Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.301 May 13, 1997 1) The English _Forward_ maims Yiddish (Ellen Prince) 2) A vertl af yidish (Hershl Hartman) 3) A vertl af yidish (Morrie Feller) 4) A vertl af yidish (Mendy Fliegler) 5) Sherlock Holmes af Yiddish (Heynekh Sapoznik) 6) A new transcription proposal (Sholem Yafe) 7) Frequency of letters in Yiddish (Estelle Souche) 8) Lipograms (Estelle Souche) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 14:24:30 EDT From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: The English _Forward_ maims Yiddish My apology to Zellig Bach for misinterpreting his post re 'mentsh' in the English Forward. I would have no problem with the Forward deciding to adopt YIVO transliteration conventions. I just have a problem with anyone dictating any sort of linguistic conventions. And I suspect the Forward has a pretty good sense of what their readership is most likely to be familiar with, which has to be their primary concern. Btw, this week's issue has my beloved noun 'big' in a front-page headline... ;) (Ok by me -- I just hope they know that this is not a possible usage for native English speakers.) Ellen Prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 19:39:03 -0400 (EDT) From: hershl@aol.com Subject: A vertl af yidish Tried to do it with the tip of my tongue, but it got stuck in the cracks on the keyboard. Better with the fingertips. English: God loves the poor and (but?) helps the rich. faryidisht: oremelayt helft der riboynesheloylem mit libe; gvirim helft er mit maysim. Hershl Hartman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 21:48:30 -1000 From: feller@indirect.com Subject: A vertl af yidish In response to the request of Shari Buxbaum in Mendele 6.300, this saying can be found in "Words Like Arrows" by Shirley Kumove (p.108). It is given in regular Yiddish, transliteration and English. The transliteration is: "Got hot lib dem oreman un helt dem noged." Morrie Feller Phoenix 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 11:34:37 EDT From: emenems@juno.com Subject: A vertl af Yidish Dos vertl iz: G-t hot lib dem oreman, un helft dem nogid...(G-d loves the poor man and helps the rich one. Un vos iz der untershid tvishn 'nogid' un 'poretz'?? Mendy Fliegler 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 11:10:11 -0400 (EDT) From: sapoznik@aol.com Subject: Sherlock Holmes af Yiddish Does anyone have any information about Yiddish translations of the Sherlock Holmes stories? How many were done and how faithfully do they hew to the originals? A dank, Heynekh Sapoznik 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 03:16:24 -0400 (EDT) From: lakejaffe@aol.com Subject: A new transcription proposal In recent issues of Mendele several people have expressed their dissatisfaction and frustration with the standardized system of writing Yiddish using English letters. Maybe the following will be of help. Don't think about the Yiddish letters that you would use in writing the word. Think only of the _sound_ of the word. Here is a key to the sounds, using common words as they are pronounced in ordinary American English: a --- car, father e --- set i --- machine, ski, debris o --- horse, cough u --- ruler ay --- Mayan, bayou, kayak, aye, Joseph Haydn ey --- they, hey! oy --- toy sh --- shoe zh --- azure g --- good s --- salt kh --- voiceless throat sound r --- voiced throat sound (untrilled uvular R, as in French) Letters not listed above are pronounced as in English. The letters c, j, q, w, and x are not used. Zol zayn mit mazl! P.S. Yiddish has no capital letters, but the English alphabet does. And since we are using the English alphabet, I think we should use capital letters wherever appropriate -- as at the beginning of a sentence, or the first letter of a name. Sholem Yafe 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 14:50:20 +0200 (MET DST) From: esouche@ens.ens-lyon.fr Subject: Frequency of letters in Yiddish Does anybody know if there are some statistics about the frequency of letters in Yiddish? I remember of seeing such statistics about French (the most common letters being e, s, a, r, t...) and am wondering if some similar statistics exist for Yiddish. Estelle Souche 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 14:50:20 +0200 (MET DST) From: esouche@ens.ens-lyon.fr Subject: Lipograms I would like to know if some lipograms (i.e., texts with missing letters, such as "La disparition" by the French writer Georges Perec- who, by the way, might have been I.L. Perets' great-grandnephew - which included no "e") have ever been written in Yiddish. A dank in advance, Estelle Souche ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.301 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.cis.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.cis.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu ****Getting back issues**** 1. Anonymous ftp archives are available. ftp ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files A table of contents is also available, along with weekly updates. 2. Mendele archives can also be reached as follows: via WWW: http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mewais.html via gopher: gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/../.pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele via ftp: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele