There are considerable differences between the Lithuanian, Polish (also known as Galician), Hungarian, and German pronunciations. • These are most obvious in the treatment of
cholam: the northern German pronunciation is , the southern German pronunciation is , the Galician/Polish pronunciation is , the Hungarian is , and the Lithuanian pronunciation is . Other variants exist: for example in the United Kingdom, the original tradition was to use the northern German pronunciation, but over the years the sound of
ḥolam has tended to merge with the local pronunciation of long "o" as in "toe" (more similar to the southern German pronunciation), and some communities have abandoned Ashkenazi Hebrew altogether in favour of the Israeli pronunciation. (Many
Haredi communities in England use the Galician/Polish , although some - such as
Golders Green Beth Hamedrash - have preserved one of the German pronunciations.) •
Tzere is pronounced in the majority of Ashkenazic traditions. In Polish usage, however, it was not infrequently . •
Segol is pronounced in the majority of Ashkenazic traditions, but in Southeastern pronunciations in a stressed syllable (Polish, Galician, etc.). • Another feature that distinguishes the Lithuanian pronunciation, traditionally used in an area encompassing modern day's Baltic States, Belarus and parts of Ukraine and Russia, is an occasional merger of
sin and
shin, both of which are pronounced as . This is similar to the pronunciation of the
Ephraimites recorded in
Judges 12, which is the source of the term
Shibboleth. This has been referred to as
Sabesdiker losn or '
Shabbos speech'. • The pronunciation of
resh varies between an
alveolar flap or
trill (as in Spanish) and a
voiced uvular fricative or
trill (as in French, see
Guttural R), depending on variations in the local dialects of German and Yiddish. In addition to geographical differences, there are differences in register between the "natural" pronunciation in general use and the more
prescriptive rules advocated by some rabbis and grammarians, particularly for use in reading the Torah. For example: • In earlier centuries the stress in Ashkenazi Hebrew usually fell on the penultimate, instead of the last syllable as in most other dialects. In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a campaign by Ashkenazi rabbis such as
Jacob Emden and the
Vilna Gaon to encourage final stress in accordance with the stress marks printed in the Bible. This was successful in concerned liturgical use such as reading from the
Torah. However, the older stress pattern persists in the colloquial pronunciation of Hebrew words. It is also prevalent in early modern poetry by poets such as
Hayim Nahman Bialik and
Shaul Tchernichovsky. The use of penultimate stress has led to the weakening of the final syllables of many words, often to
schwa, such as in the words
shabbos,
kiddush and
sukkah. • Many authorities, from the Talmudic period on (b.
Megillah 24b, y.
Berakhot 2:4, b.
Berakhot 32a) and into the modern era (such as the
Mishnah Berurah and
Magen Avraham) advocate using the pharyngeal articulation of and when representing the community in religious service such as prayer and
Torah reading though this is seldom observed in practice. Similarly, strict usage requires the articulation of initial as a glottal stop. • In general use, the mobile
sheva is often omitted (for example the word for "time" is pronounced
zman rather than
zĕman). However, in liturgical use strict conformity to the grammatical rules is encouraged. ==History==