Re: You meet the oddest people on the Internet

From:    Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>
> I just got called an anti-Semite for pointing out the difference in German
> between the ich-laut /C/ and ach-laut /x/, and that they're not both /x/.
>
> Dan/Steg/Yitzik/anyone: WTF?
>
> Seriously. How in the hell was that anti-Semitic?
This *is* a very bizarre claim, but I suspect it might have
something to do with the pronunciation of Yiddish /x/, which
in my experience is always an ach-laut, even in the environments
where you'd expect the ich-laut. (We have a number of native
Yiddish speakers in our department who have weekly gatherings
to discuss Yiddish literature and language.  As someone who
studied High German for nearly a decade, I always find their
ach-lauts-where-they-should-be-ich-lauts very jarring. But
it's not like that's a *bad* thing -- just different.)

Anyways, it may have something (vaguely) to do with that.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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