Q&A: A Lithuanian Pronunciation Clarification
A Lithuanian Pronunciation Clarification
Question
What is the point of praying with Lithuanian or Hasidic pronunciation? I’m trying to understand: according to them, did Moses our teacher, King David, Maimonides, and every normal Jew 500 years ago (roughly) speak like that? After all, even if we claim that this is how people spoke over the last 500 years in the Ashkenazi regions alone, today nobody speaks like that in everyday life—so what’s the point of praying in such an odd way?
Answer
Who said there is any point? In my opinion, there isn’t.
Discussion on Answer
From my experience, the true and proper pronunciation lies somewhere between Iraqi pronunciation and Tunisian pronunciation, with some corrections added from other communities as well (the distinction between qamatz and pataḥ, etc.). Only in those communities do they distinguish between the begadkefat letters with and without dagesh in all the letters, and distinguish between ḥet and khaf, between tav and tet, between ayin and alef, and so on. By the way, the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the name Yaakov, which today people tend to write as “Yankele,” tries to preserve the guttural quality of the letter ayin. Ashkenazim in Eastern Europe remembered that ayin is a guttural, so they deepened it until it sounded like an n.
I checked, and it turns out the Iraqis are also careful about distinguishing qamatz and pataḥ. I take it back. Iraqi pronunciation is the most perfect of all, and if only all the Jewish people were Iraqis (then all the problems of dyslexia and spelling in the State of Israel would disappear too).
Just noting that there is no community that has a separate pronunciation for each of the following letters: tav with a dagesh and without a dagesh, and tet with a dagesh and without a dagesh.
Sephardim distinguish between tet and tav. Tav is pronounced at the front of the mouth, whereas tet is pronounced farther back in the mouth. Among Iraqis, the pronunciation of tav without a dagesh is like “th” in English (and that is true in general for the begadkefat letters without dagesh, where the mouth opens a bit more). A doubled tet is pronounced like all letters with a strong dagesh, by doubling the consonant—tt—and the same is true for a doubled tav with a strong dagesh—tt. If you distinguish between tet and tav, then of course there will be a difference between them when you double them too.
In our everyday speech there is no difference at all between pataḥ and qamatz, or between a tav with a dagesh and one without a dagesh. The very fact that these vowel marks were created teaches that this was supposedly the real and correct form of speech, according to the rules of Tiberian vocalization.