Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 17.015
December 4, 2007

1) Plefki (Edie Wolkovitz)
2) "break a leg" (Martin Jacobs)
3) forshteler (Roberta Newman)
4) forshteler (Zulema Seligsohn)
5) forshteler (Leybl Botwinik)
6) forshteler (Lyuba Dukker)
7) lokshn (Leon T Rosenberg)
8) bine-shprakh (Shane Baker)
9) bine-shprakh (Larry Friedman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  October 25, 2007
Subject: Plefki

My mother used to refer to the shoym that appeared on milk when it was
boiled as "plefki."  Has anyone else heard this word in Yiddish?

Thank you.

Edie Wolkovitz

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: November 1, 2007
Subject: "break a leg"

Is there an expression which one traditionally says (or said) to Yiddish
actors as they were about to go on stage, just as in English we say "break
a leg"?  (I am not, of course, asking for a literal translation of "break a
leg", but an expresson which is, or was, used among Yiddish actors in
similar circumstances.)

Martin Jacobs

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: November 1, 2007
Subject: forshteler

Anita DiBianco writes inquiring about the origin of the term "farshteler"
(perhaps, "forshteler"?) used to describe people who accompanied the
screening of silent films by explaining and commenting on the action shown
in the movie. While I can't shed light on the etymology of the term, I'd
like to direct her to a lengthy depiction of "forshteln" that appears in
Israel Rabon's novel, The Street (Di gas), first published in Warsaw in
1928.  The protagonist is hired by a movie theater in Lodz as a reciter who
"speaks through a hole in the screen" for "workers who can't read the
titles." (See the English translation by Leonard Wolf, Schocken, 1985);
pages 88-89; 107-114; 125-127.)

Roberta Newman

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: November 3, 2007
Subject: forshteler

In my post of October 2 in Mendele 17.013, there was a transcription error
which led to the post making no sense.  The following is my original post:

For Anita Di Bianco

The word is forshteler, the person who acts a specific role, with the basic
meaning of "bringing forward".   Farshteln is to cover up, but that there
is a pun or an underlying connection in forshteln, which is used only to
refer to performances, is an academic exercise in my view. I do not believe
they are related.

Zulema Seligsohn

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 7, 2007
Subject: forshteler

"forshteler" = one who presents/shows something

"farshteler" = one who hides/covers something

"a forshtelung" = a show, often combined as in "teater-forshtelung"=
theatrical performance/play

Thanks

Leybl Botwinik

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 24, 2007
Subject: forshteler

I think that the word in question is forshteler, somebody who presents,
introduces - a host, conferencier, master of ceremonies.  In modern
American Yiddish it also has a meaning of a producer.

Lyuba Dukker

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: November 2, 2007
Subject: lokshn

Re: the lokshn and pasta and money issue.  One may continue the list with
English dough.

Leon T Rosenberg

8)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  November 3, 2007
Subject: bine-shprakh

Rebecca Fletcher asks several questions about how, when and why Voliner
Yiddish became the primary dialect of the Yiddish stage. Keeping in mind
that I'm no linguist, I'll attempt an answer.

One important reason is that many of the early greats of the stage spoke it
as their native Yiddish (Thomashefsky and Adler, to name two). Voliner
Yiddish is also closest to the "heymish" Yiddish of the majority of
speakers. It's easily enough understood by Polish Yiddish speakers and
Carpathian Yiddish speakers, and more easily understood by speakers of
Lithuanian Yiddish than either of those two dialects.

But the Voliner dialect used during the heyday of the Yiddish stage was not
necessarily a "true" Voliner Yiddish: one would not usually hear [derkh]
for "durkh" or [berikes] for "burikes" on the stage as one might on the
street.

Although Voliner was perhaps the natural choice for the stage dialect, it
did not become "the rule" until the very late 19th and early 20th
centuries, when the idea of a consistent dialect was promoted, along with
other ideals for a "better Yiddish theater",  as promoted by, among others,
Peretz. One can read complaints about mixtures of dialects confusing
performances, with a mother speaking Lithuanian Yiddish to children who
speak Polish Yiddish, and so forth and so on, and calls for consistency if
the stage were to be taken seriously.

