Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 152 January 29, 1992 1) A bakoshe (Raphael Finkel) 2) 'Oy vey' (Martin Davis) 3) Standard Yiddish (Meylekh Viswanath) 4) Introduction (Martin Davis) 5) Standard Yiddish (Ellen Prince) 6) Ludic Yiddish (Ellen Prince) 7) Housekeeping (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1992 09:49:24 EST From: Raphael Finkel Subject: a bakoshe ikh heyb itst on shraybn kleyne mayselekh un vitsn far der tokhters vegn. ikh druk zey mit di TeX-varg vegn velkhn ikh hob shoyn geshribn. tsi kent ir ale azoy gut zayn un mir shikn kleyne mayselekh, geshribn mit yivo-transkriptsie? di tokhter penina iz alt finf yor (zeks iy"h in april), un ken leyenen i english i yidish. zi hot lib mayselekh mit khayes, vi hozn, ferd, eynherner, bern, un dos glaykh. zorgt nit vegn oysleg fun hebreyishe verter; ikh ken zey ibershraybn mit pasike oysyes. (lemoshl, ikh vel iber- shraybn 'lemoshl' vi 'lmshl', un 'oysyes' vi 'uTiuT') a sheynem dank ir ale faroys. Raphael Finkel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 92 09:50:50 -0500 From: davism@turing.cs.nyu.edu Subject: "Oy vey" Ach und weh! is (I believe) standard German. Martin Davis 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1992 10:39 EDT From: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.149 Re Yude-Leyb Proger's suggestion for transcription of my name, I agree with him. I never (consciously) write it Melech, but I did usually write it Melekh, as a concession to most of the people in my shul and elsewhere who wouldn't know what Meylekh was (believe it or not). However, I agree with Yude-Leyb that Meylekh is better (especially since I always insist on Meylekh even in shul (but not to the point of correcting people who say Melekh); so henceforth at least in Mendele, Meylekh I shall be. I would also like to second Yude-Leyb's suggestion re adoption of SYR. However, I hope he will forgive the occasional use of nonSYRisms, since I usually hear what I have been told is dorem? Yiddish and if the word is not one that I know from print, I tend to store it in dorem Yiddish orthography in my memory. Meylekh. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 92 10:08:18 -0500 From: davism@turing.cs.nyu.edu Subject: Introduction My name is Martin Davis. I'm a mathematician/computer scientist at NYU. My parents were Polish Jewish immigrants in the 1920s. (I was born in 1928.) My parents spoke Yiddish to each other, but English to me. Thus, my Yiddish hearing is much better than my speech. I used to go to the Yiddish theatre on Second Avenue when I was a boy. My favorite was Maurice Schwartz in "Shylock's Daughter." I learned a little written Yiddish in a somewhat progressive Chedar, but really have no formal knowledge of the grammar. I read quite slowly, still not comfortable with the alphabet, and am totally thwarted by vowel-less Hebrew words. I studied German in high school and college, and my spoken Yiddish is inevitably corrupted by this exposure. (Yiddish speakers easily detect the German influence.) My Judaism is strictly sentimental. I'm a totally non-observant atheist, and have been happily married to a gentile woman for 40 years. The level of scholarship of MENDELE is well over my head, but I do find it interesting and fun, and I hope I will be tolerated. This is probably more about me than you wanted to know. Martin Davis 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 92 12:01:58 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.150 for m.-n. eytan: mo% she&r msyo+r, puve$ vu lir ske zhe$kri? sa vu ple&? sina%, po+te&tr ke vu ka%pra%dre$ no proble&m ave&k votrortograf. me&rsi. [conventional spelling and translation for the rest: mon cher monsieur, pouvez-vous lire ce que j'ecris? ca vous plait? sinon, peut-etre que vous comprendrez nos problemes avec votre orthographe. merci. 'dear sir, can you read what i'm writing? do you like it? if not, perhaps you will understand our problems with your spelling. thanks.'] p.s. and this silly little illustration was in *standard* french! imagine our tsuris with your farkakte spelling of a *nonstandard* dialect! Ellen Prince 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 92 12:06:23 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.151 for yude-leyb prager: you mention that the jokes you sent to mendele had to be translated from 'ludic' yiddish into yiddish-yiddish. do you still have the original ludic versions? if so, i'd be very grateful if you could send them to me, since one of my research areas is 'yinglish', the dialect of english spoken by certain jews of a yiddish background and which i think is the same as 'ludic yiddish'. a dank aykh. Ellen Prince 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 92 From: nmiller@trincc Subject: Domestic matters Two items: recent contributors may have noticed that their names have been tacked on at the end of their messages. This may make things a bit easier in the case of long messages. I mention this so that those who may have a special preference as to signature will do their own signing. The second has to do with mail that doesn't go through for one reason or another. This appears to happen more with Internet than Bitnet subscribers and a common reason given is that the receiver's disk is full. The shames tries to resubmit whenever possible, but there are by now a fair number of subscribers who've missed numbers. If you're one of those and life is less than full for the lack of every last pearl, just let the shames know. Noyekh ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.152