An acoustic description of Yiddish vowels across dialects

While Yiddish vowels have long been studied in philology and dialectology and used to denote historical dialect boundaries in Europe (e.g. Friedrich 1784, Weinreich 1962), little work has applied acoustics or examined how those dialects manifest in today’s diasporic context (although, see Nove 2021, Kleine 1998). This study contributes to a rigorous phonetic description of contemporary Yiddish and more broadly to understanding how dialects change in diaspora. Data come from 30 sociolinguistic interviews and elicitations with native (n = 11), heritage (n = 7), and L2 speakers (n = 12), aged 23–94. Preliminary intra-speaker analyses use vowel spaces to depict dialect distinctions for native speakers of three major Yiddish dialects and to investigate speakers who blend dialectal features. Pillai scores support the dialectal merger of /ʊ/ into /ɪ/, where Northeastern maintains a distinction (0.85) while Central/Southeastern merge (0.29, 0.43). One speaker variably uses /ʊ/ for both the Northeastern pronunciation (as opposed to /ɪ/) and the Central/Southeastern (as opposed to /ɔ/) (Pillai score = 0.70). Such mixed-dialect speakers suggest possible emerging varieties. Overall, this study advances the acoustic description of Yiddish, demonstrating dialectal differences, suggesting potential new Yiddish varieties, and contributing to understandings of language shift in diaspora.