A Dying Language

When my older son was in Pre-1A (that's in between kindergarten and first grade), he came home one day proud that he had figured out, without being explicitly taught, how to count to five in Yiddish. I said, "Wonderful. Let's hear." After he finished, I said, "That's great. You almost got it perfect. Do you want to try again?" My wife and daughter gave me funny looks and said that he got it right. That's when it clicked in my head, even though I had always really known it. I grew up hearing Polish Yiddish in my house (along with English, Hebrew, and a little Spanish and Italian). My son learned to count in Litvish Yiddish which, for the first few numbers, has a slightly different pronunciation than Polish Yiddish.

Now, married to a full-blooded Hungarian, I hear mostly Hungarian Yiddish. Pardon my blatant bigotry here, but it sounds to me like lower-class, street Yiddish. In fact, no one in my wife's family spoke Yiddish on a regular basis in Hungary. They all spoke Hungarian, of course, and only started speaking Yiddish regularly when they came to Brooklyn. The older generations still speak Hungarian to each other (my wife and I, though young, are first-generation Americans).

This morning I went to a circumcision and the newborn baby's great-grandfather said a few words of Torah. He studied in the Mirrer Yeshiva in Europe (i.e., he's an alter mirrer) and spoke in the most beautiful Litvish Yiddish I have heard in years. There is something regal and sophisticated about Litvish Yiddish. However, for some reason the exact Litvish pronunciation was never entirely passed on to the non-European generation and very few people today pronounce the "o" or the "r" in the traditional way. To hear it done right, and so naturally, is nothing short of a delight to the ear.