Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 52 July 26, 1991 1) Various (Mikhl Herzog) 2) Nokhamol un videramol (Raphael Finkel) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 22:24 EDT From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: Vol 1.50 Noyekh, In my relative seclusion, the news about Bashevis reached me through you. It will be interesting to see just when I will learn of it in some other way. Thank you MENDELE. Lomir ober hern besere bsures. Would you be good enough to provide some details. There still remains an important link, by the way; Avrom Sutzkever, zol er lebn un zayn gezunt. In explanation for my "seclusion", I offer the excuse of total immersion in preparing the Yiddish dialect Atlas for publication. I'm delighted to tell you that I've just completed the manuscript of Volume 1, and am off to the publisher, with volume (& disk) in hand, on August 5. If all goes well, I'll tell you "all about it" (and about Volumes 2 & 3) right after Rosheshone. Concerning Yiddish Fayvush, I "prefer" "Phoebus" only because I want to spread the honors around: Khayim is already represented by "Faytl" (often disguised as Vidal, Vitali/y, etc. I don't have any other basis for choosing between Phoebus and vivus, although "the folk" (whoever they are) have made their choice through the pairing with Shrage, in Ivrit, with Uri. By the way, I think that Edward Stankiewicz, who writes about Yiddish names in "The Field of Yiddish", vol. 3, also prefers "vivus". zay gezunt, Mikhl PS: I wrote the above at about 7 pm on Thursday. At 8 I received a telephone call from the city and, among other things, had to elicit the news of IBS's death. "It was all over the Times this morning, etc." Of course, the Times I read this morning was the early edition, which reminded me of a story worth retelling, particularly for anyone out there who knew a dear friend, now deceased, Alexander ("Olek") Erlich. He was an economist at Columbia University, grandson of Shimon Dubnow, and son of . . . he was once introduced by an overenthusiastic chairman as "the son of Erlich and Alter". Driving him home late one night, I stopped to pick up "tomorrow's" New York Times and asked him if he'd like a copy. In his inimitable, Russian accented, precise English bass, he replied that he had stopped buying the early edition of the Times since he had once spent a whole day at home without knowing that Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union. 2)---------------------------------------------------- ************************* Slicha, Raphael, un a dank dir, Dovid Sherman. It appears that the editor has goofed again and rendered Raphael's beautiful Yiddish characters illegible. Af Yidish iz beser gezogt: ikh hob fun zey gemakht blote. Here's another try. ************************* Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1991 11:30:59 EDT From: Raphael Finkel Subject: RE: Vol 1.50 1. yidtype.c. If you compile the program using a C compiler, you will have some software that will turn input looking like a SAneM dank into output looking like ___ _ _ _ ____ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , / | ,\| | | | | | | | | | | | ,\| |/ _| |_\ | |__| _|/ _| |/_/ |_\ | If you also have the 'sed' program available, then using recast.sed will let you type in the more legible a sheynem dank and get the same result. If you don't have C available, the program is useless. 2. Borukh-habe. Might be the origin of 'brouhaha', but it is in doubt. I expect that 'copacetic' really does come from 'kol beseder', however. 3. Shrage-fayvel. The fact that the two are combined implies to me that they are synonymous. I trust the Phoebus version. I dimly recollect that Phoebus and Apollo were not always the same. Even if Shrage is a relexification (what a great word!) for Uri, it still means light. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.52