r/learndutch • u/PoxonAllHoaxes • 3d ago

Koosjer kousjer kosjer

Before folks start yelling at me, here is a source: https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_taa014200001_01/_taa014200001_01_0140.php and another: https://www.ensie.nl/woordenboek-van-populair-taalgebruik/koosjer-kosjer-koscher. So I am not asking for anybody's OPINION of which spelling and pronunciation is "correct". What I would like to ask is which pronunciation people are actually using. Thank you.

13 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

4

u/SchrijfmachineMijmer 2d ago edited 2d ago

Ik heb dit in Nederland boven de Moerdijk alleen met een lange oo /o:/ gehoord, nooit met korte o /ɔ/, of laat staan ou, /ʌu/.

En dan eigenlijk vooral in de context van de uitdrukking 'dat is niet kosjer', nooit in de context 'toegestaan volgens de Joodse spijswetten'.

Ik kan me goed voorstellen dat dit typisch een soort woord is met een andere gangbare uitspraak in België en Nederland of binnen verschillende Joodse kringen.

2

u/fennekeg Native speaker (NL) 3d ago

koosjer

2

u/Seeehmwhykhay 3d ago

Based on the other responses, it seems that people are conflating spelling with pronunciation.

There's currently only one official spelling: koosjer.

The pronunciation is:

According to Kasjroet > Uitspraak_van_het_woord_koosjer, the Dutch rabbinate and the Dutch-Jewish community would be using rather the kosjer variant, but if you check their website, they use both kosjer and koosjer in their kashroet informatie and both variants as well as kosher on kasjroet. Kosjer does seem the predominant variant, but that's most likely due to how eager/attentive the site editor was to sticking to the one variant over the other.

If you feel like diving into this rabbit hole:

2

u/fennekeg Native speaker (NL) 2d ago

OP asked which pronounciation people are actually using. That's what people replying with, not the spelling. I replied "koosjer" because that's how I actually pronounce it, with a long oo, whether that's the spelling or not. When someone answers "kosjer" they mean they say it with a short o.

As for spelling, I would write "kosher" which is apparently not even one of the official options.

4

u/PoxonAllHoaxes 2d ago

Yes exactly, thank you.

1

u/Seeehmwhykhay 2d ago

It's precisely because OP asked about pronunciation that I replied with the IPA, which is the only standardized way to render the pronunciation.

When someone answers "kosjer" they mean they say it with a short o.

By Dutch grammar rules, since the 1st syllable of ko-sjer or ko-sher ends in a vowel, that o is by default long, so it wouldn't even be necessary to spell the word with a double o.

The koosjer spelling is most likely a consequence of people having forgotten the short-vs-long vowel guideline, so the vowel was doubled as a "reinforcement" measure to avoid the short pronunciation.

Anyway, even the long vowel variant if you say it fast enough, at normal slordig-speaking tempo, it's still likely you'd hear a short vowel, cause nobody's got time to pronounce it keurig netjes according to the grammar book.

2

u/PoxonAllHoaxes 2d ago

I myself prefer not to use IPA, and even in English we can describe pronunciation quite well indeed better without it,and more so in Dutch. F.ex. Wiktionary says:

"Although spelt with z-, the word is traditionally pronounced with initial /s/ even in accents that generally do not devoice z-. This is due to the former prefix t- (see etymology). However, there are also many speakers who pronounce /z/ in line with the spelling".

I can say it just as well like this: Many people say zeventig as spelled, but traditionally it was pronounced as if spelled seventig, and there are (I hope) still people who say it that way, tho even my close relatives have succumbed.

1

u/Mission-Asparagus910 2d ago

I was responding with how I pronounce it: koosjer. Not everyone knows IPA so I indicated it without.

And since in Dutch the sh phoneme does not exist and is split in two (s and j), the division in syllables is koos-jer. (As in doos-je). So it needs the double vowel for Dutch spelling as well, but of course it isn’t unusual for loanwords to be spelled somewhat differently.

