/s/
|
|
t
|
/t/
|
|
u
|
/ʊ/
|
|
v
|
/v/
|
|
y
|
/j/
|
|
z
|
/z/
|
|
Multigraph
|
|
|
dzh
|
/dʒ/
|
|
sh
|
/ʃ/
|
|
ts
|
/ts/
|
|
tsh
|
/tʃ/
|
|
kh
|
/χ/
|
|
zh
|
/ʒ/
|
|
ay
|
/aɪ/
|
|
ey
|
/ɛɪ/
|
|
oy
|
/ɔɪ/
|
Lenition Rules
- Voiceless obstruents become voiced preceding voiced obstruents (Wetzels and Mascaró 2001, 217).
Misc. Rules
- Voiced obstruents become voiceless preceding voiceless obstruents (Wetzels and Mascaró 2001, 217).
- The glottal stop [ʔ] may be inserted intervocalically (Kleine 2003, 262).
- /n/ assimilates to [ŋ] when collocated with /k/ or /ɡ/ (ibid.).
References
Wetzels, W. Leo, and Joan Mascaró. 2001. “The Typology of Voicing and Devoicing.” Language 77 (2): 207–44.