...follows the Sephardic pronunciation, which iirc was chosen as the official modern Hebrew thing partly because it was supposed to be a bit more authentic and partly because, well, it provided distance from Yiddish, which wasn't regarded highly (at various points it hasn't even been considered to have the status of a language). You'll still hear the Ashkenazic pronunciation sometimes, especially among the Diaspora Jews who would say things like 'gut Shabbes' (basically, it's the difference between "ahavAHT TorAH", Sephardic/modern Hebrew, and "aHAvas TOrah", Ashkenazi. My emphasis on the later may be a bit off. (Yiddish, of course, would have it as "ahavas Toyre", assuming the first word didn't get kind of slurred/condensed into the bargain)). Where was I? Right, Americans. Basically, there's what's probably a rather large number of English speaking Jews who have trouble pronouncing the kh sound. I've seen this among classmates, kids I'm teaching, and now also people in my German class. You hear things like h, a very soft kh that barely makes the sound but is distinct from the h, and then, especially in German or Yiddish classes, there are people who will replace kh with a hard k. Anyway. Even apart from that, the accent itself is often a little different--if a word ends in an L sound, for instance, Israelis will kind of draw it out? Like, the tip of the tongue goes against the top of the front teeth, instead of kind of curling in the middle of the mouth as it does in most Canadian/American English wouldn'tation of words ending in an L sound. That's one example. It's the same language, though Diaspora Jews are apparently more likely to have learned more biblical vocabulary and use it when am Israeli wouldn't, just with a few differences in accent and possibly some differences in emphasis.
And I really hope that made the point I wanted it to (whatever that was), and had no typos, because by now I'm really tired and I'm home and going to eat. So. Hope this adds something and is interesting, here it is so I don't post it two weeks later if the thread is even still on the Board, gut Shabbes, y'all.*
~DF
*/Is not actually the sort of person who normally says gut Shabbes, but has picked it up a little more since moving back to Canada at age ten and hearing it for the first time/
