Ida Schwarcz wrote:
The
most obvious way to distinguish between Polish and Romanian
(South Russian) is the vowel shift on words like "shabbes",
which becomes "shobbes" in Romanian Yiddish.

Martin Green

That's interesting; "shobbes" also happens to be the Anglo-Jewish
pronunciation! It rhymes with "lobbes" -- Anglo-Yiddish for "naughty boy"
-- usually called a "mazzik" by American Jews). In fact, we had a naughty
little song when I was a kid, which (sung to a well known Latino melody, I
think) went like this:

He is a lobbes -- he is a lobbes --
He takes the shikses /to the pictures/ on the shobbes!

Not very p.c., admittedly -- but then none of us were, in those days!

Judith Romney Wegner