Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 117 December 9, 1992 1) Phonetics (Arn Abramson) 2) Neger, shikse/sheygets (Shleyme Axelrod) 3) Shikse/sheygets (Bob Werman) 4) Shikse/sheygets (Bob Werman) 5) Shikse/sheygets (Jascha Kessler) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 08 Dec 92 14:07:01 EST From: Arthur Subject: How to pronounce khurbm To Yitzhak Kertesz: Your Hungarian lips need not keep yopu from pronouncing khurbm, hobm,etc. In addition to reading what I wrote in my phonetic explanation, try this: Say the Yiddish syllable hob. Now do it again, but right after pronouncing the final /b/, keep your lips closed and do a brief,quick hum.When you first do it, it may sound like hob+pause+mmm.Now do it quickly so that there is no pause between the /b/ and the hum.YOU MUST KEEP YOUR LIPS CLOSED THROUGH THE /bm/CLUS TER. Arn Abramson 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 08 Dec 1992 14:27:29 -0500 (EST) From: Seymour Axelrod Subject: Neger, shikse/sheygets Although it is sometimes difficult to convince people that it is not derogatory, the Yiddish *neger* appears--or at least used to appear--as a purely descriptive term. E.g., in Itsik Manger's version of *Di goldene pave*, and in Yos[e]l Cutler's poem *Nekst*, about lynching, published in his book *Muntergang* (1934). Cutler was a communist who in NYC in the thirties would certainly have avoided a racist term. (He was, by the way, also the artist who did that terrific poster, reproduced some years ago by YIVO, for the *Idisher Kunst Teater* production of Goldfaden's *Tsvey Kuni-Lemels*.) Weinreich gives the word, without a usage warning. ellen prince's argument with respect to *sheygets* and *shikse*, that it's not the word that offends (or delight) but what is predicated about those to whom the words are applied, is surely correct. But, just as surely, there are circumstances in which it would be downright rude to apply such words to those who are likely to be offended by them. In particular, it would be graceless to refer to a non-Jewish woman in her hearing as a *shikse*, if for years she has heard the term used only derogatorily, never mind the intended neutrality this time. And in the special case of the woman who has undertaken the intellectual and emotional work of converting to Judaism, the term seems especially likely to distress, and of dubious validity into the bargain. Shleyme Axelrod 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Dec 92 21:37 +0200 From: RWERMAN%HUJIVMS.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Shikse/sheygets Ellen Prince, despite looking a shikse, and perhaps even being right (for what it is worth, I tend to agree with her feeling) when she says that the words shikse, sheygets and goy are not intrinsically evil, I think her sociological explanation, when she writes as follows, is wrong: >....... (a friend of mine teaches kindergarten in a black >inner city school. the tiny little girls refuse to play in >the yard in the spring--for fear of getting darker from the >sun. taking the dominant group's esthetic metric is not >unique to jews...) ********************************** Having lived among the Japanese, I found that matters are much more complex. They are certainly dominent and totally intolerant of foreigners; they will not allow their children to marry Koreans who are descendents of families that immigrated in the 17th century or even Japanese descended from tanners or butchers of that century. Or allow them good jobs. They hate Americans but name their "best" imitation Scotch whiskey, "America." Their fine women walk with umbrellas to keep their skins light. They admire a tribe of supposed aborigines living on the northern island of Hokkaido, the Inu, who are supposed to have blue eyes and more developed beards (they saw the differences but I could not). They will undergo plastic surgery to make their eyes "round." What is the dominent esthetic metric here? And Jews are still hedging their bets, siding with today's powerful in diaspora, and being forced to come to grips with tomorrow's powerful. The Jews of Quebec who identified with Anglos suddenly found themselves almost disenfranchised by an emergent Francophone population. Amusingly North African French speaking Jews do much better there now. And the Jews of Pressburg who spoke Hungarian as their non- Yiddish tongue while the natives all spoke Slovak and the Jews of Satmar who spoke Hungarian while the locals spoke Roumanian? "When will they ever learn?", says the song. ...and an aside on the topic of shikse/schwartze. My wife's aunt understood shikse to mean servent girl in her native Germany; when she had to contend with a black cleaning lady in the States she felt the necessity of noting the change. She referred to her, without additional prejudice, as the shwartze shikse. __Bob Werman rwerman@hujivms.bitnet rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il Jerusalem 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Dec 92 21:50 +0200 From: RWERMAN%HUJIVMS.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Shikse/sheygets Lewis Leavitt writes: >shaygets/shikse is a "default" description of those people >who are "other"---unless specially and specifically >modified by fayne(r),shayne(r) etc. it is a pejorative >term. **************************************** For those who may have forgotten, OTHER is not always pejorative. Has this not been the debate that Jews have engaged in with their neighbors these thousands of years? If my memory serves me, the Jews defended their otherness as a very positive quality. Not a pejorative. __Bob Werman rwerman@hujivms.bitnet rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il Jerusalem 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 08 Dec 92 12:01 PST From: KESSLER Subject: Shikse/sheygets On the other side of this matter, there is affection and love: i.e., meine shikseleh, a susse sheygetseh, etc. Jascha Kessler ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.117