Talk:Yiddish phonology

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[edit] Oah vey???

Does Klein really transcribe oy as /ɔə/? That seems quite, um, idiosyncratic. —Angr 21:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

No, (s)he transcribes it as /ɔɜ/. Not much of an improvement, is it? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:25, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Not a great picture, but I think it's a she. Can we use a different source that says what people expect to see? —Angr 21:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Firespeaker and I have been discussing this page a bit on my talk page. If you've got a better source, please bring it to the table. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what you consider a better source, but I certainly have other sources, though not by phoneticians. Uriel Weinreich in both Modern English-Yiddish, Yiddish-English Dictionary and College Yiddish says simply that ױ is "shorter than oy in boy". Birnbaum in Grammatik der Jiddischen Sprache describes ױ as "Kurzes ungespanntes o und kurzes gespanntes i, ungefähr wie eu in ‚Eule‘" ["short lax o and short tense i, approximately like eu in 'Eule'"], suggesting [ɔi]. W. B. Lockwood in Lehrbuch der modernen jiddischen Sprache says "wie deutsches eu" ["like German eu"]. So that's at least one native Yiddish speakers (Birnbaum) saying in print that the ױ diphthong ends in a high front vowel, and another (Weinreich) strongly implying it. —Angr 22:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)