Verse:Irta/Hebrew
The history of Rabbinic Judaism in Irta is much like in our own world. The Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud and the Zohar are identical to ours. (Basically everything about Hasidism stays the same except with Ăn Yidiș rather than Yiddish.)
However, many accents of Apple PIE Hebrew, except Tiberian Hebrew which is identical to our timeline's Tiberian Hebrew, preserve phonological distinctions that our Hebrew lost by Post-Exilic Hebrew times.
There is also a large group of people who call themselves "lost-tribe Israelites" (analogous to Samaritans) who live in Africa and preserve Palestinian-Hebrew like vowel points, but pronounced with aspirated stops for voiced fricatives.
Irta Modern Hebrew
Used as a Jewish lingua franca rather than as a vernacular
Should be mutually intelligible with our Modern Hebrew speakers, though it may sound a bit flowery.
The standard variety today is Sephardi Hebrew with an Ăn Yidiș-influenced accent and grammar. Formal Hebrew is less of an Ăn Yidiș relex, and recent spoken Hebrew's more of an English relex.
- Consonants: /ʔ b v g ɣ d ð h w z ħ tˁ j k x l m n s ʕ p f sˁ q r ʃ t θ/ = [(ʔ) p= v k= ɣ t⁼ t⁼ h w ts⁼ χ t⁼ j kʰ χ l m n s ʁ pʰ f tsʰ kʰ r~ɻ ʃ tʰ s]
- Vowels: /i e ɛ a QG QQ o u (shva na) ḤP ḤS ḤQ/ = [i e(j) e a a u o u Ø~ə a e o]
- /r/ is alveolar and is often an approximant.
- Undageshed tav is [s] as in Ăn Yidiș Hebrew.
- Irta Modern Hebrew doesn't have the /-ah/ > /-ha/ metathesis like our Israeli Hebrew.
Grammatically, it is SVO like our Israeli Hebrew, but sometimes prefers Ăn Yidiș syntax, e.g.
- much more willing to use איני, אינך, ...for negation in present tense (אין הוא, אין היא in 3rd person); in our IH these forms are formal/written (bc Gaelic negation comes before subject pronouns). לא אני... Lo ăni is a focus construction 'It's not me that...', and אין אני eyn ăni in non 3rd person are solemn.
- Irish/Ăn Yidiș calques in some common expressions
- The following are used instead of בבקשה bevakasha:
- עם רצונך im retzonxa (lit. 'with your will', a calque of lă dă-thel) 'please'
- זה חייך ze xayéxa (lit. 'it's your life', like șe dă-bhethă) 'you're welcome'
- זה לך ze lăxa (lit. 'this is to you', like șa did) 'here you go'
- רצון איתי ratzon iti 'I like' (tel lum), עדיף איתי ȝadif iti 'I prefer' (fyor lum), ăni xofec bă- 'I want'
- More formally ani rotze be- = 'I like, I am pleased with'
- haya racon iti 'I'd like'
- אפשר איתי efšar iti 'I can' (efșăr lum)
- The following are used instead of בבקשה bevakasha:
- Question particles (ha2im, ha- in more formal contexts) are usually retained. Questions don't have a different intonation from declarative sentences; they both have falling intonation. Question marks are not usually used.
- It also prefers some coincidentally Gaelic-sounding words, e.g. אַךְ ach 'but' and שָׂשׂ sas 'happy' (sounding like Judeo-Gaelic ach 'but' and sostă 'satisfied') instead of the synonyms אֲבָל aval and שָׂמֵחַ sameax. כה ko is as common as כל כך kul káx for 'so (ADJ)'.
- Tenses are similar to our Modern Hebrew tenses but the haya okhel construction is more cpmmon.
- היה הוא אוכל = Past imperfective/progressive/conditional (corresponds to V'e ăg îth)
- הוא אוכל = Present
- הוא אכל = Past perfective
- הוא יאכל = Future
- Loazit -cya '-tion' is borrowed directly from Latin -tiō, via Ăn Yidiș/Tsarfati Hebrew -țyo
- Prepositions can be weird, esp 3al and 3im (mapped to Irish ar and le)
Yevani Hebrew
Same as our timeline's Sephardi Hebrew
Tsarfati Hebrew
Modern Tsarfati Hebrew (עברית צרפתית ivrís țarfosís, sometimes jokingly called צרפ-אָסיס țarfósis 'the disease of pronouncing Hebrew in the Tsarfati way') has been influenced by Ăn Yidiș (Judeo-Gaelic), but it's a result of a restandardization. It is similar to our Ashkenazi Hebrew, except
- Tiberian /e(:) ɔ(:) o(:) u(:)/ are pronounced as Judeo-Gaelic ey o u ü (/ej o u y/ in Standard Ăn Yidiș)
- Shva na3 is ă /ə/ in careful pronunciation (dropped whenever possible in Hebrew loans in Ăn Yidiș, however)
- undageshed gimel is pronounced like Judeo-Gaelic gh
- /r/ is an alveolar flap/trill or a retroflex approximant like Hiberno-English R
- dageshed bet, dageshed gimel, and dalet (whether dageshed or not) are pronounced as unaspirated /p t k/
- kuf and tet are unaspirated /k/ and /t/
- /p t k/ are aspirated
- Sibilants mergers are like in our TibH.
