Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 160 February 3, 1992 1) Moyde ani (Dovid Braun) 2) Standard Yiddish (Moishe-Nussen Eytan) 3) Standard Yiddish (Ellen Prince) 4) Addenda (Mikhl Herzog) 5) 'Mortkhe' (Meylekh Viswanath) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 02 Feb 92 21:48:14 EST From: David Braun Subject: moyde ani A propos M. Herzog's mention of MOYDE ANI: When saying MOYDE ANI, the pronunciation (from Yiddish-speakers) that I have heard is, no surprise: mo'yde a'ni le'fane'kho etc. etc. When calling the tfile by its name, I know of it (fun der heym -- Yiddish from Grodne/Byalistok, "White Russia/Northern Poland") as moydeni'. In fact, there's a children's rhyme: moydeni' kurtse kni. moyshe yokhes, kush in tokhes. (I'm not sure what the context is for this rhyme to be said in.) Does anyone else know of this pronunciation for the prayer's name? Or of this rhyme, for that matter? And: If I remember correctly, moyshe yokhes comes from the sider as well, only I've forgotten from where. Anyone know? --Dovid Braun 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 3 Feb 92 08:36:36 GMT From: me@suzuka.u-strasbg.fr Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.157 I suggest the people on the list who ganged up on me for daring to use non-'standard' (*whose* standard?) yiddish, write furious protests to the editors of Lifshe Schaechter-Widman {Lifshe Shekhter-Vidman} _Az di furst avek_ {Az du forst avek}, A Yiddish Folksinger from the Bukovina. New York: Gloval Village Music, 1987, 1990 including the the ridiculous example of Lady Prince; but as the saying goes "Le ridicule ne tue plus..." ==m-n 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 02 Feb 92 15:09:03 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.156 [Margaret Winters writes about 'standard Yiddish':] >When I studied at the Sholem Aleichem Folkshul, I was told >that we were being taught a `standard Yiddish' >pronunciation and spelling, based on the standard of the >New York Yiddish theatre. Is this a random choice, or was >the theatrical Yiddish pronunciation consciously >standardized (in the early part of the century, I would >imagine)? hi margaret. yes, it was consciously standardized. at least one guy, prilutzki, proposed a standard, and it in fact is what you hear on the stage. for all intents and purposes, it's basically volhyner yiddish. the reference is: Prilutski, N. 1927. Di yidishe bineshprakh. Yidish Teater 2.129-44. Ellen Prince 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 03 Feb 92 08:27:00 -0500 From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU Subject: Addenda 1) Leonard, one thing I forgot to mention: You refer to the Yiddish material in the Cairo Genizah as having "migrated to Cairo". Doesn't that question still remain open as far as the 14th century "Cambridge Codex" is concerned? As for the 16th century epistolary material that Khave Turnianski published, we know that that it was an exchange between Jerusalem and Cairo. 2) Dovid Braun: As for "emetser", vocalic variation is e/ey/i with "imitser" occurring outside the area normally associated with i from "E5". The same holds for the words gikh (gekh/gey(e)kh--gyakh/gikh) and im (em/eym/im). As for the alternants with tsh, I may actually have a map, but I don't think you'll find any correspondence to the phenomenon of "sabesdiker- losn". I don't know what connection it might have to variation in local Slavic-language phonology but, in the case of shmate/smate I think the answer does lie there. The variant eymitsha, where "a" is the reflex of "r"-dropping is very characteristic of the area of Brisk (i.e., Brest Litovsk): tsika, pita, futa, etc. 3) Hershl Bershady: you're referring to the "haccent" of the so-called "tote-mome" area (which is also "haich-dropping"). The expression, by the way, is "Moyshe-kapoyer" (not "kapoyre"). Why Moyshe? Who knows? Literature? Theatre? Why "yente" from a name with such "yikhes"? Theatre? Yente Telebende? Which came first? 4) Berl Hoberman: a propos of the relevance of pharyngealization, your point about the absence of nasalization in the presence of khes seems very well taken. On the subject of nasalization in Yiddish, in the absence of etymological n, there is a case of a non-Hebrew-origin word as well: may(n)ster/maanster 'master (craftsman)'. Both Weinreich and Harkavy have separate entries for "maynster"; only Weinreich varies the gloss. By the way, I haven't forgotten my promise about the reader. My office is being packed for a move. IF I have it will surface next week. 5) Ellen, concerning your reference to "drerd". In Litvish "drerd" and "dreykh" function as substantives which get their own (pleonastic?) definite articles in such expressions as "leyg es avek AFN drerd" and "der reykh ('smoke') geyt aruf INEM dreykh". 6) Moyshe-Nosn, whatever the case in Alsatian German, my tapes of Alsatian Yiddish speakers shows that the mergers (d/t, b/p) favor the lenis variant. It would be interesting to confirm the coterritorial contrast. Alsatian Yiddish is alive, if not entirely well, in Alsace. If you'd like to pursue the matter, I'll refer you to people (in Shtrasborik and elsewhere) who can be of help. 7) Finally, a propos of a recent reference to the absence of the definite article after "in"; i.e., "in hoyz" (like "inem hoyz"), means 'in THE house'. Notice that this is true of prepositions "fun" and "lebn" as well; ("arum", too, perhaps?): " a shtern iz aropgefaln fun(em) himl"; "er shteyt lebn (dem) tish". Two possible explanations: 1)"grammatical/semantic"--these are all locative constructions; cf. "er iz in hoyz/in shul/in Shikago"; ii) "phonological/morphophonemic": All Yiddish prepositions take the dative (unlike German); in the dative, preposition plus article contraction is permissible only in the masculine and neuter (again, unlike German). The form of the contraction (of preposition plus dem) is NASAL, its precise form phonologically determined: after vowels--"m"--baym, tsum; after dentals--"n"-- mitn; after labiodentals--(supply the symbol)--afn; after velars- - -"ng"--noxn, farn; after nasals--"nasals", as follows:-m+N = -men or zero (arum tish), -n+N = -nem or zero (in hoyz, fun himl). The fly in the ointment? The feminines: shul, shtot; in shul, fun shtot. The definite article is implicit but an explicit article would be either fem. dat. "der" or where fem. dat. and accus. have merged, "di": fun der shtot/fin di shtuit. Enough. Mikhl Herzog 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1992 11:24 EDT From: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.157 Yude-Leyb writes "Weinreichs and Mortkhe Shekhter"; Weinreich is in the usual romanized spelling, but Mortkhe Shekhter is not; Is this intentional or a slip? If intentional, could you throw some more light on this? Meylekh. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.160