Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.157 February 27, 1998 1) Dos Broytele (Dorothy Wasserman) 2) Americanisms in Yiddish (Larry Rosenwald) 3) buflfish (Joachim Neugroschel) 4) Buffalofish (Al Grand) 5) Kishinev and bobe-manses (Shaya Mitelman) 6) Spelling, pronunciation, dialects (A M Ramer) 7) shayle (Meyer-Leyb Wolf) 8) shayle (Arnie Kuzmack) 9) Sutzkever's "Di blayene platn fun roms drukeray" (David G. Roskies) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:43:40 +0000 From: "Dorothy Wasserman" Subject: Dos Broytele Pessl beckler-semel-stern hot gefregt in Vol. 07.154 vegn lid Dos Broytele. Oyb ir meynt di poeme vos fangt zikh on azoy: Der tate hot a broytele in shtub arayngebrakht: Eyns nor iz dos broytele Un maylekhlakh a sakh. iz der dikhter Shneyer Waserman un Sidor Belarsky hot adaptirt di muzik. M'ken beyde gefinen in Shneyer Waserman's bikher "Mayn Layb un Lebn" (1972) oyf zaytlekh 198-201 oder "Vinter-Blumen" (1976) oyf zaytlekh 116-119 beyde aroysgegebn in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Di verter unter di notn zaynen a bisl andersh. Mit grusn, Dorothy Wasserman Austin, TX 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:10:08 -0500 (EST) From: Larry Rosenwald Subject: Americanisms in Yiddish In a recent issue of Mendele [07.151], David Justman writes, "One frequently sees in Mendele attacks on anglicisms and americanisms in Yiddish. All languages, as far as I know, take from other languages, and considering the history of the Jews, it is easy to understand why Yiddish has taken more than most. Why are Americanisms caused by let's say, 20th century migrations to America somehow worse than slavicisms caused by late medieval migrations to Eastern Europe?" This reminded me of a passage in Benjamin Harshav's _The Meaning of Yiddish_: A notorious case was VINDE, adopted in America from the English "window" instead of the German-stock FENTSTER. VINDE became a symbol of barbarism to the purists but there is no objective reason why the European Yiddish VINDE for "lift" (which came to Yiddish from Russian) should be more legitimate than its homonym derived from the English "window." By the twentieth century, however, Yiddish was established in Europe as a dignified and prestigious language, and the writers fought against its vulgarization in the American Yiddish "yellow press." In contrast, Abraham Cahan, the editor of the popular _Forverts_ . . ., promoted this influx of Americanisms, absorbed into the unifying Yiddish alphabet, as the language of the masses for whom he worked. In a profound sense, Cahan was not just an opportunist: he understood the open nature of the Yiddish language, as did his readers. . . . The purist critics cannot be right because the whole conception of uncontaminated Yiddish - and the sometimes whimsical norms imposed onit - are a very recent development indeed and vary from one writer to another (65-66). Best, Larry Rosenwald 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:07:35 -0500 (EST) From: ACHIM1 Subject: buflfish The Yiddish "buflfish" might be the equivalent of German "Bueffelfisch" and English "buffalo fish." Joachim Neugroschel 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 18:02:28 EST From: Savoyid@aol.com Subject: Buffalofish I'm responding to Pinchos Melnick un zayn froy Khane regarding the English equivalent of a fish called _bofl_ which was commonly chopped up by hand in the preparation of _gefilte fish_. I believe it is the buffalofish, a large fish in the carp family. It must always be eaten _mit a bisl khreyn_. Which brings to mind a parody of a song from "My Fair Lady" which goes thusly: THE PAIN OF KHREYN IS MAINLY INHUMANE. Al Grand 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 18:17:28 -0500 From: Serge Mitelman Subject: Kishinev and bobe-manses. S'yz mir a khidesh, vus der khushever khover Fridhandler ot ibergefirt Keshenev kin Ukraine, yn nokh merer - kin Poyln (Vol.07.152). Aza manse! Keshenev yn meshekh fyn zan geshikhte ot tsikh gefinen yn Moldove (1991-yetst), der "moldavisher sovetisher sot sialistisher republik" (kerts geredt - ratnfarband, 1940-1991), der rumenisher monarkhie (1918-1940), di rislendishe (1812-1917 vi a guberniale kroynshtut) yn otomanishe (biz 1812) imperies. Di ershte khronik-bamerking fyn ot der shtut (yfshriftn af berest, tsi vus?) shtamt nokh fyn 1466 (tuznt fir yndert zeks yn zekhtsik!), yn der numen aleyn kimt arus fyn dym olt-terkishn vort far kvol oder kernetse. Oyb tsi redn fyn der gontse mekoyme, dus eyst Besarabye, yz zi gur amul arangegon yn bashtand fynem moldavishn firshtntum, yn afile yn der groyser roymisher imperie, nukh deym vi Dakie yz gefoln inter di kirasn fyn di legionern azh fynem imperator Trayan. Me shmist, az di kadmoynishe fisdrikn zenen dortn oykhet gefinen gevorn! Nor Poyln?! Oder Krayne?! Yn ire besere tsatn yz Poyln geveyn bagrenetst mit deym Nester: di linkbregike shlyakhte yn di rekhtbregike terkn. Yn Keshenev, tsirikgezugt, gefint tsekh dofke af der rekhter zat! Di ortike bafelkering anshlist khits idn oykh moldavones, tsiganers, bulgarn, gagauzn (aza min tyurkishe, pravoslavne felkershaft), grikhn, armener, - vus zey ole voynen mer-veyniker kompakt; yn, farshteyt tsykh, di olfaronene risn yn ukrainer, vus zey in eynym rifn zekh katsopn. Keyn shim polyakn yz dortn keynmul nisht geveyn! Yn nokh vater. Ir vet mikh rifn knyaknisl, nor i yn Basarabye i yn Podolye zugt men "manses" yn nisht "maynses" (vus fara "maynses" yn Keshenev?). Interestingly, this word - manse - also belongs to the Russian underground argot ("enchke-lushn"), in the se nse of "piste manses", though. Since it was likely introduced in there in Odessa (as were most other Yiddish words), it is pronounced in Russian as "mansa" (sing.) and "mansy" (pl.). It was used once quite extensively in the Russian criminal lore and son gs ("blatnaya pesnya", see/listen to A.Rozenbaum, A. Severny, et al.), but has made its way into the contemporary belles-lettres as well. See, for instance, Sergei Dovlatov - one of the most prominent modern Russian authors: "Zona (Zapiski nadziratelya)"/ "The Prison Camp (Notes of a Warder)", written in early 1960s (Collection of Prose in 3 Volumes, Limbus Press, St. Petersburg, 1995 - v.1, p.83). The idiom ( "Don't throw your manses around") is omitted in the English transla! tion. As a footnote: S.Dovlatov was born in Ufa, Bashkir Republik, and lived in Leningrad when the book was being written, - to be sure of the word's geography. Anshuldikt, az di transliteratsie yz ba mir tsi fonetish. Ikh bin ober du maskim mit ynzer reb Motele Czernevitzer. Mit derekh-erets, Shaya Mitelman. 