Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 2 no. 166
March 22, 1993
 
1) Ye (Michael Shimshoni)
2) 1920s Vienna Jewish speech (Neil G. Jacobs)
3) Fir kashes/comprehensibility (Martin Davis)
4) Dutsn/irtsn (Pe'rets Mett)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun Mar 21 09:55:17 1993
From: MASH@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL 
Subject: Re: Ye

Rick Turkel speculates:

>Could "ye" for "yo" in Litvishe Yiddish be analogous to
>"Me(i)se" for "Moshe?" This is a pretty well-known
>transformation among Litvaks.

This seems to  me to be unlikely.  While I  have heard
sometimes Meshe (OK Mese) from Litvaks, I have never
come across Moshe in a *Yiddish* usage, only Moishe. 
As an example may serve one of the prominent Mendele
contributors, who signs his name as: David (Daniel
Moishe) Sherman.

Michael Shimshoni

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun Mar 21 22:18:31 1993
From: njacobs@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU
Subject: 1920s Vienna Jewish speech

I am currently doing research on Vienna Jewish speech
during the 1920s-30s. Specifically, I am looking at the
NATIVE German language of V(ienna) Jews--that is, not the
German of the Jewish population that was native
Yiddish-speaking, and for whom German was clearly a
(later-acquired) second language.  Rather, this concerns
those V Jews--usually V-born, or arrived as infants to V
from Galicia, Moravia, etc.--who spoke primarily (if not
exclusively) German.  The written sources I have looked at
thus far on V German offer next to nothing on this--often
for a number of rather interesting ideological reasons;
references to the Hebrew-Aramaic origin component in
Viennese underworld- (and not-so-underworld-)slang often
ascribe to these a Yiddish source, when Rotwelsch is often
more accurate in these cases.

As for the emerging (in the 1920s) group of Jewish native
speakers of German (VJS), however, I at least, have found
very little.  It is fairly clear that this group--the
VJS--did not operate on an identical DIALECT-TO-(AUSTRIAN)
STANDARD-GERMAN continuum as did non-Jewish Viennese
Germans.  (For example, the Jewish model of "Standard"
included a voiced [z]:  wir sind  'we are' :  [vi:r   zint]
-- as opposed to Austrian Standard German  [vi:r  sinD]
{V-dialect:  [mia  sAn]};  that is, the Austrian Standard
of the non-Jews did not contain [z], but (at least many)
Jews' VJS did.)  For Jews (and probably/possibly non-Jews?)
of that period there seems to have been a stake in claiming
that their VJS was:  (1) "not at all Yiddish",  and (2)
"not (German) dialect."

I would like to get closer to answers for two main
questions about VJS:  (1) Since (different varieties of)
Yiddish was overwhelmingly the substrate for VJS, what may
be seen as the nature and extent of that Yiddish influence
(at all levels--phonologiy (including intonation), syntax,
etc.)--that is, not just lexical items;   (2) to the extent
that VJS had--consciously or unconsciously--a model of
non-dialectal German that was not an Austrian model. WHAT
WAS that German model--geographically, sociolinguistically,
etc.  (It has been suggested to me a possible Prague German
(Prague JEWISH German?) model. AAAny thoughts, sources,
help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

I should add that I have already consulted Leopold
Schnitzler's (1966)  Prager Judendeutsch.    Schnitzler
says that Prague Judendeutsch is overwhelmingly of Bavarian
dialect origin.  (Thus, Schnitzler discusses a general
problem with "s" sounds--written without consistency--as
zayin, samekh, sin--{though this should probably be looked
at in the context of the general, larger problem of s - z -
ts  in Yiddish linguistics). )  The Bavarianness of Prague
Judendeutsch potentially makes it a bit more difficult to
discern from Austro-Bavarian of Vienna, but that remains to
be looked at further.  It could be, however, that if there
indeed was a Prague-German model for VJS speakers, it was a
19th- or 20th-century non-Jewish model.

In general--beyond my concern with VJS--the Prague-Vienna
connection is interesting:  location on same historical
trade route,  the Landau/Wachstein Juedische Privatbriefe,
etc.  However, it does not necessarily mean that some type
of Prague German served a the (a?) model for 1920s VJS.

Thanks.

Neil G. Jacobs

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun Mar 21 23:24:31 1993
From: davism@TURING.CS.NYU.EDU
Subject: 1. fier kashes oyf yiddish  2. comprehensibility

1. I'm told that at the age of 4 I asked the kashes in
Yiddish and that I was enormously cute. This was 61 years
ago and unfortunately I recall nothing of it.

2. A joke my mother told me hinges on the (apparent) fact
that the word "fella" (or some such) meant a cold (as in
sneezing & coughing) in her Polish dialect of Yiddish.

The joke: A young woman, a recent immigrant to the US
writes to her mother in the old country how well things
were going for her:

".. un ikh geh shoyn arum mit a fella "

The mother's reply:

"Mit a fella geht m' nish arum. Mit a fella geht m' in
bet."

Martin Davis

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon Mar 22 06:31:02 1993
From: P.Mett@OPEN.AC.UK
Subject: dutsn/irtsn

The recent discussion has been most enlightening.

Uns hot men oysgelernt az tsu tate mame, vi oykh tsum rebm,
red men nisht oyf du un nisht oyf ir, nor "der tate" u.z.v.
Avade tsvishn der mishpokhe un mit ale heymishe dutstmen,
un gevis der tate zogt 'du' tsu zeyne kinder. tsu eynem
zogt men dir nor ven er iz fil elter oder er iz a fremde.
[bey galitsyane siz nokh mer oysgedrikt; vayl zey nutsen
nisht ir in mertsol, nor ets]

derkh agav, ikh ze az elye hersh shraybt "eyn mentshn". mir
zogen "eyn mentsh". khob shtendig gemeynt az nor litvishe
zogen "eyn mentshn"

pe'rets mett

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End of Mendele Vol 2.166