Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 2 no. 163
March 19, 1993
 
1) Yo/ye (Pe'rets Mett)
2) Ye/yo (Noyekh Miller)
3) Yiddish cataloging (Yankaleh Ziso)
4) Dutsen Eltern (David Sherman)
5) Reyzl (David Sherman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri Mar 19 04:56:25 1993
From: P.Mett@open.ac.uk
Subject: Yo / ye

Berl (Bob) Hoberman writes [Mendele Vol 2.159]:

 >>Everyone knows the Yiddish word for 'yes' is /yo/ (I guess
 >>in Polish, Galitsyaner, and Ukranian dialects /yu/?).  But
 >>my grandmother, from a town a few miles west of Minsk well
 >>inside Litvish territory, said /ye/ to rhyme with /fe/
 >>'yuck' and /ikh ze/ 'I see', and insisted that this was not
 >>the English word "yeah" but genuine Yiddish.  Of course she
 >>knew /yo/, but said that's not the way it was pronounced in
 >>her dialect.  What's puzzling is that there is no regular
 >>sound change from /o/ to /e/ in Yiddish and she said /do/
 >>'here', /sho/ 'hour'.

I have not heard anyone pronounce the word as /yu/; it is
pronounced /yo/ by Poylishe/Galitsyane/Ukrainishe as far as
I know. On the other hand most Litvishe I know pronounce it
/ye/. Any way it is not cognate to "sho" and "do" which are
pronounced by Poylishe as /shu/ and /du/.

Is this any help?

pe'rets mett

(Does this spelling overcome the objections of the purists?)

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri Mar 19 09:30:04 1993
From: NMILLER@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject: Ye/yo

The first time I ever ran across 'ye' in print was in Kadya
Molodovsky's _Bam Toyer_.  It was important for her story,
which takes place in Israel in the early 50's, to distin-
guish among the various kinds of Yiddish and quasi-Yiddish
that were being spoken.  I mention this by way of a plug
for a fine writer whose approach to the novel is so
different from that of her fellow poet Chaim Grade. I
wonder if someone who knows about these matters would care
to comment.

Noyekh

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri Mar 19 09:53:39 1993
From: ZISO@ZODIAC.RUTGERS.EDU
Subject: Yiddish cataloging

Shalom u-vrakhah,

Berl H. touches on a most interesting and practical
problem, also for cataloging. In the process of cataloging
over 500 Yiddish fiction titles, imagine how many times I
am facing the decision of: The author is (p r o b a b l y.
It's something to research and know how) from Galitsya, or
Poland ...) therefore the transliteration should be for
this vowel e, u, y, i, o.

And mind you, many, many times such decisions are taken by
someone who couldn't care less, or know more, about such
issues. I  donnot want to belabor the very clear
explanations of Berl H. about morphological alterations and
questions of comprehensibility, but I think you get my
drift as far as the need to be informed and acutely aware
of such questions in Yiddish transliterations. That can
explain a few of the misscomprehensibilities on OCLC/RLIN.
But do you want explanations, or correct access ?

I promise to not become a nudnik.

Yankaleh Ziso

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri Mar 19 11:29:34 1993
From: dave@CAI.LSUC.ON.CA
Subject: Dutsen eltern

[Pe'rets Mett says:]

> One thing that puzzles me is that the kashes seem to be
> phrased in terms of the familiar "dir" which children do
> not use to their parents.

Perhaps it's regional.  In our dialect children do use
dir to their parents, and I thought it was quite common
throughout Yiddish.  Mikhl?

(What's the word in Yiddish, incidentally? It's "tutoyer"
in French in "dutzen" in German.  "Dutsen" also?  Is there
for verb for "to address someone as ir"?)

David Sherman

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri Mar 19 11:42:38 1993
From: dave@CAI.LSUC.ON.CA
Subject: Re: Reyzl

Hello, Reyzl.  Good to see you on MENDELE.  A grus tsu Josh
un di kinder.... which reminds me: all MENDELEniks should
consider making time to come to Copake NY for the annual
Yugntruf yidish-vokh.  Me farbrengt a vokh dortn mit
mishpokhes vos redn yidish tsuzamen.  A mekhaye!  It runs
over the last week of the summer, leading up to Labour Day.

>  Can one type in in Yiddish characters and have
> others be able to read the Yiddish text even if they don't
> have something like Note Bene?

Absolutely not.  People on MENDELE are not all using the
same kind of computer.  I'm using a VT-100 compatible
(dumb) terminal, for example, connected to a UNIX system.
Other people are using terminals, PCs, Macs and other
computers of all stripes.  We're stuck with ASCII
characters, which means transliteration.

Zay gezunt,

David (Daniel Moishe) Sherman
Toronto

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End of Mendele Vol 2.163