The IgNoble Experiment, a.k.a. Live Dangerously!: Taf, Saf, and Freud, My Love

Even though author Irina Tsukerman is a racist Zionist, who merits the scorn of every decent human being, this article entitled Taf, Saf, and Freud, My Love</strong> and its associated comments are sufficiently interesting linguistically and psychologically that I am linking them into my blog.

Tsukerman writes:

Following a discussion on Psychotoddler's blog, I realized that I have been suppressing an issue within me, which I'm now letting out into the open.

First, however, a little background.

Certain words Jews often use in their day-to-day activities can be pronounced in two ways, or at least two ways I've heard used.

For example, the word Shabbat (sabbath/Saturday)can be pronounced exactly the way it's spelled, with the accent on the last syllable, or it can be pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, "shabbas".

The "t" sound is called a taf,(or hard taf, in reference to the Hebrew letter) and whenever it's emphasized rather than the "s" sound, or saf, it's considered modern Hebrew/Israeli pronunciation. The "s" sound - Shabbas, rather than Shabbat, bris rather than brit, etc., is considered Ashkenazi/Eastern European pronunciation, and is more widely used in the United States, especially in more observant communities. Technically, both are considered acceptable, but the choice of pronunciation is up to individual/cultural preference.

I've gotten into frequent arguments about this issue with people who insist on using the Yiddish/Ashkenazi pronunciation rather than the Hebrew one. Although I didn't mind my grandmother using it - after all, she grew up knowing Yiddish and never knew Hebrew, and besides she actually was from the area of the world where that pronunciation evolved - I am quite annoyed when I hear much younger people speak with a Yiddish accent. (Not that I'm an expert in Hebrew, mind you. Au contraire, I don't know the language at all).

[To read the entire article, click here.]

Practically nothing that Tsukerman believes about Yiddish, Hebrew, Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim, Jews, the Soviet Union, or the Yiddish Daily Forward is true.

I share with Tsukerman an affection for Lion Feuchtwanger, but since he wrote in German and since Tsukerman mentions no German reading abilities, I assume she reads him in Russian.

Soviet translators were generally exceptional, and Feuchtwanger was probably translated better into Russian than he has been into English.

Common ethnic Ashkenazi disdain for the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew always baffles me. I learned Hebrew at a prep school where we used the theoretical restored classical pronunciation [RCP].

In other words, the phonemes we used were simply the conjecture of some expert or groups of experts in Semitic languages.

RCP is useful because it had a one-to-one correspondence with the letters and the points of the Hebrew text, but I have always considered the Ashkenazi pronunciations of Hebrew to be interesting because they reminded me so much of the various Arabic pronunciations current among Turks and Iranians during the 19th century.

Anyway, readers that want to get a good sense of ethnic Ashkenazi psychosis about issues other than the State of Israel should take a look at Tsukerman's article and her blog in general.

Anyone that is reading this blog should be able to identify her delusions fairly quickly.
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