Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 09.028 September 14, 1999 1) Festschrift for Alexis Manaster Ramer (Fabrice Cavoto) 2) MLA Bibliography (Yossi Galron) 3) Yiddishisms in Russian (Alice Nakhimovsky) 4) dybbuk (Caraid O'Brien) 5) Learn the Alef-Beys (Lucas Bruyn) 6) translation (Julia Pascal) 7) Jewish Haikus (Michoel Ronn) 8) "shmoktelyakes" (Jack Berger) 9) Introduction (Ephroim Glaser) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 02:54:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Fabrice Cavoto Subject: Festschrift for Alexis Manaster Ramer: Call for Papers. My name is Fabrice Cavoto, and I am contacting you to announce you that I have decided to edit and arrange publication for a Festschrift for Alexis Manaster Ramer. As Alexis has worked in many different disciplines of linguistics, the book will be divided into several sections, including the following: -Mathematical Linguistics -Theoretic. linguistics -Comparative/Historical Linguistics: papers on any aspect of historical linguistics are welcome, but I particularly hope to represent the areas in which Alexis has been active, such as Indo-European (especially Armenian), Yiddish, Uto-Aztecan, and wider constructs, such as Nostratic and its daughter language families. -Anthropological Linguistics and Anthropology -Phonetics and Phonology -Misc./Other categories. (pidgins, creoles, computational linguistics, etc.) I am currently trying to contact potential publishers. However, in order to approach some important publishers more easily, I will need to have a list of potential contributors as soon as possible. The deadline for the receipt of all papers is 1 July 2000. It is of crucial importance that you let me know as soon as possible (before Monday 4 October 1999) if you plan to contribute to this Festschrift. Given the wide variety of the subjects in which Alexis Manaster Ramer has worked, we would like to have as many contributions to this Festschrift as possible. Needless to say the number of contributions will also be relevant for finding a publisher. I hope you will accept to contribute to the Festschrift, which is meant in a spirit of loyalty and gratitude to Alexis Manaster Ramer, one of the leading figures in every linguistic field he has been working on. Looking forward to your answer. Fabrice Cavoto Kobenhavn, Danmark 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 11:39:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Yossi Galron Subject: MLA Bibliography MLA International Bibliography Call for Bibliographers The MLA Bibliography is in need of bibliographers to index Hebrew- and Yiddish-language material in the subject areas of language, literature, linguistics, and folklore. The bibliography is compiled by MLA staff members and by a network of over 120 scholars worldwide. Bibliographers cover a group of periodicals in their own fields and submit their indexing to the MLA office. The MLA staff fosters a cooperative working arrangement with bibliogaphers that allows them to offer work based on their individual specialties. Those who contribute to this effort provide an important service both to individual scholars and to the international scholarly community. To acknowledge bibliographers' contributions the MLA sends the printed volumes of the bibliography for the years that they have contributed. For information on contributing to the bibliography write to Terence Ford, Editor, MLA International Bibliography, 10 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003; ford@mla.org Joseph (Yossi) Galron Columbus, Ohio 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 09:18:06 -0400 (EDT) From: Alice Nakhimovsky Subject: Yiddishisms in Russian For an essay about a Russian-Jewish writer, I need information about certain Yiddishisms as they filter into Russian (particularly its Odessa variant). Are there any essays I could read? Articles on Yiddish-to-English would also be helpful. I'm interested mostly in syntactic borrowings and translations of idioms and set phrases. If you like, reply directly to me. Alice Nakhimovsky Hamilton, NY 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 18:46:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "Caraid O'Brien" Subject: dybbuk To Michael Steinlauf: To find out more about the original production of The Dybbuk by the Vilna Troupe - you should read the book On Stage, Off Stage, Memories of a Lifetime in the Yiddish Theater, written by the last surviving member of the company Luba Kadison. You can order it from Harvard University Press. In addition to appearing in the world premiere, Luba Kadison is the daughter of Vilna Troupe cofounder, Leib Kadison and the widow of actor Joseph Buloff. She has a chapter about the Dybbuk in her book. Miriam Orleska died in a death camp with the business manager and cofounder of the Vilna Troupe Mordechai Mazo after being transported there from the Warsaw ghetto. Sincerely, Caraid O'Brien New York 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 06:19:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Marion Troia Subject: Learn the Alef-Beys. Recently Noyekh Miller has urged the readers of the Mendele List to learn the Alef-Beys. [Vol. 9.026: Now's the time to learn the Yiddish alef-beys] Are there really such people who cannot read the Hebrew characters which are used to write Yiddish, but know how to read and write Yiddish in the Roman alphabet? Who are they? Why did they never learn the Hebrew equivalents of the Roman alphabet? Should they learn the Hebrew Alef-Beys? I think that there are probably two groups of people who know Yiddish, but not the Hebrew script. The first and probably most numerous group consists of people who had Yiddish as their 'mame-' or 'bobe-loshn', but who were never taught the Hebrew script or how to read and write the language. The second group consists of people who took up the study of Yiddish at a later age and fearing the difficulty of learning a new script decided to make do with Yiddish in Roman script. This group might include people of the first group. There is no way that someone knowing spoken Yiddish could read or write Yiddish in Roman script, when only educated in reading and writing the English language. The spelling system used for Yiddish, in Hebrew or Roman script, is, as in most European languages, quite regular. One sound is basically represented by one letter or combination of letters. If more than one sound is attributed to one letter, the sound can be determined by the position of the letter in the word. This fundamental idea is only partially realised in the English spelling system. Someone who has not studied the Yiddish spelling system can not correctly encode the spoken word or decode the written word. Those who have mastered reading and writing Yiddish in Roman script, who know the spelling rules