How the Locals Grew an Accent: The Sounds of Modern Hebrew in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine

Abstract

Abstract: Early twentieth-century Palestine was a noisy place. Urban streets echoed with the cries of hawkers, the songs of nationalists, and the whistles of trains announcing their arrival. Conversations in Arabic, Turkish, Yiddish, English, Ladino, French, Hebrew, and other languages reverberated in the soundscape. In this article, I explore how Palestine's residents made sense of what they heard, focusing on one type of sound in particular: Hebrew-language accents. Building on the work of sensory historians, and focusing on Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, I investigate the following questions: How did Palestine's residents use accents to mark identity, belonging, and exclusion? What were the stakes of sounding different? And what did it mean to sound "native"?