Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.369
March 15, 1995

1) Reklamele (Aren Portnoy)
2) Yiddish on Macintosh (Meyer David)
3) Yiddish greetings (Bob Freedman)
4) Translating Yiddish idioms (Arnie Herschorn)
5) Der 'Dibbuk' fun Moni Ovadia (Szalom Korbman)
6) Homoseksuel (Meylekh Viswanath)
7) Jewish Cultural Festival in Boston (Rokhl Bernard)
8) Bilingual Coincidences? (Norman Fishman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 11:57:37 -0500 (EST)
From: ep73@columbia.edu
Subject: Reklamele

This message is being forwarded for Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter:

Me' farkoyft a rizike bibliotek (toizenter egsemplarn) fun lingvistik
(semantik, sinteks, fonetik, un azoy vayter), sotsial lingvistik,
germanistik (spetsiel daytshe dialekt-geografie), filosofie, literatur
kritik, leksikografie (spetsiel hebreyishe leksikografie), daytshe
literatur un visnshaft.

Oyb farinteresirt, kling on Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter: 718-231-7905. A dank.

Aren Portnoy

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 16:30:24 -0800
From: mhd@crl.com
Subject: Yiddish on Macintosh

Macintosh has technology called Worldscript.  This allows for different
scripts to be added to support the various languages.  While there are
scripts for Hebrew, these do not support the needs of Yiddish.  They seem
to support fairly well the needs of Hebrew, including the use of Nikud.

I'm interested in approaching Apple to get them to add Yiddish support.
If anyone cares to join me, or can update me or the group on efforts in
this direction this far, I'd appreciate it.

Until that support is added, full support for Yiddish will be done, if at
all, in an unsatisfactory way.

How is it done now?  Either (a) it's not done, i.e., you make do without
fey-mit-a-dekhele (fey-rofe), patakh-tsvey-yodn, etc., or (b) you get a
font that substitutes the needed Yiddish character images  for the images
of less-often-used characters.  In approach (a), you cannot produce fully
standard Yiddish printed documents.   Approach (b) suffers in that
there's no official standard way to input the Yiddish characters, and no
standard as to where the extra characters should fit into the font.

I personally use approach (b).  My Yiddish fonts I bought from Mr.
Deutsch, the zetser for the Forverts, who by the way is mentioned as one
of the lerer for the class on Yiddish word processing at the Mameloshn
'95 event just announced.  I can give you his name and number if you
contact me.  I obtained it originally from Nisus.

Meyer David

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 19:35:27 EST
From: rfreedman@shrsys.hslc.org
Subject: Yiddish greetings

Supplementing Khane Honig's response to mendelnik Turkel's request for
more about "Vos Makhstu" --

Ikh makh zikh nit visndik, ober di bal khoyves lozn nisht !!

Bob Freedman

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:22:17 +0500
From: percepti@inforamp.net
Subject: Amusing translation of Yiddish idioms

Re: Amusing translation of Yiddish idioms from Rick Turkel.

Yes, others have encountered the phenomenon of literal translation from
Yiddish. The late Max Skarf, among whose admirers I count myself, was
often an inadvertant literalist. Yiddish speakers will be familiar with
the rhetorical question "Ich redt in der velt arayn?" ("I'm talking
nonsense?"). Without missing a beat, Max would ask rhetorically, in
English, "You think I'm talking in the world?"

For me, Skarfisms (as they were referred to in a certain circle) enrich
the language. I try to do it in reverse. Does anybody know how to say
"couch potato" in Yiddish? "Geleger kartofl", of course.

Arnie Herschorn

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed,  15 Mar 95 18:0:0 GMT
From: S.Korbman@agora.stm.it
Subject: Der 'Dibbuk' fun Moni Ovadia

Vi ken men redn vegn dem khurbn? Wus ken men zogn?

Moni Ovadia, in sein 'Dibbuk' spiel, farshteyt az me ken nisht dertseyln di
broch: aber me ken es vayzn, mi ken es zingn, mi ken lozn di tsure
shrayn un vaynen, me ken es filn.

Me gibt di spil in der Parenti teater, in Milano, Italie; maistns iz es
in Yiddish.  Oyb ir hot an occazie, geyt es zeen: es ist vert.

