What's the deal with Matzoh?

[@va.spider]

When people ask me how various words from Hebrew are "really spelled," my standard answer is "in another alphabet."

[@va.spider]

And yes for a NY accent video!

[@natlewvt]

In elementary school I too was convinced that “infrared” was the past tense of the verb “to infrare”, which was something that physicists did to light! Also, you have achieved a new height of delightfulness in this video. Bravo, and chag sameach!

[@AWSMcube]

Same! I wish it were spelled with a hyphen. Infra-red.

[@_oaktree_]

Same here! I only learned the truth in my 20s, lol

[@ssquilts]

I would love to learn more about NYC pronunciations. Chag Pesach Sameach

[@vladimir520]

Definite yes for a New York accent video!!

[@mikeycham3643]

You are the only other person I've encountered who thought there was a verb to misle.

[@gc2009able]

I came to the comments to say the same! I absolutely thought "misled" was the past tense of "misle". It wasn't just me!!!

[@alexisericson241]

I had a teacher with the same opinion. It's not completely crazy

[@voidmstr]

It was “mizzled” to me.

[@phmagnabosc0]

I have English as a foreign language here and i definitely have made that mistake. Of course I'd complain that English spelling is rubbish at having too many letters he(a)re, and not enough the(y')re. But being French, I have no right to.

[@patrickhodson8715]

I was never confused by “misled” or “infrared” but I thought “disheveled” was related to “upheaval” for the longest time, and I pronounced it as such

[@markbr5898]

I still remember being laughed at when I read "mizzled" about sixty years ago.

[@blotski]

Me too!!!

[@CaritasGothKaraoke]

I never had that one but I was laughed at by a girlfriend for pronouncing “gamut” like “guh MUTT”

[@RobespierreThePoof]

I had a funny joke about Matzoh balls and handsome Jewish men, but my straight Reform buddy is sitting here telling me to keep it to myself. He thinks Dr. Jones might not appreciate it. Damnit. Fine. Reining it in ... חג פסח שםח

[@languagejones6784]

Tell the joke!

[@yonatanbeer3475]

I'm so happy you introduced "hoigh on the boireh oilam" to the masses

[@resourceress7]

Haha, when I was a kid, I used to think they were singing "phenomena!" in that song, too. Aww, baby linguist me ftw.

[@scaevolaludens679]

About the yod and waw being used as long vowels, in some arabic texts where all vowels are annotated i see that long vowels are written as if they're a short vowel followed by the corresponding glide in the coda. For instance the long i in "kabir" is sometimes written with a kasrah on the B (so a short /bi/) as if the following ya is not a vowel but a /j/ that happens to be basically a homophone of a long /bi:/ is this how it originally developed or is it a reanalysis that happened later on? and was it the same for hebrew?

[@yossi8405]

אתה מסביר הכל בצורה נהדרת! אני יהודי חרדי, דובר עברית ואנגלית, ואני מאוד אוהב את התוכן שלך.

[@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands]

I only speak Dutch, the rest i fake :)

[@JonBrase]

3:21 Do you know anything about the history of this particular sound change? I know that sound changes in Yiddish seem to have influenced Ashkenazi pronunciations of Hebrew (e.g, Bet -> Bes following the 2nd Germanic Sound Shift), that German orthographically has "eu" spelled /oi/ (which I suspect but don't know reflects a sound change in medieval German), that Yiddish generally has /oi/ in corresponding words, and also in at least some words where German has /au/, and that o often diphthongizes to schwa+u (as in some English dialects). This suggests o -> schwa+u -> oi in Yiddish (with the second step being part of the broader eu, au -> oi change), with Hebrew pronunciation following the Yiddish. Does that actually match sound changes documented in the literature? Also, do you know the mechanism of the change? Metathesis is the obvious explanation for eu -> oi specifically (via ue, perhaps?), but schwa and a don't seem particularly likely to turn into /i/ after the metathesis for the more general case.

[@ryalloric1088]

I'm afraid I can't shed much light on the mechanism, but I'm curious if you can give some examples of german «eu» /oi/ being yiddish /oi/. As far as I'm aware, yiddish /oi/ seems to correspond to german «au», with german «eu» being yiddish /ai/, such as Deutsch being «דײַטש» /daitʃ/. (that's pretty much the only example I have, so I could well be wrong). Otherwise, yiddish /ai/ and /ei/ seem to correspond to german «ei» /ai/. Update: found a second example in german «neu» being yiddish «נײַ» /nai/.

[@JonBrase]

@@ryalloric1088 Interesting. My knowledge of Yiddish is fairly rudimentary, so I may have misremembered some details.

[@ryalloric1088]

@@JonBrase Mine too.

[@binyaming7921]

The word in Hebrew which is pronounced more or less like "kosher" means "physical fitness". Which leads to a lot of puns that are apparently only funny to me.

[@GavrielAbrahams]

I just learned a bunch of fitness word in Hebrew, they are amusing to me too.

[@JemRochelle]

YES to a New York accent breakdown video!

[@abmindprof]

If you do the NYC video, don't forget the dental coronals. Everyone forgets the dentals and our wonderful affrications. It's not only about the vowels.

[@the1HLT]

Hebrew is my second language and even though I speak it reasonably okay it’s nice seeing someone talk about it from a perspective similar to mine

[@benploni7492]

How is it that I'm just discovering your channel now? This is excellent content. Chag Kasher v'Sameach (or whatever is the proper transliteration)

[@GavrielAbrahams]

I'm Western Sephardi but my son was taught his brachot by Ashkenazim with Galitzianer accents and now he sounds like the Miami Boys choir. 🥲

[@ericclark1958]

YES! Please make a New York pronunciation video.

[@HenryLeslieGraham]

final ה comes from proto semitic -t, the evolution is t > h > ø (nothing). the same thing can be observed in arabic, where word final h changes back to a t when followed by a vowel.

[@Dragantraces]

"Charcuterie" I just fell even more in like with your channel. If they could even just get closer to a ū -ish sound...

[@PolaBeaver]

That O in Ashkenazi Hebrew reminds me of how the O is pronounced in Polish. I wonder if there was an influence.

[@darkmann12]

Need that new york breakdown!

[@rickdavids8128]

I could not follow the video because Hebrew sent me into a research frenzy, having only heard of Modern Hebrew being a revived language. Still stuck on that one, hm.

[@user-sh3cf7kd6e]

It's "revived" in terms that no one spoke it natively nor as day-to-day language for a long time (though less than "2,000 years"). But it was written and spoke in prayers.

[@user-sh3cf7kd6e]

1:17 It is not inhereted from the Phoenicians. Paleo-Hebrew/Phoenican script (which are basically identical except very slight difference in one letter) were developed from the proto-sinaitic. Together, at the same time.

[@amyhull754]

This was a DELIGHT--and I learned a lot! Thank you!

[@ramimorrison5420]

Hey! There's a vowel here is one of the best things I've heard in a while

[@rubenpriority725]

Yes to the New York accent video!

[@sifatraihan3455]

I need the link to the ‘high on the boyre oylem’ shiur

[@saltrocklamp199]

I would love to hear more about the evolution of Hebrew through the middle ages, and its relationship to / coexistence with Aramaic.

[@CaritasGothKaraoke]

So if you spell it with a German Z and an a with no H, you can spell it “maza”, thereby making a new tradition of passover tostadas.

[@Reubentheimitator6572]

1:39 - 1:49, O Language Jones, I don't remember pronouncing 'misled' as /ˈmɑj.zɔɬd̪/ when I first read it, but I do remember pronouncing 'infrared' as /ɪ̴nˈfɹɛɚd̪ᵗ/ when I first read it.

[@sjuns5159]

What does the little superscript t do? Never seen that. (I'm assuming your ɬ is supposed to be an ɫ btw)

[@Reubentheimitator6572]

@@sjuns5159 It's meant to let you know I go from a voiced 'd' to an unvoiced 't' at the ends of syllables with 'd' with no vowels after them. It's kinda like what German does with words like 'schmidt' but the 'd' isn't said in German nowadays. The ɬ is used to let you know I velarize my 'L', like I recently learned Polish used to do, instead of what it now does, which is make the 'Ł' like a 'w'. Did I explain my self well enough?

[@DrownedLamp]

Them: That's silly. Me: So what colour of armour should I wear?

[@jameskennedy7093]

Yeah, also as a Philadelphian I want a NYC video, and particularly one that talks about the relationship of the Philly white person accent I have to the New York one. I find people either treat them as the same accent, which they're not, or they go too strongly in the other direction and overstate the differences. It's cawwfee and byeahd and yuzz.