1

u/Seeehmwhykhay 2d ago

since in Dutch the sh phoneme does not exist and is split in two (s and j), the division in syllables is koos-jer. (As in doos-je).

Koosjer can only be split as koo-sjer.

If koosjer were to be divided into koos-jer, the pronunciation would be different.

A division must not alter the pronunciation, and the word should still be easily recognizable, so the sj pair should not be split in this case.

0

u/Mission-Asparagus910 2d ago

Koosjer is pronounced exactly the same as doosje, which is split in the same way. That’s why I gave that as an example.

You also run into problems if you treat sj as a whole. You should be able to double the consonant to shorten the vowel when necessary, but how? Ssjj? Sjsj? It’s impossible. So you need the vowel to indicate if it’s long or short.

Or put differently: a single vowel before two consonant letters (regardless of pronunciation) is always short.

0

u/Seeehmwhykhay 15h ago

What a bunch of inaccurate nonsense on a platform where people are genuinely trying to make sense of this language. No wonder people are confused when it comes to learning the language.

1

u/Mission-Asparagus910 6h ago

Such an insightful comment.
How would you spell a similar word with short o followed by sj?

1

u/PoxonAllHoaxes 2d ago edited 2d ago

Thank you and I have done this. That is easy to find. But what people actually say is harder to find out. Now there are people who like automata adopt whatever pronunciation the spelling suggests to them, and I fear that my Dutch family (mostly born and raised in A'dam) are among these. However, I was hoping to find people who have preserved the older pronunciation and ignored the games being played with the spelling. Now, if you wonder why, the answer is twofold. First, as a theoretician, I am interested in just this phenomenon, of whether people follow the spelling or whether there are any free souls left--and how this works. This problem of course concerns not just pronunciation or language. We need (I hope you agree) people who say NO when told what to think. Second, as to the specifics, Dutch Jews used to speak a kind of German-derived language that they did NOT call Yiddish but (once again we are dealing with a Diktat) they have in the last 50 or more years been told they MUST call that and which is now probably extinct. In this language for centuries the word was with the "ou" vowel (as were all words with the same Hebrew and German vowels, namely long ā and long ō). Another such word that you will know of course is Moukem or Moukum. Dutch non-Jews naturally borrowed these words in that form. C. 1900 give or take within the Jewish communities of Western Europe there was a movement to "correct" the Hebrew pronunciation and one aspect of this was to replace the "ou" with the "oo". This happened just as the language was dying out but it did happen. So at that point c. 1920 or so Dutch became a repository of the TRADITIONAL Jewish pronunciation, whereas the Jewish community adopted the new pronunciation. This is exactly the way you preserve the real Latin pronunciation of "C" in a word like Caesar (Dutch keizer) and do NOT change it to *tsjeizer or *tsjezer to keep up with the change that has taken place in Rome. The idea that the Dutch pronunciation (and spelling reflecting that) must change because the source language has suddenly changed is at least one that should be discussed rather than imposed. Or it seems to me. So this is a neat case to study, to see whether the imposition of norms by some grey men who certainly were not elected works--and whether (as seems to be happening) spelling instead of reflecting pronunciation changes the latter. But anyway I am looking for people who defy the authorities and continue to say kousjer. Thank you very much though.

4

u/Seeehmwhykhay 2d ago

As a theoretician, you'd likely be aware that any language, dialect, etc. is ever evolving. People are gonna use whatever they feel like, regardless if "imposed" or not by "grey men" (this is too silly).

If you're biased toward a specific variant, and your true quest is to find like-minded linguistic revolutionaries, you could just ask that instead from the start. Bet you'd have more luck asking people on the streets than here. You'd find them, for sure, and then you can rejoice together in the confirmation-biased bubble that there are still "people who defy the authorities."

1

u/Floordove 3d ago edited 3d ago

Kosjer

Edit: I own a recipe website, I checked it, and it seems I named the category ' Kosher' haha. So I guess when I think about it I feel it is ' Kosjer', but in actual use I write 'Kosher'.

3

u/PoxonAllHoaxes 2d ago

And you say it with the SHORT vowel?