[Avodah] Changing Havarah

[Minden]

R' Jonathan Baker wrote:
> the contemporary books all used havarah Sefaradit, and my grandparents had moved to Florida, so there was no continuity of tradition.  "Booreech Ahtoo...Eloikaini Meilech HoOilum"
That's how I should speak, if I really wanted the traditional pronunciation of my ancestors.  Note how the segol sounds sometimes like a tzere, sometimes like a segol - what are the rules for that?  But nobody would understand me in the modern world, where even Chasidim speak Sefaradit to communicate with the outside world, particularly with Israelis.

Ther rule is basically: When the syllable ends in segol -> ei, when it ends with a consonant after the segol -> e.

Of course, in more colloquial speech, every vowel that isn't stressed will be a central e, like the a in English 'central' (not 'centrahl'). In most formal leining, this rule is simplified to: *every* segol -> ei, *every* tzeire -> ai. The normal Galitzianer pronunciation sounds very natural to me, but this super-formal way sounds awkward ("meileich").

(About the misconception of what is Sefaradit, I wrote last week.)


ELPhM
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