[@ps3master72]

After watching your truncations video i realized it is totally legit to truncate the word "Charcuterie" into Cooter.

[@la.zanmal.]

The "infrared" thing was definitely not just you. There are some weirder, actually ambiguous examples out there, too. The world of chemistry gives us periodic acid (which in fact is consistently an acid), as well as atoms that are unionized (but won't ever go on strike).

[@jameskennedy7093]

We've got to get you to Kol Tzedek.

[@Gabe-no5zy]

פסח שמח!

[@languagejones6784]

חג סמח

[@zevelgamer.]

@@languagejones6784 *שמח

[@ElisaAvigayil]

There is a word in Hebrew that is pronounced "kosher" - it's a compound word: חדר כושר It means "gym." Sometimes in street Hebrew, people drop the "cheder" (room) and just say "kosher" - but depends on the context (I hate that expression now....). Has nothing to do with Kashrut. No idea if it comes from the same shoresh (root) but it is kind of funny to think that "fitness" ("kasher") and being fit (ie going to the gym) would come from the same shoresh.

[@Ahavahde_borah]

I could be going out of boundaries with the topics mentioned in the video, but I remember my rabbi teaching me and/or studying on my own about the Hebrew letter heh, (compares to the letter h). Vaguely, the hebrew letter heh ("h"), is not used at the end of hebraic words (probably torah words mainly) for the sake of revering The Name of The Most High, yod heh waw/vav heh... Just wanted to add some two cents, even if it is off topic lol.

[@danthem2278]

Happy Pesach!

[@zevelgamer.]

Amen

[@abigailb2478]

I love your videos but I do have to point out that you made a little mistake. Ashkenazi jews pronounce Kamatz as an O therefor it's kosher and not kasher sephardi jews and in modern hebrew they pronounce Kamatz as an A so it's not an American thing it's an Ashkenazi thing

[@adrianblake8876]

BTW, Biblical Hebrew, like Arabic was a six vowel system: three vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ with two varieties, short and long. This morphed into an eight vowel system as such: short /i/ and /ai/ diphthongs morphed to /e/, long /a/, short /u/ and /au/ diphthong morphed to /o/, then long /a/ that didn't morph to /o/ AND /o/ that morphed from short /u/ in closed syllables morphed to /ɔ/... In some places short /a/ morphed to /ae/, This change is unique to Tiberian Hebrew and classic Yemenite Hebrew doesn't reflect it. Finally unstressed open syllables too far from the stress (eg, the first syllable in a trisyllabic ultimate) got reduced to shcwa... This leaves us with: /i/ - chiriq, /e/ - tzere, /u/ - qibbutz/shuruq (a shuruq if there's a waw afterwards, qibbutz otherwise), /a/ - patach, /ɔ/ - qamatz, /o/ -cholam, and /ae/ segol... Sephardic and Modern Hebrew pronounce segol as tzere an qamatz as either cholam or patach depending on what it originated from...

[@user-sh3cf7kd6e]

Also, many uses ‏/ʕ/ all the time. Not just old Yemenites. That's how we learn it at school, but many people are just lazy.

[@adrianblake8876]

@@user-sh3cf7kd6e I was talking about the evolution of vowels, not consonants. Classic Yemenite texts use a different system of vowels points rather than Tiberian, that is called "Babylonian" (which is kinda misleading because babylonian jews don't use it...) and I mentioned it because its uniqueness is that it doesn't have a segol, and instead uses a patach everywhere a segol would be...

[@user-sh3cf7kd6e]

@@adrianblake8876 Oh, I just intuitively considered ע as a vowel...

[@adrianblake8876]

@@user-sh3cf7kd6e Letters aren't vowels in Hebrew, they're either consonants or matres lectiones, and ע isn't considered a matres lectiones at all...

[@user-sh3cf7kd6e]

@@adrianblake8876 We should honestly call it matres, but everyone just calls them אותיות אהו"י.

[@travisjacobson2334]

חג פסח שמח אותך!

[@ptrknvk]

In Czech we transliterate it as "maces" or "macos". In Russian people mostly use "маца" [matsa] or rarely "матис" [matees]. Also, English also uses h as a vowel indicator (I think it took it from French, but I'm not sure). F.e. you don't pronounce 'h' in "meh".

[@b6983832]

Of course not pronounced with a profound American accent, bus Kosher with an o is originally from Yiddish.

