There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects. The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts.
The palatalized coronals appear only in Slavic loanwords. The phonemic status of these palatalised consonants, as well as any other affricates, is unclear.
* In the case of, puts it in the "velar" column, but consistently uses a symbol denoting a voicelessuvular fricative to transcribe it. It is thus safe to assume that is phonetically uvular.
* In the case of, puts it in the "palatalized" column. This can mean that it is either palatalized alveolar or alveolo-palatal. may actually also be alveolo-palatal, rather than just palatal.
The rhotic can be either alveolar or uvular, either a trill or, more commonly, a flap/tap.
The glottal stop appears only as an intervocalic separator.
As in the Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact, but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation, so that, for example, זאָגט is pronounced and הקדמה is pronounced.
are near-close, but may sometimes be realized as close. These allophones are more or less in free variation, but they could have been separate phonemes in the past.
In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Standard Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs. Examples are the German long as in Vater, which corresponds to in Yiddish פֿאָטער, and the German long and long, which correspond to diphthongs in Yiddish. As in many Germanic languages, Yiddish lacks the German front rounded vowels and. They are replaced in Yiddish by , and , respectively. Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged the Middle High Germandiphthongei and long vowelī to ei, Standard Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them as and, respectively. The German corresponds to the Yiddish corresponds to in Yiddish. Another difference is that the vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in Standard Yiddish. Yiddish has some coincidental resemblances to Dutch in vowel phonology, which extend even to orthography, such as Dutch ij versus Yiddish tsvey judn, both pronounced /ɛɪ/; and Dutch ui versus Yiddish vov yud. For example, the Yiddish "to be" is זיין, which orthographically matches Dutch zijn more than German sein, or Yiddish הויז, "house", versus Dutch huis. Along with the pronunciation of Dutch g as /ɣ/, Yiddish is said to sound closer to Dutch than to German because of this, even though its structure is closer to High German. There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddish deaffricatesthe Middle High German voiceless labiodental affricate to initially ; /pf/ surfaces as an unshifted medially or finally. Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not Northern Standard German.
