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From: teitz@aecom.UUCP (Eliyahu Teitz)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Stop the anglo-saxon hebrew!!
Message-ID: <1331@aecom.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Mar-85 11:52:58 EST
Article-I.D.: aecom.1331
Posted: Thu Mar 28 11:52:58 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 31-Mar-85 04:38:03 EST
References: <23760@lanl.ARPA>
Distribution: net
Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
Lines: 36

> 
> I have unfortunately become accustomed to American pigeon Hebrew
> such as "shabbes" for shabbat, "yontif" for yom tov, etc., but when
> a recent posting starts using terms like "ha'maisim" for "ha'metim",
> it's time to stop the language degradation.
> 
> Most Ashkenzaim in the world have adopted the correct Sephardic
> pronounciation of Hebrew, and it is used everywhere in the
> world except in the United States, and some places in England.
> I hope that some of the orthodox Jews on this net would stop
> separating themselves from the rest of the Jewish world, and
> start using the correct pronounciations.
> 

		Why do you think that the s'faradi pronunciation is the correct one.
 They do not differentiate between tet, ta, nd saff, and saf. Why are there three 
 letters if there is only one pronunciation ( in this the ashkenazim are no
 better ). One place where the ashkenazim are more exact than current Israeli
 hebrew ( not real sfaradit ) is in the vowels. There is a difference between
 a kamatz and patach, a tzere and segol which the Israeli's don't make. The
 only people who speak correct hebrew are the Yemenites ( here Yakim has a 
 point to say we are not as good as they ). If you insist on Yemenite 
 transliteration when writing to the net I would comply, but it would be 
 difficult, because we are not used to their pronunciations. However, to
 insist on one wrong method over another wrong method makes little sense. 
 I'm sure there are those on the net who prefer to read meisim and understand
 it more clearly and read it more quickly than they would meitim. 

	In short, it would be impractical to force one group to write in the
 other groups style. ( I personally switch between the two, sometimes even in
 the same sentence. It depends whether I learned the word in school, in which
 case I would probably write it Ashkenazi style or if I learned it at home 
 where we speak Israeli hebrew ).


			Eliyahu Teitz.