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Accent Breakdowns Production Materials University of Michigan

Romanian Yiddish

For the character of Mr. Marks in Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage

Please see How to Work on an Accent for advice on using this breakdown.

Listening Sample Subject

Elie Wiesel

Key Sounds

For each sound, I’ve included audio examples and a dropdown section of practice phrases.

Unless otherwise indicated, practice phrases are excerpted from Lexical Sets for Actors by Eric Armstrong under a creative commons license.

Vowel Sounds

The vowel inventory of Yiddish is about half as large as English–just six vowel qualities. As a result, a native Yiddish speaker may tend to distribute English vowel sounds into a simplified schema, depending on their fluency.

Native accents of English tend to be rule-bound and consistent. Non-native accents, on the other hand, tend to be more fluid because they are based on an individual’s challenges in attempting native-like pronunciations.

Because English pronunciation rules are complex and inconsistent, non-native English speakers often find it challenging to determine correct pronunciations based on, for instance, spelling. This can lead to a certain amount of flexibility in the “rules” for performing in the accent, and certain words may have different pronunciations depending on context or happenstance.

As an exercise, what happens if you limit your English pronunciation to a small number of basic vowel qualities? Conversely, what happens if your character has a more nuanced understanding of English?

The information below is not a set of rules, but rather a starting place for flexible speech choices.

Close Front Vowel Sounds

Words like KIT and FLEECE may be pronounced with a similar sound.

  • Tim joined the team that will read about how to rid the car of its wheels?
  • I cancelled my mail subscription for People Magazine because they keep shipping it to the wrong address!
  • You have to sit after you read this tweet, Nicki Minaj is coming to town for a meet and greet!
  • I saw a shadow of creature in the kitchen before I reached for the light switch.

Words like TRAP

Words like TRAP may use a similar sound to words like DRESS.

  • That man is a fat cat.
  • Keep track of your Slack account.
  • A TicTac snack attack.
  • An Italian cabbage salad.
  • The Flash-based app crashed my Mac.
  • Alexander planned his capitol to be in Babylon.

Open Vowel Sounds

Words like BATH, PALM, and STRUT may all use a similar open vowel quality.

  • Fun in the sun
  • On behalf of the calf.
  • Umbrella weather in London.
  • The tsunami in Java.
  • Did Sinatra have ties to the Mafia?
  • I said “footpath”, not “bloodbath”.
  • The dancer from France was entrancing.
  • The skunk stunk up the stump.
  • A peanut, coconut, and fudge donut.
  • Gaga danced the cha-cha and the samba.
  • The chorale sang Mahler.
  • We laughed about the aircraft.
  • The Hungarian ski-jumper tumbled.
  • Percussionists love the drums.

Rounded Back Vowel Sounds

Words like LOT and THOUGHT may be pronounced with a similar round back vowel quality.

  • Saul didn’t wash the soft cloths with his laundry.
  • The cost to install the hot water softener in the office was appalling.
  • Rob saw that frothing milk for coffee is not easy.
  • Shawn was appalled by the strong taste of guava in the sauce.
  • Tawny took off her uncomfortable bra and thong, and tossed them away.

Close Back Vowel Sounds

Words like FOOT and GOOSE may be pronounced with a similar sound.

  • The pirate took the filthy lucre from the onlookers and hid it in his toque.
  • Should we have played boules while they shooed the bull away?
  • If Luke looked at Leia full on in the woods, he wouldn’t have wooed her, like a fool.
  • I saw a documentary about Brunei, where I learned about their traditional foods and some facts about their small population.
  • Before every football tournament, I always include foot care into my routine before I put on my boots.
  • “Welcome to the neighborhood!” I said, as I dropped off cookies for the new dude that moved in.

Consonant Sounds

R Sounds

Yiddish speakers may use primarily tapped R sounds (made with the tip of the tongue) with occasional instances of back uvular R (made with the back of the body of the tongue). You can hear both varieties below. Try reading some practice text aloud using a tapped R.

W Sounds

Yiddish speakers may replace /w/ with a V sound. Note that this speaker’s level of fluency means that sometimes he uses this feature, and sometimes he doesn’t.

-ING Endings

Words with the -ing suffix are pronounced with a final K sound (i.e. “-ink”.)

TH-Stopping

TH sounds are pronounced as D and T (e.g. “these things”–>”dese tinks”.)

  • Neither his father nor his mother bothered to clothe him, though they thought he was thoughtless about his appearance.
  • Length, width, and breadth are the three fundamental measurements lathe operators can’t do without.
  • As the throng gathered together, they withered at the sight of the thing’s clothing.

*Practice phrases adapted from Speaking Clearly by Hahner, Sokoloff, and Salisch.

Final Consonant Devoicing

Voiced consonant sounds may lose their voicing at the ends of words.

  • Z becomes S
  • V becomes F
  • D becomes T
  • G becomes K

For example, in this accent the word “dogs” might be pronounced the same as “docks”.

Two common places to watch for this feature are in plural noun endings and third-person verb endings.

Specific Pronunciations

Cârnați

/kɨrˈnaːt͡si/
Audio by Google Translate