[Mesorah] mis-accentuation (was: 'Tis Chanukka)

[Sholom Simon]

"mis-accentuation" -- what an awesome word!  Thanks!

> > > many places where people mispronounce ... a couple of places 
> almost everyone makes a mistake <
> > C'mon, R'Seth, don't hold back -- tell us how you really feel :).
>
>Some (much?) of this can be blamed on the tunes we Ashqenazim use 
>(at least the ones I know).  Take the tunes for Hallel, for instance.

And the tunes of which you speak, presumably, were written by 
Ashqenazim.  Compare, e.g., to the accenting on the words in the 
popular tune for D'ror Yikra.

More to your point: certainly, the tunes will be a strong force to 
perpetuate the mis-accentuation.

But a lot of is simply that one learns pronunciation, for the most 
part, by what one hears (mimeticsm).  I remember a long time ago when 
someone when I first learned that I pronounced everything wrong -- 
and he pointed me to standard siddurim, which have an accent mark on 
every word where the accent is _not_ on the last syllable (do all of 
them have it?  My Artscroll and my Chabad siddurim have it).  I was 
blown away.  There it is, in black and white for everybody to see 
where the accent should be, and almost everybody of Ashkenaniz 
persuasion ignores it (except some of those who have spend some 
formative years growing up in Israel).

In any event, some of these tunes have *long lasting* 
power.  (Everybody knows the tune for Sh'ma -- written by a Austrian 
Reform cantor (Sulzer) in the mid-1800's (who, btw, I think was 
fairly machmir in making sure his music fit the accents!)).  But I 
digress . . .

-- Sholom