Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.111 November 30, 1997 1) Lullaby for Jacob Feldman (Susan Lerner) (Sam Gunclers) 2) shpatsiren (Felix Baerlocher) 3) orthography for transliterated yiddish (Milton Rosenberg) 4) Hebrew-Aramaic words in Yiddish (Mikhl Herzog) 5) Warshawsky on davenen (A. Manaster Ramer) 6) shpatsirn (Hugh Denman) 7) yiddish film book (Ross Bradshaw) 8) The Forward and Transliteration Schizophrenia (Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan) 9) shpatsirn (Robert Shapiro) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 01:04:06 -0600 (CST) From: Meydele@ix.netcom.com Subject: Lullaby for Jacob Feldman I believe the lullaby that Jacob Feldman is looking for is probably "amol iz geven a mayse". I have been told that it is one of the oldest Yiddish folksongs known. It can be found in Ruth Rubin's A Treasury of Jewish Folksong as well as in the Mlotek's mir trogn a gezang. The version I learned begins: Amol iz geven a mayse. Di mayse iz gortnisht freylech. Di mayse on geyhobt Mit a yidishn meylekh. Chorus: Lyulinke may feygele, Lyulinke mayn kind. Kh'ob ongevoyrn aza libe. Vey iz mir un vind. Susan Lerner [Similar note was sent by Sam Gunclers. --shames] 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 12:20:10 -0400 (AST) From: Felix Baerlocher Subject: shpatsiren I think this is obviously related to the German spazieren, which has been in use for over 600 years (Middle High German). It is derived from the Italian spaziare (to spatially expand, aimlessly walk), which in turn is derived from the Latin spatiari. The common root is the Latin spatium (space). I have another question: is anybody familiar with the term "opikuress" (or similar, I have never seen it written). I vaguely remember a story where the term was applied to a Jew, who is very knowledgable about all rules and commandments, but deliberately applies them in the wrong way. This was contrasted to another Jew who ignores the rules out of ignorance. Felix Baerlocher 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 17:12:57 -0600 From: MRosenberg@tribune.com Subject: orthography for transliterated yiddish I am a new member of this list--and my yiddish is rusty, though once it was fluent und is geven mein mamaloshen. What system of transliteration into the western alphabet is used here. I gather it originates with, or was oublished by, YIVO. Can it be found on the internet and, if so, where? A shaynem dank. Milton Rosenberg 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 18:42:59 -0500 From: "mikhl herzog" Subject: Hebrew-Aramaic words in Yiddish Excoriating Manaster Ramer for his views on the possible origin of _dav(e)nen_, Beni Warshawski writes: "The Hebrew-Aramaic words are the core words in Yiddish because they articulate Jewish religious concerns which are not expressed using words from the dominant environment. These words express the continuous core of Jewish religious life and are not simply expressions which are swapped in and out based on location or fashion." Hebrew-Aramaic words like _got_, _bentshn_, _leyenen_, _praven_, _treybern_, right? Mikhl Herzog 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 19:42:46 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Warshawsky on davenen I will leave it to those who know Aramaic better than I do to establish which forms existed in Aramaic and which ones did not. But I would like to point out that Mr. Warshawsky completely failed to address any of the points I made in the form of challenges for his and his informants. Thus, I must conclude that he is conceding that IN GENERAL informants who are not linguists canNOT come up with correct etymologies--my main point. Likewise, he has not responded to my subsidiary point that, while Yiddish has many verbs based on Hebrew words, it does not have very many based on Aramaic and in particular not on Aramaic phrases beginning with the preposition d-. Mr. Warshawsky now raises two new points, on which he again simply issues ex cathedra pronouncements instead of citing evidence. One is that we do not care what forms actually exist in Aramaic. I simply cannot begin to imagine what he means by this. But supposing it is the correct approach, why I can we not make anything we want? If it does not matter wheter avanan or avinan really existed in Aramaic, then why can we not decide that the English word 'father' comes from Chinese or that Aramaic words come from Yiddish, or whatever else we want. In that case there is no need to do etymology at all. If he can make up non-existent Aramaic forms, so can anybody else, and so I could claim that daven- itself is Aramaic, and thus "solve" the problem. This is just an illogical position to take. The second point is that he does not accept my statement that in Eastern Yiddish we find Romance and Germanic words being replaced by Slavic or Hebrew ones. To argue that this is inconsistent with a preconceived scheme of jewish history is besides the point; it merely shows that the preconceived scheme has no basis for it. The idea that Hebrew forms some kind of basic core of