[Avodah] Selig

[jay via Avodah]

In Yiddish, there is a name, derived from the German name Selig, that
is normally spelled with Hebrew letters that indicate the
pronunciation "Zelig".  In German, however, which does not allow
terminal voiced consonants, the name Selig is pronounced "Zelik".
A few weeks ago there was a discussion on this mailing list about that
topic, in which, inter alia, the following three comments were made:

>
> In German a G at the end of a word turns into a K sound.  It used to
> be the fashion in Yiddish to spell German-derived words as close to
> the original German spelling as one could get, presumably to show
> off one[']s mastery of that language.
>

> 
> As I explained, that's because in German it's spelt with a G.  But
> since Yiddish no longer slavishly follows German spelling, that
> should be irrelevant.
> 

> 
> ... the only reason to spell it with a gimmel is to copy the German
> spelling, which most people have no interest in doing.
>


Well.  This is quite a calumny against my Yiddish-speaking ancestors:
They misspelled words in order to show off their mastery of the German
language; they copied German spelling; in fact, they slavishly
followed it.  I think my Yiddish-speaking ancestors deserve better
than that.  And, although this article perhaps belongs more on Areivim
than on Avodah, since the original calumnies were allowed to appear on
Avodah, this article must appear before the same audience.

The first thing to note is that the set of Latin letters which Germans
use to spell their language includes the letter K, and Germans have no
difficulty using that letter when the spelling of a word calls for it
(as in, "Ich bin der Kaiser und ich will Knodel").  We also note that
the phoneme /g/ exists in German, and wherever it does, it is
represented by the letter G (as in "Carl Gauss" -- German allows
initial consonants to be either voiced or unvoiced, it is only
terminal consonants that may not be voiced).  When a G appears at the
beginning of a syllable, it is always voiced; it is pronounced /k/ at
the end of a syllable, but that is because the /g/ phoneme does not
exist in German at the end of a syllable.

But if Selig is pronounced as if it ended with a K, and if the letter
K is available when one spells German, why isn't it spelled with a K?

The second thing to note is that languages tend to be spelled the way
they were pronounced when their spelling was standardized.  This is
obvious to people who are literate in English, which we all are.
Because English pronunciation is so very different now than when its
spelling was standardized, it is obvious to every one of us that
English is spelled the way it was pronounced four hundred years ago,
not the way it is pronounced now.  But you can also see this even in
languages like Russian that have barely changed at all in the past
eight hundred years -- cf. the spelling of shto and yevo.  So, if
Selig is spelled with a G, that is plausibly because it was once
pronounced that way.

The third thing to note is that Yiddish is not descended from modern
German.  Yiddish is descended from Middle German.  More precisely,
Yiddish is approximately 80% descended from Middle High German, 15%
from Semitic elements (Hebrew and Aramaic) and 5% from Slavic
elements, with trace amounts of Latin and molybdenum.

Finally, we note that native speakers of Yiddish have no trouble
pronouncing terminal voiced consonants in the Germanic component of
their vocabulary.  Compare the Yiddish 1st-person singular indicative
"hoob" to the German "habe" (where the terminal /b/ is followed by a
vowel), or the Yiddish 2nd-person singular imperative "hoob" to the
German "hab" (where the "b" is pronounced /p/).  This cannot be
attributed to Hebrew influence, because native speakers of Yiddish are
incapable of pronouncing Hebrew phonemes that did not exist in Middle
High German (e.g., they cannot pronounce the /th/ in "Shabbath", and
mispronounce it as "Shabbos").  It can therefore only be due to the
fact that terminal voiced consonants existed in Middle High German.

So, it is quite plausible -- in fact, more plausible than not -- that
if native speakers of Yiddish spelled "Zelig" with a gimmel, that is
because it was pronounced that way, and that if there are some people
today who pronounce it "Zelik", they, and not my ancestors, are the
ones who are influenced (I shall not say "slavishly following", out of
Ahavath Yisrael) by German.


                        Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
                        6424 N Whipple St
                        Chicago IL  60645-4111
                                (1-773)7613784   landline
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                                jay at m5.chicago.il.us
                                http://m5.chicago.il.us

                        "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"