I look at regional accents (and I’ve lived in several regions) as the spice of life. Nearly always, someone who tries can understand. Two engineers in my department at work are from Scotland and I can deal with that, too. In any event, no one is about to take anyone’s dictation in this matter.

Are you now demanding an end to Californish, too? Which state is up to your standards?

A professor who can’t turn off academese when addressing those outside his department is engaging in pompous selfishness. Ditto those who cloister themselves with exclusionary dialects.

We should endeavor to minimize regional accents. If someone who lives an hour’s drive from you can’t easily understand you, you are the source of needless extra effort and gneivas zman that could have been saved if one had spoken clear English in a manner that a foreigner taught English wouldn’t struggle too hard to compare to the English in which he was instructed.

A good rule of thumb is to speak in the dialect most easily understood by the person in your audience who hails from the location most distant. EVERYONE understood Johnny Carson’s or Ronald Reagan’s accents.

In other words, I’m not thrilled with yeshivish expanding into vicinities or publications that have folk who aren’t wearing black hats any more than I want more Spanish taught in the local public schools. You want to speak Spanish at home, whoopee. Don’t make me do a double-take due to your pronunciation, and especially so with words that did not exist before I was born.

Don’t get me started on Californians who pronounce my name identically with the girl’s name Erin. There is no “eh” sound in “Aaron”. Nor is there an “eh” sound in the first syllable of the word “carrot” which should not rhyme with “ferret”.

As for Burg, all I can say is: Loy U’laiynu, elef alfie havdalos from the Sheker Mamush of this Rasha Gumuur.

Every bar bei rav dechad yoma should know that it’s not just the Modernisher who indulge in Dunkin’ Donuts–altz the heter of powedered milk makes it not only muttar for der yeshivisher oilam, but it shoffs a chiyuv.

Conservatives like the former Likud adviser Dore Gold said that Burg’s analysis was “dead wrong: what we used to call crum pshat—twisted interpretation—in the Yeshiva world.”