Yiddish has been dead for a century. Scholars such as Weinreich and others demonstrated that--CONTRARY TO WHAT LATE 20TH CENTURY COMMON SENSE WOULD INDICATE--the history of Ashkenazic Jews, as reflected in language, is quite otherwise. It is instructive for example to read Yiddish texts from the 16th century to the present. You will see that the percentage of Hebrew-derived vocabulary was much lower in the 16th century literary texts than in 20th century ones. This perhaps clearest when we look at Hebrew-origin verbs like ganv(en)en, pask(en)en, and so on. They certainly occur much more frequently in later texts than in earlier ones. The 16th (or is 17th, I forget) century text Kaiser Octaviano has one just one occurrence of one such verb, namely, ganven, for example. As for specific instances of the replacement of Romance by Hebrew elements, the terms of betrothal, engagement are an obvious example. The verb antshpoyzn is no longer used in modern Yd (except in the archaic language of Bible translation) and the related noun shpousering 'engagement ring' is only attested I believe in Dutch Yiddish. Instead of the Romance stem shpous/shpoyz-, modern Yiddish uses the Hebrew stem knas-. Likewise, for 'defiance', the Romance term stirdes is acc. to Weinreich unknown to many Yd speakers today. But, acc. to Uriel Weinreich's dictionary, we also have the Hebrew-origin tselokhes, which is universally known. It is currently controversial whether the Jews who created Yiddish originally spoke Judeo-French (Weinreich, Birnbaum, Bin-Nun), Judeo-Slavic (Wexler), Judeo-Aramaic (Katz), or maybe Judeo-Italian, but it seems clear that they did not speak Hebrew as their vernacular, and many Hebrew elements in modern Yiddish clearly are of relatively recent date. This does not mean that I am right to suggests that davenen is derived from Hebrew and that it replace the Romance-origin word orn, but at least that scenario is consistent with the bigger picture. A derivation from a non-existent Aramaic phrase beginning with d- is unparalleled and so it does not. And I hope Mr. Warshawsky is not going to now argue that etymology should be done atomistically, on each word separately, ignoring the whole history of the language. A. Manaster Ramer 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 02:02:22 +0000 From: Hugh Denman Subject: shpatsirn with reference to Avraham Chasid's enquiry [07.109:9] concerning the etymology of 'shpatsirn', I think we can say with considerable confidence that the word is directly derived from MHG 'spazieren'. True, in many comparable instances we encounter Polish or other Slav languages in an intermediary role [cf. 'rateven' < Pol. 'ratowac' < MHG 'retten'] and in Polish there is indeed a verb 'spacerowac', but the formant suffix '-irn' makes it clear that in this case MHG is the immediate source. The MHG form was borrowed around the 13th century from Italian 'spaziare/ spaziarsi' which in turn comes from Late Latin 'spatiari' (all in the same sense as the Yiddish word), a derivative of Lat. 'spatium' = 'space'. Hugh Denman London 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 09:52:33 GMT0BST From: "MYRA WOOLFSON" Subject: yiddish film book Five Leaves Publications - a small press is the UK - is to publish a new book on aspects of Yiddish film, edited by Sylvia Paskin. The book will be aimed at both a film studies audience and a Jewish/Yiddish interest audience. We plan to publish in 1998, in English. Contributions already in hand include essays on Mollie Picon, Joseph Green, the Yiddish documentaries, an overview of Yiddish film within Jewish film, Yiddish film within Yiddish culture and more. A nominal fee will be paid to writers whose work is used. The book will be an illustrated paperback of roughly 240 pages. We are still seeking submissions... Please send ideas, abstracts and submissions to Five Leaves Publications, PO Box 81, Nottingham NG5 4ER, UK. Thank you very much, zait gezunt. Ross Bradshaw. 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 09:42:25 -0500 (EST) From: SHirshan@aol.com Subject: The Forward and Transliteration Schizophrenia I guess we've enjoyed our _zibn gute khodoshim_ as regards the YIVO accepted spelling of the word MENTSH (since last May) in the Forward Classifieds. Someone has "corrected" it back to _mensch_, and just when the Forverts strides into the land of YIVO standardization. Isn't this an Abbot andf Costello routine in the making? _Spell it mensch. No, that was on first..... Oyb men lakht nisht, ken men nemen veynen... Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan Boynton Beach, Florida. 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 20:34:23 -0500 (EST) From: Lodzher@aol.com Subject: shpatsirn The etymology of shpatsirn probably goes back to the Latin specere, to look, and so is related to the words spectacle and speculate. Thus the nuance in shpatsirn is not so much the walking as the looking about as one tours the neighborhood. Robert Shapiro ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.111 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html