Re: Help with transliteration of Central (Polish) Yiddish
Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:41 am
squee333 wrote:Deinonysus, which can you read more comfortably as /aj/ in names like beis/bais, pei/pai, and reish/raish: <ai> or <ei> (which you described as English-specific, but seems more German-specific to me)?
Yeah, that one is more German specific. As an English speaker I would read "beis" as something like /bejs/ unless it looks like standard German in context.
English speakers will probably read "bais" as /bejs/ without context but might go with the more international reading of /bajs/ in context in a passage that doesn't look like it follows English pronunciation rules. I think going with the international variant is best.
IPA note: forward slashes / / indicate a broad transcription (phonemic rather than phonetic). Broad transcriptions are simplified to be more readable. A narrow (phonetic) transcription would go between square brackets. It's fine to write [eɪ] as /ei/ or /ej/ if it isn't ambiguous within the language's phonology. Since you switched to forward slashes you should be fine sticking with /aj/ and /ej/.