Comment by D.L.G.
Comment by D.L.G.

Summary/Abstract: I do not think that B.A.S. (in his last paragraph) is justified in reading so much into Harkavy’s and Drejzin’s dictionaries. The Yiddish spelling of “educated” people at the end of the nineteenth century was notoriously etymological. The fact that Harkavy wrote a komets-alef after the mem in his 1891 dictionary does not necessarily mean that Yiddish-speakers were pronouncing /o/ here (this spelling is repeated in his 1898 dictionary, where the English gloss is ‘cap, skull-cap’). I am certain (but have no direct evidence) that there was no vowel between the /m/ and the /l/ in this word at the time (the /l/ being syllabic).

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