Why does Yiddish butcher Hebrew

Joe, a relative of mine once told me he had a conversation with R’ Teitz from Elizabeth. Apparently in the school there, they teach two different pronunciations – one for davening/learning, and one for Ivrit. My relative asked him, “I can show you a dozen proofs regarding certain pronunciations, that the way you teach them for davening is incorrect. Would you change it?” R’ Teitz replied, “You can show me 1,000 proofs, and it wouldn’t matter to me. This is the way my father did it, and the way his father did it, and the way his father did it before him. Mesorah matters more than your proofs!”

So, Melech Shlomo had Sephardi consonants, Teimeni Ayin, Litvish vowels and Yakkish knowledge?

ZSK:
100% wrong about Zionist shmad? Had you said 20% wrong or even 50% wrong then that might have been reasonable. But 100% wrong? Every single Yemenite who was caught in the Zionists’ clutches is still holding on to his mesorah from Yemen?

And you claim to live in the Zionist paradise? Are you really denying the well-known facts about the Zionist shmad of the Yemenites, throwing overboard their tefillin and priceless sefarim manuscripts and then educating them to be Zionists instead of Jews? Some of those, of course, have moved to other countries after becoming Zionist goyim.

I guess your knee-jerk reflexive defense of the Zionist idol is due to your having learned in a “hesder Yeshiva”, which means that you subscribe to “Religious Zionism” which is idolatry according to the Torah greats like Rav Elchonon, the Brisker Rav, etc.

Avi K:
That’s not an evolution of Lashon HaKodesh. That’s a difference in context. The Tannaim spoke Aramaic, as we know, and any mixing in of (formerly) Lashon HaKodesh there, is no different than the way Yiddish mix in (formerly) Lashon HaKodesh there.

HaKatan: During the Tannaitic period, Judea was quadrilingual. It is not true that Judeo-Aramaic (JA) was the only spoken language there at the time. The Mishnah and Tosefta reveal a living language (“Neo Hebrew” or “Rabbinic Hebrew,” i.e. RH) that was vibrant and adaptive to the experience of the people, which is why it contains Aramaisms as well as many Greek and even Latin loan words. The less educated among the Jews of Judea spoke JA, while the scholarly class communicated in RH. The Jews did not have a high opinion of Latin, which the Talmud Yerushalmi attests. So, the Roman officials communicated with the Jewish representatives in Greek, which the Jewish merchant class spoke as well. Latin was spoken among the Romans themselves and was the only language used by the Plebians and common soldiers.

IF Ha-Shem wanted Hebrew to be pronounced a certain way, there would have been a sound recording at Sinai. Also in the above discussions, note that most Ashkenzim routinely mispronounce א, ע and ה. Indeed if Ha-Shem wanted Lashon Kodesh to be constant and unchanging, we would have been required to use a different language on a daily basis, since living languages constantly change over time.

Have you noticed than in English the gutteral “gh” which is “correctly” pronounced like a hes (ח) is almost always mispronounced (note that in words of German origin it is sometimes written “ch”, but also mispronounced. Have you noticed that virtually no English-speaker can read books written in English from the time of Rashi, and it is difficult to read English books from the period of the early Achronim without special training, and that native English speakers from different countries have trouble understanding each other (imagine some who grew up speaking Brooklynese trying to talk to someone from the Australian outback, or even from the American south – though English dialects have been reuniting since the inventions of new mass media in the 20th century).

So stop worry, and say Baruch ha-Shem that Lashon Kodesh is a living language, richly able to absorb new words, and never suffered the fate of Etruscan or Minoan Linear A (languages which never get butchered).

Language is about communication not rules. Didnt know anybody around studied Sumerian after Kramer died. Our language was the first like our אדם the first man. רשי in his first פשט says שפה אחת is Hebrew.

By the way, Yemenis pronounce the hard ג wrong. Like Arabs.
ג is supposed to be from the palate, G (like the soft ג which they do get right, indeed, GH), not the teeth

And nobody pronounces the ר correctly, which should be a J and soft ר should be ZH.

The English RR is the best substitute, and the best pronunciation of ר that exists today, because at least it comes from teeth, like supposed to.

But, ya, should be J and ZH. They are 3 Reshs, you know that, right?

GG

Yiddish is a beautiful language. I feel connected to my ancestors when I speak the language. It’s a pity that the younger Yiddish-speaking females feel it’s uncool to speak Yiddish in public.

I wish I could understand, speak and write loshen kodesh as fluently as I know Yiddish and English. I would feel connected to my even more ancient ancestors and history. I blame the schools for teaching so many things that are not important instead of teaching us to understand, to write and to speak Loshen Hakodesh fluently.

Yiddish doesn’t butcher loshen kodesh. Yiddish is an evolving language like every single spoken language is. You would not understand the English spoken 1,500 years ago. Yiddish evolved less than many other languages. If I strain myself, I can understand Old High German, the original source of the Yiddish language, even though over the years the pronuciation and dialects evolved. The Hebrew words in the Yiddish language also evolved a bit; it is not butchered.