In the performance of songs and poetry, however, Voliner Yiddish is
particularly important, because many writers, particularly for the theater,
depended on it for rhymes (perhaps most importantly in the case of [u] to
[i] than [o] to [u]). Even the famous "Sabesdiker- losn"-speaking Arn
Lebedev respected this rule. He may have shouted "Zol zayn sa!" at the
beginning and "sheyn" (shoyn) at the end of a performance, but in between
he sang "Skrip, klezmerl, skripe, shpil a freylekhs tsi der khipe".  Recent
productions and performances in which modern literary Yiddish is used for
traditional theater and folk songs make very little sense, with the rhymes
either distorted, or upheld in contradiction to the rest of the
pronunciation.

Even after Voliner became the rule, however, there were various exceptions,
the foremost among them being the Vilna Troupe and the Moscow State Yiddish
Art Theater, both of which used (their versions of) literary Yiddish on the
stage, a modified Lithuanian Yiddish in which the [oy] to [ey] change is
corrected (and hypercorrected) and the distinction between hushing and
hissing consonants is upheld. Keep in mind, however, that these theaters
concentrated not on musicals, but straight dramas. The founding members of
the Vilna Troupe maintained their literary Yiddish as best they could even
after the troupe split up, carrying it to the troupes they formed whenever
possible, and learning/using the Voliner dialect only when joining other
companies, which often presented problems. Joseph Buloff, working with
Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, was know to joke in exasperation
about "der almekhtiker GUT in himl".

Furthermore, Schwartz was known to experiment with other dialects when
appropriate: Luba Kadison recounts great difficulties with learning to
speak the deep Polish Yiddish required for the Art Theatre's production of
Yoshe Kalb ([yakh] for "ikh" and so forth).

Another prominent example of performers who did not use Voliner Yiddish,
from the kleynkunst stage, would be Dzigan and Shumakher, who performed in
the Lodz dialect (and to great effect) for the length of their careers.

Indeed, stars may have always enjoyed a certain latitude in their choices
of dialect, especially before the heyday of the Yiddish stage and after its
decline. If one listens to recordings of Ben Bonus and Mina Bern's Broadway
production "Let's Sing Yiddish" from the mid 1960s, he performs
consistently in his natural "Tote-mome" Yiddish and she varies between her
native Lithuanian Yiddish and the Voliner Yiddish she's perfectly capable
of speaking. The rest of the cast performs in the Voliner dialect.

Voliner Yiddish has not ceased to be the ideal dialect for Yiddish
performance; however, young performers' lack of familiarity with it and
inability to speak it consistently, combined with the use of scripts in
standard transcription (which is, in theory, "super- dialectical" but in
practice heavily weighted toward literary pronunciation) have done a number
on Voliner Yiddish. How is one to know, for instance, that the first "o" of
"opkokhn" is pronounced [u] and the second pronounced [o]? When is "nokh"
[nokh] and when is it [nukh]? (Hint: more vs. after) Most younger
performers learn the language at the various summer courses, where literary
Yiddish is taught. There's no academy for Yiddish actors, and the Hebrew
Actors Union for years pushed away younger members, so there was little
chance to learn it by practice. If you happen to have been born with
Voliner as your "mame-loshn," that's great. Otherwise, you've got a lot of
work ahead of you and you'd better be listening to a lot of old recordings
and spending as much time with native speakers, or linguists like Paul
Glasser and Dovid Braun, as you can.

Mitn rekhtn fus,

Shane Baker

9)----------------------------------------------------
Date:  November 4, 2007
Subject: bine-shprakh

The question "should one" implies "which one is 'right'?" The answer to
that is simple: both r's are "right" in Yiddish, the uvular r being more
common in northern accents, and the rolled r more common in southern
accents. In song, however, there is some gray territory.

Most other languages that use the uvular r in speech (French, some accents
of German) use the rolled r in classical singing, but the uvular r in more
popular music (Danish, which uses the uvular r in speech, seems to use it
as well in classical singing). Yiddish does not have a long history of art
song or opera. My own thought would be that if the singer tends to use the
rolled r in speech, it should be retained in song. If s/he uses the uvular
r in speech, it depends on how "classical" s/he wishes to sound in song.
The more declamatory, aria-like songs might sound better with a rolled r,
but the more street-oriented, down-to-earth, comic songs might do better
with the uvular r.

As for the pronunciation at the end of the word, it again depends on which
r is being used. To pronounce the word completely and carefully using a
rolled r, it is sometimes necessary to pronounce it rather strongly. If,
however, the uvular r is being used, the presence of an r can be suggested
with a very light fricative.

One person's opinion.

Larry Friedman
______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol.17015


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