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 18:57:11 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Spelling, pronunciation, dialects As a linguist (and I won't apologize for being one!), I have to point out that we take the spoken language to be the REAL language and the written language (which after all only a minority of the world's languages have ever developed) to be an interesting but strictly secondary development. And above all, since people normally learn to speak long before they learn to read or write, it makes no sense whatever to ask why people do not speak the way the spelling is. Rather the question must always be the reverse: why do so many languages write words differently from the way they are spoken. And the answer is usually one and the same: spelling often reflects the way the language USED TO BE pronounced. The ayin in mayse is no different from the k- and the -gh- in the English knight. A long time mayse was pronouced with a real phonetic ayin and no nasal, much as a long time ago English knight was pronounced "knikht". That spoken language is NOT a reflection of the written but the other way around and that most if not all oddities and irregularities of any language (including but not restricted to those of the spelling) are almost always in essence anachronisms, relics of the past, living dinosaurs, if you will, are two of the basic discoveries of 19th cent linguistics. But for some reason unlike other basic scientific discoveries of that time, these are not normally taught in our educational system (except in linguistics and anthro depts of our universities) and in fact what IS taught (if anything) is the EARLIER, ahistorical and writing-oriented views that date back to the Greeks. The same applies to almost everything else to do with language. The language lore of our grammars and dictionaries and schools (again with the exception of technical work by linguists and anthropologists) is hardly different from what was taught by the Greeks. The ideas of etymology which the general public is exposed to and which I have been fighting here on Mendele, for example, are exactly those found in Plato's dialogue Cratylus (as are the popular ideas of how languages change and how they come to resemble each other). Of course, in physics and biology we no longer teach the theories of Plato's student Aristotle, and I do not know how this connect between modern science and popular knowledge occurred in the case of language, but I do regard it as the duty of every linguist to do his/her best to fight the good fight to remedy this situation. Yiddishists are probably as good an audience as we can hope for precisely because Standrd Yiddish has such a tenuous hold (compared to that of most standard European languages) and because so many Yiddishists are so unabashedly fond of their native dialects--and hence should be more receptive than most other Westerners to the teachings of a science that gives dialects their rightful place. A M Ramer 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 00:10:52 -0800 From: Meyer Wolf Subject: shayle In Mendele Vol 07.155, Hugh Denman asks where Yehoyesh-Spivak's pointing of shayle comes from. I cannot point to an attestation of the spelling with pasekh and khatef-pasekh in a Loshn-Koydesh text, but a pointing with shwa under the shin and komets under the alef is registered in Jastrow. This puts the word in the same class as dayge, whose classical pointing is the same and which similarly failed to end up in Yiddish as *doge or the like. raye also should have wound up as *roye, but the yud hides the development of /ay/. In a reversal (if that's what it really is), what should have been *balebayes shows up as balebos, while *taynes shows up as tones. Meyer-Leyb Wolf 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 08:49:46 -0500 (EST) From: Arnold Kuzmack Subject: a shayle Hugh Denman asks about the pointing of 'shayle' in the Hebrew text of Yehoyesh. I checked my CD-ROM of the Tanakh text for every occurrence of shin-alef-lamed-heh and did not see the pointing that Hugh refers to (pasakh under the shin and khataf-pasakh under the alef) at all. Where did this occur? Is it only a typo, perhaps? Arnie Kuzmack 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 09:03:12 -0400 (EDT) From: daroskies@JTSA.EDU Subject: Sutzkever's "Di blayene platn fun roms drukeray" The historicity of this poem is discussed in my book AGAINST THE APOCALYPSE: RESPONSES TO CATASTROPHE IN MODERN JEWISH CULTURE (Harvard, 1984), pp. 251-52. For those who prefer to have everything at their fingertips: it never happened. My source is the late Abba Kovner who wrote to me on August 22, 1983 that in the Vilna ghetto one could scarcely find an oven in which to warm up one's tsholnt, let alone a blast furnace in which to melt down lead for bullets. In my analysis of the poem, I argue that the truth of Sutzkever's poem transcends its facticity. David G. Roskies ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.157 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