[@ZipplyZane]

Mine was outlier. I still want to say OUT-lee-uhr.

[@vickilenoir8683]

Is that really how charcuterie is pronounced back in the states? I moved to france when I was 20 and I realized I will never be able to pronounce some of the french ones I learned here with an american accent, one of them being my married last name. My sisters have done "le-noy" and "le-nor" for Lenoir.

[@caseycasas2498]

It depends on area, but (pardon no IPA) essentially char-koo-trrr-ee is the usual one...but I've also heard "shark-coochie" so your mileage may vary!

[@pierreabbat6157]

I go to a Spanish church and if I were to say "matzo" in Spanish I'd say "matzá", as "la matzo" would sound funny (even if held in la mano). But usually it's called "pan sin levadura".

[@tomaszgarbino2774]

0:45 You most definitely pronounce /ɑ/ not /ɔ/.

[@adrianblake8876]

FYI, "kosher" is a Hebrew word, it just means something else... specifically, "fitness"... So "machón kosher" or "cheder kosher" would be the Hebrew word for a gym...

[@bdarci]

They are different words and spelled differently in Hebrew.

[@adrianblake8876]

@@bdarci First, I did say they're different words. Second, no, they're spelled the same. Vowels in hebrew don't appear in spelling. And while you CAN spell it with a waw (and most probably will) you don't have to (in fact, in the dictionary it's spelled without)...

[@bdarci]

@@adrianblake8876 They are not spelled the same. They start with different letters in Hebrew.

[@adrianblake8876]

@@bdarci What are you talking about!? They have the same tri-consonantal root... כָּשֵׁר and כֹּשֶׁר See, same letters only niqqud differs...

[@bdarci]

@@adrianblake8876 you are absolutely right. I don’t what I was thinking.

[@rosiefay7283]

5:00 Heh --- so that's why Isaiah, Sarah, Hannah, Torah etc. are spelt that way. (But not Messiah --- thank you, dfs-comedy, for your correction.)

[@dfs-comedy]

Messiah actually does not end with a heh, but a chet. It's pronounced "mashiACH" in Hebrew and spelled like this: מָשִׁיחַ⁠ And yes, there's a weird exception that makes the final חַ pronounced "ach" instead of "cha". Hebrew has so many odd exceptions...

[@Gur7910]

WHAT is חנכה

[@languagejones6784]

just no "matres lectionis"

[@Gur7910]

@@languagejones6784 hmmm the Ac*demy says that is a valid spelling, though israelis could never this language never ceases to amaze/annoy me

[@rosiefay7283]

3:11 Well, not "the merger", but the merger in your accent. The cot/caught merger is not universal across English accents, and it is one of the factors which make the speech of Americans so hard to understand.

[@kamrat_ett1722]

אַ פֿריילעכן פּסח!

[@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands]

So basically Hebrew sounded like Dutch, simple.. except for the g....lol...

[@mercy2351]

גוט יום טוב!

[@moladiver6817]

It's only fitting that charcuterie is butchered in English.

[@MooImABunny]

3:31 shoulda put a trigger warning for extreme amounts of cringe

[@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands]

Hebrew is confusing for Dutch, we pronounce cham and gam the same way, (as CHam) ..lol now sing the song again: hiney ma tov omah nayim chevel achin cham yachad ?? What Why? No we never pronounce a g like a k with sound like the English to, English goal and coal sound the same to us...Dutch goed sound like english CH-oot CH as in loCHness.

[@rosiefay7283]

5:50 English didn't voice that t to a d. Americans are to blame for that.

[@Maurice-Navel]

shva

[@blakeshaw9533]

איר טועה, העברעאיש האט אויפגעהערט צו רעדן ביזן זמן חז"ל, אחוץ לימוד הרבנות.

[@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands]

Yeah why are they female???

[@cadian101st]

The modern Hebrew alphabet is not an immediate descendent of the phonecian alphabet, its derived from imperial aramaic which in turn comes from phonecian. There is an older hebrew script called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet immediately derived from phonecian and its descendant is used by samaritans today

[@sjuns5159]

Fun fact: the Dutch word "jambe" (iamb) is a trochee ([ˈjɑmbə]), while "trochee" is an iamb ([tʀɔˈχej]). I guess that still makes it easier to learn though, just remember it's the wrong way round.