Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 149 January 28, 1992 1) Yiddish syntax (Ellen Prince) 2) Midrashic sources of oy vey? (Lazer Segal) 3) Various (Yude-Leyb Proger) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Jan 92 11:54:46 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.146 >From: dave@lsuc.on.CA >Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.141 > >Ellen Prince writes: >> re the idea about geveyzn at the end of the verb phrase and >> geven in the middle, that's a nice project! i believe old >> yiddish had only geveyzn, and we know that old yiddish was >> verb final... > >We do? I didn't. Interesting. You mean participle final, >like modern German? i meant verb-final. old yiddish and modern german and also dutch are sov--subject, object, verb, with the extra twist that, in main clauses only, the part of the verb that carries tense moves to second position. since i don't know german, i'll give examples using english words: subordinate clauses ('basic' sov word order): ...because hans a movie sees/saw ...because hans a movie seen has ...because hans a movie see will ...because hans a movie see can main clauses (sov word order plus tensed verb in 2nd position): hans sees/saw a movie hans has a movie seen hans will a movie see hans can a movie see 'topicalized' main clause (where something other than the subject is 'topicalized' to first position; note: tensed verb is still in second position): a movie sees/saw hans a movie has hans seen a movie will hans see a movie can hans see what happened in yiddish (in the 18th century, more or less, according to beatrice santorini's dissertation) is two things: (1)the rule that says that the finite verb be in second position was extended to subordinate clauses. (2)the basic word order became svo (subject,verb,object). however, there are lots of 'remnants' of the old sov word order, which is how come geven/geveyzn can pop up at the end of the clause. more than you ever wanted to know about germanic syntax... Ellen Prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Jan 92 12:17 MST From: ELSegal@UNCAMULT.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.146 My real research in midrashic studies has ;led me into some fascinating tangents of expressions of distress in biblical and talmudic literature, including such expressions as hoy, oy, eey, vay and way, etc. All the above are well attested in classical sources, leading me to the suspicion that their later colloquial counterparts among Ashkenazim (oy vey) and Sfardim (way) may be parts of the Hebrew-Aramaic heritage rather than, as I had supposed, borrowings from the respective German\Slavic\Arabic environments. Can anyone shed light on the topic (e.g., what do we know about the use of oy and vey among the Germans and Slavs)? Lazer Segal 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Jan 92 15:05:56 IST From: leonard Subject: mendele To: Noyekh Miller Re: vol. 1, no. 144 Once we adopt the Standard Yiddish Romanization (SYR), which is keyed to Standard Yiddish (StY),some of our difficulties may disappear. The preposition _lebn_ 'near' and the verb _lebn_ 'live' are always pronounced with a final syllabic /m/ : /lebm/. But in SYR (so-called Yivo transcription, not to be confused with transliteration, which implies letter-to-letter substitution), which is morphophonemic, we romanize: lebn. Moroever, _lebn_ is one of the few prepositions (_in_ and _fun_ are two others) which does not require the masculine and neuter definite articles: _Er voynt lebn gortn_ 'He lives near the garden'. In SYR, Moishe-Nussen would romanize his name Moyshe-Nosn and everyone would pronounce it according to his own dialect/ sociolect/idiolect, etc. _Nosn_ can be pronounced /Nusn/. But regardless of whether or not M.