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 Irta 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.
Irta Modern Hebrew
Used as a Jewish vernacular in Irta America and Canada
Should be mutually intelligible with our Modern Hebrew speakers, though it may sound a bit flowery. In Cualand it's called "French Hebrew" (or ivrit tsarfatit which may also refer to the traditional Tsarfati reading of Hebrew).
The standard variety today is Irta Yevani 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⁼ ʁ t̪⁼~ð t̪⁼~ð h v z χ t̪ʰ j kʰ χ l m n s̪ (ʔ) pʰ f t̪s̪⁼ kʰ r~ɻ ʃ t̪ʰ s̪]
- 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 or retroflex and is often an approximant.
- Undageshed tav is [s̪] as in Ăn Yidiș Hebrew.
- Irta Modern Hebrew pronounces he mappiq (final /h/) and doesn't have the /-ah/ > /-ha/ metathesis like our Israeli Hebrew.
- Intonation is similar to our Scottish Gaelic
Grammatically, it is SVO like our Israeli Hebrew, but sometimes prefers Ăn Yidiș syntax, e.g.
- much more willing to use אין for negation in the present tense; (איני, אינך in non-3rd person, אין הוא, אין היא in 3rd person); in our IH these forms are formal/written (bc Gaelic negation comes before subject pronouns). (ze) 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 rătzonxa (lit. 'with your will', a calque of lă dă-thel) or אם זה רצונך im ze rătzonxa (mă șe dă-thel e) '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 adif iti 'I prefer' (fyor lum)
- More formally ani rotze bă- = 'I like, I am pleased with', ăni xofetz bă- 'I want'
- haya racon iti 'I'd like'
- אפשר איתי efšar iti 'I can' (efșăr lum)
- You might hear yeš li [LANGUAGE] for 'I speak [LANGUAGE]':
- A: Kabėl es tėrutzi, him yėš lăxa Ozolis? 'Excuse me, do you speak English?'
- B: Yėš./Ėn. 'I do./I do not.'
- The following are used instead of בבקשה bevakasha:
- Question particles (ha2im pronounced him, ha- in more formal contexts) are usually retained. Questions don't have a different intonation from declarative sentences. Question marks are not usually used. Yes-no questions are usually answered by repeating the verb in the affirmative/negative. Present-tense copular questions (which have no verb), e.g. haim šomėr axixa ata? 'Are you your brother's keeper?' can be answered in the following ways (This is also true of sentences with a present tense verb):
- šomėr axi '(Yes, I am) my brother's keeper.' or lo šomėr axi '(No, I am) not my brother's keeper.'
- hin(e)ni 'Indeed, I am.' or ėnéni/ėni 'I am not.'
- hėn 'indeed' or lo 'no' (the least common)
- 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 samėax. כה ko is as common as כל כך kul káx for 'so (ADJ)'.
- Tenses are similar to our Modern Hebrew tenses but the haya oxėl construction is more common.
- היה הוא אוכל = Past imperfective/progressive/conditional (corresponds to V'e ăg ith)
- 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)
- It's also as focus-prominent as Ăn Yidiș and Irish. Irishy cleft constructions are common.
Names in non-Hebrew Jewish languages written in the Hebrew alphabet, such as Ăn Yidiș, are usually spelled as in the original language.
Yevani Hebrew
Same as our timeline's Sephardi Hebrew
Tsarfati Hebrew
Modern Tsarfati Hebrew (עברית צרפתית ivrís zarfosís; "Tsarf-osis" is a common pun in Cualand for using a Tsarfati accent or Irta Modern Hebrew grammar) has been influenced by Ăn Yidiș (Judeo-Gaelic), but it's a result of a restandardization to Tiberian niqqud; some Hebrew loans in Ăn Yidiș keep relics of an older, non-Tiberian based reading.
Tsarfati Hebrew is similar to our Ashkenazi Hebrew, except
- Tiberian /e(:) ɔ(:) o(:) u(:)/ are pronounced as Ăn Yidiș 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 Ăn Yidiș 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/
- dageshed tav, daleth, teth are dental [t̪ʰ t̪ t̪]
- sin/undageshed tav can be dental [s̪] or alveolar [s]
- both zayin and tsade are /ts⁼/; samekh is /tsʰ/
- kuf and tet are unaspirated /k/ and /t/
- /p t k/ are aspirated
- 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/.
Sinosphere reading traditions
Chinese Hebrew
Due to convergent evolution, Irtan Chinese/SEA Hebrew is identical to Tsarfati Hebrew pronounced in the Standard Ăn Yidiș accent, except
- samekh = sin = /s/
- Resh is always Mandarin r
- Qamatz is the same as Mandarin o or wo
- /h/, /ħ/ and /x/ are merged
- Epenthetic [ə~ɛ] is common and is always used for coda consonants except /ʔ ʕ/
- Shva na is [a]
Genesis 1:1 ba·rei·XI·se bo·RUO ê·lu·HI·me EI·se ha·xiuo·MA·yi·me va·EI·se huo·O·rê·ze
A Tiberian niqqud-based Chinese Hebrew reading tradition is detailed in the 18th century treatise 塔納赫之正讀法 (Tǎnàhè zhī Zhèngdúfǎ 'The Correct Reading Method for the Tanakh'; might need to change the transcription of Tanakh to the contemporary Mandarin phonology), which may have been translated from Judeo-Mandarin.
Old Tsarfati Hebrew
Old Tsarfati Hebrew was used during Proto-Ăn Yidiș times and is 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 is noticeably less conservative than Tiberian Hebrew, for example merging the emphatic series and the voiced series and merging patach with qamatz gadol, even though it keeps some older distinctions lost in Tiberian Hebrew such as samekh vs sin.
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 or retroflex L in some readings)
- Ayn and ghayn are still merged, as well as ħ and x.
- Qamatz is always /a/ as in Sephardi the and Palestinian traditions.
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'.
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 (Standard Ăn Yidiș accent) |
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 (in the Irta timeline, Yevani) tradition. In our timeline Ashkenazi Jews sing a slightly different version; I use the Ashkenazi version here to illustrate the difference between various Hebrew reading traditions of Ăn Yidiș-speaking Jews in Irta.
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Hebrew (Tiberian) |
Standard Ăn Yidiș accent |
Ballmer Ăn Yidiș accent |
|
English |