Do Aramaic-speaking Jews pronounce the vowels of Hebrew like those of Jewish Neo-Aramaic?
Drink wrote:I don't know which dialect of Jewish Neo-Aramaic you're showing. There are many very different dialects.
But from the ones I am most familiar with, which are the ones from Iraqi Kurdistan, the answer is no. The Hebrew pronunciation of Neo-Aramaic speaking Jews from Iraqi Kurdistan was pretty much the same as that of other Iraqi Jews; this pronunciation had been brought from Spain by Sephardi Jews, and was not the original Hebrew pronunciation of Babylonia.
squee100 wrote:Okay. One thing though, you say that Iraqi Hebrew pronunciation maintains vowel length distinctions, but the pronunciation from Spain apparently had already lost such distinctions (as evidenced by the Palestinian vowel pointing having only five non-schwa symbols).
squee100 wrote:Also, is Baghdad Jewish Arabic (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Jewish_Arabic) more like the Aramaic described above or Yiddish and Ladino in terms of its relationship to the local pronunciation of Hebrew? Do Iraqi Jews refer to the letters as described when refering to Hebrew (not Baghdad Jewish Arabic)?
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