Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 200 May 13, 1993 1) Coffee talk (Paul Weichsel) 2) Plurals (Ellen Prince) 3) Yiddish spelling conventions (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed May 12 14:56:12 1993 From: Paul Weichsel Subject: Coffee Talk My reaction to Gerald M. Phillips' inquiry is the following. 1. My mother used to say on special occassions: Oy, der hartz vert mir ferklempt, meaning that she felt a constricting pressure around her heart, meaning that she was feeling very distressed. 2. As far as "konnektekezoink" is concerned, I guess that it is a product of one of the shows more imaginative writers. 3. Is "Coffee Talk" good for the Jews? It provides some hillarious moments for this particular Jew and I am delighted to see it on the airwaves. Yasher koiach Saturday Night Live! P. Weichsel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed May 12 16:48:30 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: Plurals on the nar/naronim, dokter/doktoyrim, shabes/shabosim thing: it's not unlike modern english dive/dove, where the 'historical' past tense would be (and still is for some) dived but where it was recategorized as being in the drive/drove, strive/strove verb class. when the change goes the other way, we call it 'regularization'; when it goes this way (from less marked to more marked, i mean), we chuckle... p.s. mikhl, thanks for poyerim--i always forget that one. ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu May 13 02:28:27 1993 From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.Columbia.edu Subject: Yiddish spelling conventions Meylekh, my earlier comments were apparently unclear. I hope the following ones don't add to the confusion. Let me elaborate somewhat on matters of Yiddish spelling conventions. Indulge me if I ramble a while and belabor the obvious. Perhaps I don't really have to establish the relevance of pre-Yiddish traditions for an understanding of some Yiddish spelling conventions. Still, it helps me to ramble so, perhaps it will be of some help to you too. Like other Jewish languages, Yiddish uses the Hebrew or, if you prefer, the Jewish alphabet. It inherited the letters and many of the conventions associated with them, perhaps indirectly from Hebrew, more directly from Aramaic, and in some manner from other Jewish language forebears as well, certainly from Judeo-French. The earliest dated, connected Yiddish text, for example, (the rhymed couplet in the Worms makhzer, dated 1272: "gut tak im betaGe sver dis maxazor in beth hakneseth traGe" (in which G is probably the fricative counterpart of [g]), already displays well developed spelling conventions, and apparently has a Judeo-French parallel: "bon dzhor(e)** . . ." etc. There is much to be learned from how the letters were first used (and not used). Hebrew-origin words retained their traditional spelling, except where their origin was somehow obscured, as in the case of "mekn" (to erase). Some letters were never used for non-Hebrew words, or in positions in which Hebrew spelling conventions (which may have reflected Hebrew phonology) precluded them from occurring. Unlike today, "samekh" for example, occurred only in Hebrew words. The [s] sound was represented by "sin". This surely had something to do with the historical difference between "samekh" and "sin" and the manner in which they corresponded to the "eses" of the corterritorial, non-Jewish languages. Unlike today, the [x] sound in word-initial position was represented by "khes", never by "khof" which, unlike "khes", was precluded from occuring in that position. in Hebrew. In the 19th century, Mendele is still writing "khotsh" and "khlebn" with "khes". For the same reason, "vov", not "fey" represented word-initial [f] although, I must admit that, at some point, the system may have gotten messed up by the use of "veyz" for initial [f], What can you do? I view the use of alef in Yiddish against this background of Hebrew-origin constraints. Except for [e], every word-initial vowel in Yiddish is either represented by alef [a, o], or preceeded by alef [i, u, ey, ay, oy]. My explanation is that Hebrew words (with an exception that I can't explain ##), unlike words in Yiddish never begin with a vowel sound. They do begin with alef and ayin but these are, historically, consonants. In Yiddish, both alef and ayin lost their consonantal value and were thus freed, in the case of the word-initial, so-called shtumer-alef, to serve a strictly orthographic (dummy consonantal) function and, in the case of ayin, to represent [e]. Why [e]? Perhaps there is some phonetic explanation. (In Western Yiddish, ayin often represents [e, e:] in Hebrew-origin words, too: sho 'hour(s)' is [she:], moes "money" is [me:s]. I think you quetioned my explanation for the traditional use of the shtumer alef in spelling such words as "yid", and "yidish" on the grounds that initial "yud" has a consonantal function in Hebrew and thus could have/should have? been carried over into the non-Hebrew component of Yiddish as well. The fact that it wasn't, if it wasn't, does not however, invalidate what I've said about the origin of the word-iniitial shtumer alef convention. As to why this convention was applied in the case of [yid/yidish/yingl] when consonantal "yud" was available, we probably have to look elsewhere, perhaps to the dominance/"prestige" of the Litvish variants [id/idish/ingl]. Wasn't there actually a newspaper called "Der Jud" (spelled "yud", "vov", "daled")? The preferred form, before modern spelling reform, became "Der Id" (spelled "alef", "yud", "daled"). By the way,the three words in question, yield three systems: i) a yid [a yid/ayid] -- der/dem yid ii) a id-- der/dem id iii) a-y-id [ayid]--der id ----------------------------------------------- ** spelled "yud", "vov", "reysh", ("alef") ## udvar adonay/unsane toykef Mikhl Herzog ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.200