Abstract

Religious Jewish Hebrew speakers in Israel are accustomed to pray regularly, which might affect their language. The question is whether there is an apparent grammatical difference in their language as opposed to the language of secular Jewish people, who are not accustomed to prayer. In this article, I will examine the implementation of the vowel reduction rule in the language of the religious Jews in Israel in comparison to the language of the secular Jews. Furthermore, I will show that there are differences between the two groups only when reading sections of the prayer, and that the religious tend to a more accurate reading of part of the forms. On the other hand, it has been distinctly found that the reading common in prayer does not permeate into the ordinary natural speech of the religious speakers, and their grammar is formed similarly to that of their secular counterparts.

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