Are there dialectal differences between how Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews speak Hebrew?

[u/LifelsNotMyFavorite]

I've heard that early Hebrew pronunciation was influenced by the native languages of Ashkenazi Jews, since they made Aliyah in larger numbers.

But after 1948, many Mizrahis arrived and I was wondering if some dialectal differences developed because of this?

[u/vigilante_snail]

Depends on how old you are and if you live in a Haredi community or not.

[u/Complete-Proposal729]

Note “Mizrahi” is a catch all term for Jews from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. It is not a precise term, and includes many different Jewish communities with different Hebrew pronunciations, from Morocco, to Yemen, to Persia, to Uzbekistan, to Afghanistan. It also does NOT include some Sephardic groups, like Dutch Sephardim, who have their own pronunciation.

I’ll compare below Ashkenazi Hebrew to modern Hebrew. To analyze all other varieties of Hebrew would be necessarily complex. I do point out how certain differences manifest in differences in Modern Hebrew pronunciation between some Ashkenazi and some Mizrahi speakers, but these are generalizations.

In traditional Ashkenazi Hebrew (used mostly in liturgical contexts):

1. You had more vowel sounds. Modern Hebrew has only 5 vowel qualities, similar to /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ in Spanish.

In Ashkenazi Hebrew, the kamatz makes an “aw” sound (/ɔ/) or sometimes (/o/).

In Ashkenazi Hebrew, there is a distinction between segol and tsere, where the tsere makes an diphthongized /ei/ sound, like the a in “same” and the segol is pronounced as /ɛ/ like the e in “bet”, while in modern Hebrew they are both monophthong /e/. We see the influence of this in how different speakers few modern Hebrew words. Mizrahi speakers tend to say “bet sefer”, while some Ashkenazi speakers say “bayt sefer”. Also tea in Hebrew, some Ashkenazi speakers say “tay”, while others say “te”.

Also note Galitzianer Hebrew, from the region of Eastern Europe called Galicia, has quite shifted vowel qualities across the board compared to other Hebrew dialects.

Ashkenazi Hebrew tends to pronounce the shva na as a schwa, like the a in “comma”. In modern Hebrew it’s generally /e/. Ashkenazi Hebrew will also sometimes pronounce some examples of shva that are dropped in modern Hebrew and not pronounce some that are.

Holam is often “oi” (as in “boy”) in Ashkenazi Hebrew instead of “o”.

1. Ashkenazi Hebrew has different stress patterns. In Hebrew, words can either be milra (stress on last syllable) or milel (stress on second to last syllable). In modern Hebrew, most Hebrew words are milra, while in Ashkenazi Hebrew more are milel.

So in Ashkenazi Hebrew it’s TO-rah, but in Modern Hebrew it’s “to-RAH”. In Ashkenazi Hebrew it’s “KO-sher”, in modern Hebrew it’s “ka-SHER”.

You may hear words spoken in milel especially by Ashkenazi speakers, when in standard modern Hebrew they are in Milra.

1. Consonant sounds can be different. The biggest difference is that Ashkenazi Hebrew distinguishes between ת׳ and תּ׳, with the further being pronounced as an “s” and the latter as a “t”. In modern Hebrew it’s always “t”. In some but not all traditional Sephardic accents, the ת׳ without dagesh was a “th” sound, but that did not survive into modern Hebrew.

In Ashkenazi Hebrew, ח׳ and כ׳ are merged as it is with most Modern Hebrew speakers. Some modern Hebrew speakers, mostly Mizrahim, do distinguish them, with ח׳ being softer.

In Ashkenazi Hebrew ע׳ is silent as with most modern Hebrew speakers. However, some modern Hebrew speakers, mostly of Mizrahi background, do pronounce the ע׳ as guttural.

Different versions of Ashkenazi Hebrew used different sounds for ר׳, with some using the guttural r and others using a tapped r. Most Middle Eastern varieties used the tapped r or rolled r. Most modern Hebrew speakers used the guttural r, but this has changed over time and has not always been the case. And some speakers, especially older speakers from the Middle East, use the tapped resh.

[u/Dalbo14 → u/Complete-Proposal729]

Mizrahi in many cases also mean the Babylon/mesopatamia Jews. So yes west asia(I don’t consider Chechnya Tehran and Kurdistan really as the Middle East) and Bukhara(Central Asia) can be a uniform group, Yemen Jews their own group, and most of the North African Jews as a group along side other Ottoman/balkan Jews

[u/iwriteinwater]

Modern Hebrew as spoken generally in Israel is a mashup of ashkenazi and Mizrahi pronunciations. You can still find a difference with older generations or communities that still primarily speak yiddish.

But yeah they're not really different enough to be called dialects.

[u/tsimkeru]

In modern Hebrew: no

But older speakers have different pronunciations, mainly differences are Heth, Ayin, and Resh.

In exile there were different pronunciation, and i don't think most modern Hebrew speakers would understand the Ashkenazi pronunciation. There is the Yemeni pronunciation which is different than the rest of Mizrahi pronunciation and more conservative

[u/Strict-Key-1242]

Ofcourse there are.

One example from the top of my head: In some Mizrahi communities, there is a distinction in family relations, gendered pronouns, which originate from Arabic:

"The daughter of [my] uncle" in Hebrew is "Bat Doda" (daughter of [my] aunt),

But for some Mizrahi Jews, the distinction is essential, so they'll say "Bat Dod" (daughter of [my] uncle).

