Verse:Irta/Judeo-Mandarin/Ballmer

Ballmer Ăn Yidiș (אַן אידיש אס בּאַמאר an Idiș ăs Bamăr or אַ בּאַמאריש a Bamăriș) originates from the Eastern US city of Ballmer (בּאַמאר, from בּאַלא מוֹר Bală Mur 'Big Village', Ḷbāḷdimōra in Palkhan; same location and same local pronunciation /boəlmər/ as our Baltimore). It's the most common Ăn Yidiș dialect in Haredi communities in Irta's US, whereas the Bohemian dialect is the most prevalent in Europe. Bamăriș descends from Ăn Yidiș dialects that were spoken in our timeline's Southern Italy in the late 19th century (many of the earliest European immigrants to Ballmer were Irish and Italians, like Philadelphia immigrants in our timeline).

Formal written Ăn Yidiș in Bamăriș-speaking communities is close to Standard Ăn Yidiș. However, spoken Bamăriș (described in this page) is highly innovative and is also influencing other spoken Ăn Yidiș dialects due to its prevalence.

Phonology

• ăm ăn ăl can become syllabic m n l like in our Yiddish. Unstressed i in closed syllables reduces to ă after this sound change, and older fortis resonants don't become syllabic (ən:(vel) > O:n > ən), so the new syllabic resonants are potentially phonemic: Cheșvn 'Cheshvan' and tfilăn 'tefillin'
• It has a 5-vowel system like Yiddish, with the following vowel shifts; the resulting Hebrew reading is coincidentally similar to our Satmar/Poylish Hebrew, just with stop voicing weirdness like the rest of Tsarfati Hebrew.
  • ă > o > u > ow; oa > oy; ea > e > ey > ay > aa
  • ăy, ü > often i
• ř is Spanish y
• ņ has shifted to a velar nasal
• gimel rafe and native gh are [g]
• d z ģ /t t͡s t͡ʃ/ are [ð z ʒ] after a vowel as in the Baltic dialect
• broad and slender L merger
• fd is pronounced f: ănóf 'tonight'

Grammar

Bamăriș has lost gender, case and grammatical mutations.

Nouns

Noun mutation has lexicalized to the form that came after the definite article. h- is still added to vowel initial plural nouns but not adjectives.

Bamăriș gained an animacy distinction. Animate singular nouns always take the definite article nt/n/m (< Proto Ăn Yidiș *ənt, the masculine sg. nominative article before vowels) while the inanimate singular article is a before a consonant and an before a vowel. Non-Hebrew/Aramaic noun plurals are regularly -iņ (< -ug-n < *-óg-anna) if inanimate, -(ă)n if animate.

• m břeythin 'the judge', nă břeythinăn 'the judges'
  • Hebrew plurals are kept in Hebrew words: n șowfăd, nă șowfdăm 'judge'
• n leynăv 'the child', nă leynăvn 'the children'
• m beybi 'the baby', nă beybin 'the babies'
• nt Idăch 'the Jew', nă hIdăchn 'the Jews'
• a rowșin 'the rose', nă rowșiniņ 'the roses'
• an ofis 'the office', nă hofisiņ 'the offices'

Sentence structure

The auxiliary bi has lost tense inflection; it only marks truth value.

Object pronouns of transitive verbs are forms of the preposition ghă.

Hence a transitive sentence now always displays the following word order:

truth value -- subject -- tense -- verb -- object.

The truth value slot is always occupied by one of these 4 words:

• תּא tă/tu affirmative
• וועל vel interrogative
• כנעל, נעל (ch)nel negative
• נאכעל năchel neg. interr.

The tense slot is always occupied by:

• (NONE) present
• (ă)mbi past
• ze(ș)l vi future (< *deiseil a bhith 'ready to be')

The preverbal particle is

• ăg for native verbs
• nă for predicate nouns
• zero for adjectives and Hebrew participle verbs

The 2nd person singular familiar pronoun is ti (thu in Standard Ăn Yidiș). The present tense auxiliary תּאָ is pronounced tu when stressed (when a subject pronoun follows or when used as "yes") and t' or tă when unstressed (when a noun follows).