- Final /h/ (he mappiq) is pronounced, since An Yidish has final /h/. (חילל 'to desecrate' and הילל 'to praise' shouldn't be homophones)
- The most conservative Tsarfati readings keep geminate nun, lamedh and resh distinct from their non-geminated counterparts, pronouncing these as reflexes of Old Irish broad /N/, slender /L/ and broad /R/.
Due to convergent evolution, Irtan Chinese Hebrew is identical to Tsarfati Hebrew pronounced in the Standard Ăn Yidiș accent, except
- Resh is always Mandarin r
- Final /h/ is silent as in our Israeli Hebrew
Old Tsarfati Hebrew
Old Tsarfati Hebrew was similar to Tiberian Hebrew, unless stated otherwise. It was the source of early Hebrew loans in Ăn Yidiș (before the pronunciation was re-standardized according to Tiberian niqqud, resulting in what is today called Tsarfati Hebrew).
It has the following sound changes from PSem:
- emphatics and alveolar /r/ are kept
- ś/s þ š > Basque z, Basque s, š (written as shin left dot, shin middle dot, shin right dot)
- z ð > voiced Basque z, voiced Basque s (the latter becomes Tamil zh in some readings)
- ś' þ' s' > /ts, c, c/ (but ejectives)
- Ayn and ghayn are still merged, as well as H and x.
- Qamatz is always /O/ as in Tiberian.
Old Tsarfati Hebrew also distinguished
- cholam from Proto-Semitic *u = o /o/
- cholam from Proto-Semitic *ā and *aw = ů /u/ (/uə/ in some other reading traditions)
- Proto-Semitic *ū = u /ü/ (/u/ in some other reading traditions)
A minimal pair between the two holams: חוֹל chul 'sand' (*Hāl; ~ Aramaic Hālā) and חוֹל choal '(something) secular' (*Hull; ~ חילל 'he desecrated')
Hyper-Israeli
This reading tradition is used by a sect of Karaite Jews.
Like our Israeli Hebrew, but:
- Hyper-Israeli reflects Hyper-TibH o (and qamatz qatan) as /ʌ̹/, Hyper-TibH ů as /u̠/, and Hyper-TibH u as /u̟/. (These vowels resemble Seoul Korean eo, o, and u respectively.)
- PSem *H is reflected as a uvular fricative (merging with lenited kaf) and PSem *x is voiceless sje.
- Non-prevocalic V + ayin sequences are reflected as nasal vowels or nasal vowel offglides: ארבע /aʁbɑ̃/ '4'.
- Proto-Semitic ð became ž, as in זימר žimer 'he overpowered', as opposed to זימר zimer 'he sang'.
Camalanàbha Hebrew
Lost Tribe Hebrew
- /k x g ɣ/ = [k kʰ g gʰ] k kh g gh
- /ts z/ [tʃ dʒʰ] č ǰh (*S/*Z *ð)
- /tś ź/ [ts dzʰ] c jh (*D *z)
- /t θ d ð n/ = [t tʰ d dʰ n] t th d dh n
- /p f b v m/ = [p pʰ b bʰ m] p ph b bh m
- /j r l w/ = [j r l w~v] y r l v
- /s *þ ś ʃ h ħ X ʔ ʕ G/ [s ʃ s ʃ h qʰ ʔ q] s š s š h h qh ' ' q
tet -> voiceless unaspirated, tav -> aspirated with no lenition, dalet series -> voiced, aspiration corresponds to lenition
Voiced plosives without dagesh are aspirated. Dagesh forte is always realized as gemination.
Roughly: /i e ɛ a QG QQ o u ă ɛ̯ ɔ̯/ = [i e ə ə a o o u ə ə/e o] i e a a ā o o u a a/e o
[bəreʃitʰ bara ʔelohim ʔətʰ həʃʃaməjim ʋəʔətʰ haʔarəts]
[ʋəhaʔarəts hajətʰa tʰohu ʋabʰohu ʋəqʰo(ʃ)ekʰ qəl pʰəne tʰəhom ʋəruqʰ ʔelohim mərəqʰəpʰətʰ qəl pʰəne həmmajim]
Final /h/ is pronounced with an echo vowel: e.g. למינה /ləmi'naha/ 'according to its kind', אלוה /ə'loho/ 'God'.
ǰhimmer 'to overpower', jhimmer 'to play music'
Comparison
Dror Yikra
Dror Yikra is a medieval Shabbat piyyut, in our timeline one of the earliest piyyutim to use an Arabic-derived meter.
Disclaimer: Piyyutim are thick with biblical allusions so they're a bitch to translate. I'm sure I made mistakes.
[X] denotes "something that has the same reflex as X in our Tiberian Hebrew."
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Hebrew (Tiberian) |
Proto-Tsarfati |
Tsarfati |
English (What Inthar got from an Israeli site explaining piyyutim) |
Yedid Nefesh
Yedid Nefesh ("Friend of the Soul") is a 16th-century Shabbat piyyut originally from the Sephardi tradition. In our timeline Ashkenazi Jews sing a slightly different version; I use the Ashkenazi version here to illustrate the difference between various accents of Tsarfati Hebrew.
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Hebrew (Tiberian) |
Standard Ăn Yidiș accent |
Ballmer |
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English |