Szalom Korbman
Milano - Italie

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 95 13:47:15 EST
From: pviswana@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Subject: Homoseksuel

This is a comment on Meyshe-Yankl Sweet's condemnation of Dr. Mordkhe and
Binyumen Shekhter's compilation of yiddish terminology for some
homosexuality-related words.  I have not read the yugntruf issue in
question, so I depend solely on Shleyme Axelrod's posting in a previous
mendele.

Shleyme mentioned that the Shekhters excused themselves regarding the use
of the term 'homoseksuel' by stating that there was no 'gerotener vort'
for homosexual.  It would seem, therefore, that 'homoseksuel' was a
reluctant choice, which would excuse awkward circumlocutions like
homoseksualisten-bar.

On the other hand, what of Meyshe-Yankl's point that the word 'freylekh'
exists, which is used by some gays/lesbians?  I suspect that the concept
of homosexuality is discussed not only by homosexual Yiddish speakers,
but by heterosexual Yiddish speakers as well. Hence, it is not clear that
the fact that 'freylekh' is used by some members of the homosexual
community would make it a 'gerotener' _yidish_ vort.  If sufficient
numbers of homosexuals use 'freylekh,' then it would certainly be
appropriate to list 'freylekh' as the yiddish equivalent of homosexual/
gay in a word-list describing that community.  It is not clear, however,
if some use of the word 'freylekh' in the homosexual/gay community would
make inclusion of the term in a general yiddish word list mandatory.

Regarding Meyshe-Yankl's use of the word 'ukase' to describe the Shekhter
word-list, I wonder what Meyshe-Yankl means.  My Oxford American
Dictionary defines 'ukase' as an arbitrary order.  I very much doubt that
Dr. Shekhter's word-lists are arbitrary, even if one might disagree with
him on the bases on which particular words were chosen.  On the other
hand, I have not personally discussed this particular word list with him.
I do not know if he consulted any self-respecting gay persons either.

Meylekh Viswanath

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 13:53:25 -0500 (EST)
From: dschrag@acs.bu.edu
Subject: Jewish Cultural Festival April 2, 1995 in Boston

I wanted to make any Boston area subscribers aware of a special event on
Sunday, April 2nd, 1995.  On that day, from 2-5 p.m, Workmens Circle,
Boston District will be sponsoring a Jewish cultural festival.

The program includes: _Klezamir_, featuring vocalist Rhoda Bernard (yours
truly), performing an exciting program of Klezmer music; Miho Sato,
Japanese opera singer, singing in Japanese and Yiddish; Moshe Waldoks,
Jewish humorist and author of "The Big Book of Jewish Humor"; Bonnie
Greenberg, one of the best Jewish story tellers.

In addition, the Japanese Consul General, the Honorable Nobuyaso Abe,
will be presented with a memorial plaque recognizing the late ambassador
Sempo Sugihara, who rescued thousands of Lithuanian Jews during the
Holocaust.  The plaque will be presented by Professor Hillel Levine of
Boston University.

The festival will be held from 2-5 p.m. on Sunday, April 2, 1995 at the
Cambridge Multiculural Arts Center, 41 Second Street, Cambridge, near the
Lechmere MBTA Station.

For more information, call (617) 449-1786 I hope many Mendelniks can
attend, and I'd love to meet some of you at the Festival.

Rhoda Bernard (Rokhl)

8)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 11:03:44 -0800
From: normf@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Bilingual Coincidences?

I don't know how contributions under the subject heading "bilingual
coincidences" began, but perhaps multilingual is more appropriate. And
why "coincidence"? Words of similar sound in different languages are
likely to have common origins. How would the etymologists among Mendele
participants account for the following?

N. Rosenblatt, in Mendele Vol. 4.367, brought in "tsibele" (Yid.) and
"cebolla" (Sp.). The onion must have been broadly known both historically
and geographically. Note the following: "zwiebel" (Ger.), "cipolla"
(It.), "si-pu-la" (Fin.). Furthermore, (comments from etymologists
requested), I understand that in the evolution  and adaptation of
languages, transposition of syllables may occur. Thus, onion is "ba-tsal"
in Hebrew; could the ancients have used or contributed to the borrowers
from Hebrew, the word "tsa-bal" ?

Norman Fishman

______________________________________________________
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