and what pronunciation goes with the Roman script when it is used to write Yiddish, only have to learn the Hebrew equivalents of the Roman letters in order to use standard dictionaries, get access to Yiddish literature in Hebrew script and to correspond with Yiddish speakers who don't know the Roman script. Is it hard to learn the Hebrew script? Is it hard to learn to use the script? Not really. There are 24 basic characters plus 5 variants indicating a different letter, plus an additional 5 characters that double other letters, but are used at the end of a word. As in our Roman script, there are 'printed' characters and 'handwritten' characters, but there are no capital letters in either. The Hebrew script is written from right to left, which normally causes some problems reading Hebrew text in the beginning. The eye of the reader who is accustomed to reading Roman left to right script might have some problems finding the next line in a text. Scan-reading or looking for a particular place in the text remains difficult. Learning to read and write Hebrew script is not more difficult than learning the Russian or Greek script. Since all alphabetic writings in existence have a common ancestor in the Phoenician script, the idea is clear, it just takes some practice. With the aid of a primer one could learn five or more characters a day, get the alef-beys down in a week and become a 'mayven' within a month - a bit depending on the time available. The advantages of learning the Hebrew script are obvious, are there disadvantages? Yes, in non-Soviet Yiddish publications the 'loshn-koydesh' words are given in the standard Hebrew spelling, without vowels. Unless one recognises the word, there is no way to determine the pronunciation. Moreover, six characters of the alef-beys (veys, khes, kof, sin, tof, sof,) are exclusively used in writing 'loshn-koydesh' words. In Roman transliteration and in Soviet spelling these letters are identical to six others, (vov, khof, kuf, samekh, tes, samekh). For those who don't know Hebrew this is a difficulty. On the other hand, these words can be looked up in standard dictionaries, that give the pronunciation in Roman script. To my knowledge there is no dictionary that gives all words of this type either in romanised form or in Soviet Hebrew script spelling. As indicated above, the contents of the Hebrew Alef-Beys as used for Yiddish and the Romanised Alef-Beys are not exactly the same. Six letters are 'missing'. The YIVO Roman transcription, the standard for 'Romanised Yiddish', is further not a transcription whereby each Hebrew character is replaced by a Roman character. For instance, the 'khof', 'tsadek' and 'shin', single characters in the Hebrew script, are represented by the combined characters 'kh', 'ts' and 'sh' in transcription. The initial 'alef' as vowel support is omitted in transcription. The 'combined vowels' of the Hebrew script are not transcribed as originally written: 'tsvey yudn' becomes 'ey'; 'tsvey yudn mitn pasek' - 'ay'; the sequence 'vov-yud' - 'oy' etc. Apart from these differences in transcription, the YIVO spelling or 'oysleyg' is the same, whether one uses the Hebrew or the Roman characters. The YIVO transcription or Romanisation is, as witnessed by many contibutions over the years in the Mendele list, misunderstood by some. Some people find fault with the YIVO transcription because one has to write some words in a different way than they are pronounced. An example is the spelling of 'oyf', pronounced 'af'. Spelled in Hebrew characters the same problem exists, if one spells correctly. Hebrew script is not better to represent alternative pronunciations used by certain groups of Yiddish speakers. The YIVO transcription is not 'phonetic' in more or less detail than the Hebrew script. It certainly is not a system based on the American spelling rules, as some people seem to think. The Hebrew script is not basically better than the Romanisation - the YIVO transcription is at least fully compatible with the Soviet system to write Yiddish in Hebrew script. The only thing one could say is that Yiddish is Yiddish, a language of old written in the Hebrew script. The only reason not to use Hebrew script is not having a Hebrew typewriter or a computer that can handle it. (The YIVO transcription was thought up in pre-computer days and clearly aims at making it possible to type Yiddish on a Roman script typewriter, without using diacritics. A solution for computer use would aim at automatic transcription from Roman to Hebrew by changing fonts). Lucas Bruyn. 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 16:57:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Pascal7038@aol.com Subject: translation I am not having any luck finding a fund that will pay a translator to translate Joseph Schein's book on S. Mihoels. Is there anyone willing to translate for free so that the book can be shown to a publisher. In this way the translator would have the fee later. Of course this is a risk. But it means we can read about this vitally important Yiddish actor Please let me know Julia Pascal 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 17:49:41 -0400 (EDT) From: chromelion@juno.com Subject: Jewish Haikus Regarding the quotations previously submitted from David M. Bader's book, _Haikus for Jews_, probably the most meaningful haiku to those subscribing to Mendele is the one appering on the last page of the book: Yenta, Shmeer, Gevalt, Shlemiel, Shlimazl, Tochis, Oy! To be fluent! Yours truly, Michoel Ronn Brooklyn, NY 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 10:36:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Jack Berger Subject: "shmoktelyakes" In response to Jason Payne [09.027]. Might this be "shmokhtelyakes" ? I recollect "shmokhteh" as a variation of "shmatteh" in my household. In which case, I would think that "shmoktelyakes" might be knick-knacks on the desk (i.e. objects without any intrinsic utility). A related concept is, "shmontzkehs" which I have heard aplied to costume jewelry aka "the better-type cheap junk" (a Myron Cohen sobriquet). Regards Jack Berger 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 00:27:12 -0400 (EDT) From: EPHRAIM GLASER Subject: Introduction Friends, It is my first encounter with the Mendele group. My love for Yiddish is still there, even after more than 50 years since I live in Israel. Along the sad reality of the decline of the Yiddish language, it is a great confort to see the interest it raises among young scholars. I will of course follow with great interest your publication and would like to offer my assistance in any way I can. Mit a fraindlichen griss Ephroim Glaser ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 09.028 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://metalab.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html