-N. agrees to Nosn, he must acknowledge that the final _n_ is syllabic and the presence of the _e_ before it is derived from NHG and is inauthentic. Thus we should write _vos_, even though the phonological realization of the komets alef in some dialects is /u/. In other words, we all follow the same spelling (here = romanizing) conventions, and if we wish to indicate pronunciation, we use phonetic notation. Incidentally, isn't the Yiddish name Meylekh as opposed to the Hebrew Melech. It is a thorny business to suggest to others how to spell their names, but these matters are not purely arbitrary. I notice that the subject of how to romanize Yiddish is constantly being raised in _Mendele_ and we will have to keep hammering at it until we reach a a sensible and civilized consensus. The notion of spelling by ear to placate one's ancestors is touching but totally impractical -- and also inconsiderate of one's colleagues who are kept guessing what you are trying to say. Let's stick to Standard Yiddish in the Standard Yiddish Romanization. To: David Sherman Re: vol. 1, no. 145 It is, I believe, always better to borrow authentic morphemes and follow the normal neologizing patterns of a language than to accept barbarisms of the order of _boyd-vuchers_! In StY we write _gey_ even though it it pronounced /ay/ in Central (Polish) Yiddish. When we write the word in Yiddish we write it with two yods, without a pasakh = /ey/. The correct transcription is _mayn_ -- here there is a pasakh under the two yuds -- not the German _mein_. The tes + shin sound is /tsh/ and thus you would have to write _vatsher_ if you wanted to borrow English _watch_. To: Dovid Braun Re: vol. 1, no. 145 Dovid, here are the two references you requested. I give them as they appear in my _Yiddish Literary and Linguistic Periodicals and Miscellanies_ (Norwood Editions, 1982), which I believe is out of print and in any event is now undergoing revision for an expanded and corrected second edition -- for which I would appreciate the assistance of all Mendele khevre with access to Yiddish collections: _Yidish far ale; khoydeshdiker zhurnal_ 'Yiddish For All, Monthly Journal' Warsaw: 1 - 2 {= Nos. 1 - 14}; March 1938 - June / July 1939. // ed. by Noyekh Prilutski. Volume I (1938) = pp. 1-296 = 1 (March), 2 (April), 3 (May), 4 (June), 5 (July), 6/7 (August/September), 8 (October), 9 (November), 10 (December); II (1939) = pp. 1-128 = 1 {11} (January), 2 {12} (February/March), 3 {13} April/May, 4 {14} June/July. This is the first Yiddish linguistic periodical intended for the educated lay person, yet it contains a wealth of important information useful to the linguist as well. The debate over Hebraisms is aired in I, 3, 65-75 and a useful list of doublets is given in I, 10, 291-293. There is a great deal of onomastic data in these slim volumes. Contributors include: B. Braverman, Yoysef Erlikh, A. Golomb, M. Grosman, Yitskhak Grudberg, M. Kahanovitsh, Z. Kalmanovitsh, Kh.-Sh. Kazhdan, M. Landman, Yudl Mark, L. Olitski, Zalmen Reyzn, Khayim Semyatitski, Avrom Sutskever, Arn Tseytlin, Maks Vaynraykh, Sh. Vinter, Yude-A. Yofe. Rep: JNL, NN, NNYI, UH. Sources: Weinreich #33; _Yivo Bibliography 1925-1941_, New York, 1943, #2527. _Yidishe filologye: tsveykhoydeshdike bleter far shprakhvisnshaft, literaturforshung un etnografye_ {tsvey-khoydeshdike bleter far shprakh-visnshaft, literatur-forshung un etnografye}. {yiddish philology : bimonthly leaves for linguistics, literary research and ethnography} Warsaw : 1, 1 - 1, 4 / 6 {3 issues}; January / February - July / December 1924. // ed. by Noyekh Prilutski, Zalmen Reyzn, Maks Vaynraykh. This journal is the predecessor of the _Filologishe shriftn_. It was published as a single volume by Kultur-lige in Warsaw in January, 1926 with the aid of the recently organized YIVO. It belongs to the small body of indispensable source books for the student of Yiddish language, folklore and, to a lesser extent, literature. Contributors include: Shloyme Birnboym, Aleksander Harkavi, Alfred Landoy, Shmuel Leyman, Regine Lilyental, Kh. Lunski, Yitskhok Shiper, Nokhem Shtif, Yankev Viler. .sk Rep: JNL; NNYI. Sources: Kan #76; Weinreich #34. .sk I have access to these periodicals, but have not found the Prilutski article you are looking for. Both periodicals could do with indexes. Yude-Leyb Proger ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.149