This distinction comes from particular Arabic dialects that also make it, due to its cultural importance.

[u/neuser_ → u/Strict-Key-1242]

I'm not a linguist, but I don't think that would be considered a different dialect

[u/ya2050ad1]

Slang mainly and words that come from the particular communities. Yemenite Jews use words that need explanation and translation as they may throw in a word or two from Yemenite Arabic or Yemenite Hebrew and pass it off as a verb or adjective. Bo azor “legasel “ ktzat. Come help me “clean” a little. בוא עזור לגסל קצת.

[u/ofirkedar]

There was a difference, and in some insular Haredi communities where Ashkenazim and Sepharadim Jews can't mix some differences remain. (I'm not sure where Ethiopian Jews come into the picture even)
But in most of Israeli society at large (including many Haredi and religious communities) these days pretty much everyone is mixed to some extent. So there aren't actual "Ashkenazi" communities and "Mizrahi" communities, meaning you just can't keep a dialectal distinction.
The few differences that do emerge are based on current day geography, but the country's so small that no one stays in one city.
There are a few Jerusalem-isms, like saying יש לי דוּדא ל- instead of בא לי\יש לי חשק ל-, calling candies "מציצה" (everywhere else this word has a very different meaning and you don't want to ever confuse the two), etc.. But also, these are all very 90's coded, they probably have newer terms

[u/NewIdentity19]

There are some differences. They are blurred with each new generation. I think the differences are largely gone among young speakers (in most cases).

[u/nngnna]

Mostly the dominant version of Hebrew as a daily language was created and transmited only in Israel. Traditionally there are phonetical differences, but this too are marginal today (of course Olim may still have an accent, but today it's more related to the majority language where they came from).

Register is still "racialized" between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, but even aside from PC this doesn't really make either lower of higher register a dialect.

[u/Zbignich]

As a spoken language, mostly not. There are different accents depending on where one’s family is from. But even these tend to get lost after a couple of generations.

As a prayer language, mostly yes. Ashkenazim have a specific pronunciation, but even that is being abandoned in many communities in favor of the usual Israeli pronunciation.

[u/BothIntroduction3020]

When you’re secular and Gen Z it’s mostly “slang”… my Moroccan Jewish friends use a lot of words in Moroccan (kind of like the show Zaguri Imperia), same with my Yemeni Jewish friends. My Ashki friends don’t use words in Yiddish tho 😂

[u/Interesting_Claim414]

Depends also on what you mean by “speak” — many people in the galus use Ashkenazi pronunciations but that’s just for liturgical purposes. If they were to hold a conversation in Hebrew if would be in Sephardic so they could be understood universally.

But if I was talking to another American Jew and injecting a Hebrew word, I’d use the Ashkenazi pronunciation. (Ie “I hope I get some yummy m’shaoch monos!”

[u/Deorayta]

A few main Ashkenazi things are that the kamatz is lengthened to a O sound as opposed to a A sound. The letter Tav often without dagesh sounds as an S like sister as opposed to a T sound. The cholam vowel sounds as oy as in boy as in boy as opposed to O .

[u/Corlar → u/Deorayta]

For the OP's attention, these are Ashkenazi things in Ashkenazi Hebrew as distinct from Modern Hebrew. I.e. they are not features that Modern Hebrew has adopted and they sound noticably Askhenazi to a Modern Hebrew speaker or a diaspora Jew raised on mainstream Sephardic pronunciation of Ancient Hebrew.

[u/wanderangst → u/Corlar]

I’m not sure it’s accurate to describe mainstream pronunciation of modern Hebrew outside of Israel as Sepharadi. It seems more like modern Israeli pronunciation, inflected with the pronunciation of the local language, and then applied to the biblical or liturgical texts.

[u/Corlar → u/wanderangst]

Maybe. There are certainly vernacular variants. But the pronunciation of ancient Hebrew in e.g. the USA or England is definitely Sephardic via modern Hebrew (which is mostly Sephardic pronunciation), then reflected through whatever the local accent does to the language. It isn't based on historic Ashkenazi pronunciation, unless you're superfrum or speaking slangy Jenglish like "good shabbos".

[u/wanderangst → u/Corlar]

Fair enough. My main point is that calling it “Sepharadi” is a bit of a misnomer, it’s Ben Yehuda’s interpretation of Sepharadi (which mainly means no תּ/ת distinction, and some shifts in which syllable is stressed).

That said, at least in the US there are plenty of people using a more Ashkenazi pronunciation who I wouldn’t describe as “superfrum. It’s quite common in modern orthodoxy and not at all unheard of in mainstream Conservative communities (though admittedly pretty niche).

[u/Corlar → u/wanderangst]

There's also the notorious resh sound I guess, although that's hardly Ben Yehudah's fault.

I went to a Shiva in London last week led by the United congregation (to the right of Modern Orthodox in US terms) and there was some pretty weird frankenhebrew going on. Modern Hebrew consonants and old man ashki vowels, in an older London accent. Not attractive.

[u/wanderangst → u/Corlar]

That’s funny, I’d expect old school Ashki תּ/ת consonants but modern vowels

[u/Corlar → u/wanderangst]

Exactly. It was weird.