Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.040 June 21, 1993 1) Wexler (Arn Abramson) 2) Philologos (Ellen Prince) 3) Wexler's theory (Meylekh Viswanath) 4) Korten (Rick Turkel) 5) Unimportant announcement/important request (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 20 21:29:13 1993 From: "Arthur S. Abramson" Subject: Wexler Reyz; K-W mentions a "Slobodjanskyj scandal" apparently in connection with Paul Wexler's argument abaout the history of Yiddish and the Jews of Eastern Europe. Am I the only one who doesn't know what this is? Could Reyzl, my respected teacher, explain this without being guilty--perish the thought--of scandal? Arn Abramson 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Jun 21 00:31:50 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: philologos as i read the recent notes on mendele, a question keeps popping into my mind. why does the language columnist of the forward hide behind a pseudonym, a custom usually reserved for advice-to-the-lovelorn columnists? perhaps, since he seems to be a reader of mendele, he can share his reasons with us. inquiring minds want to know, vi men zogt. ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Jun 21 12:43:49 1993 from: meylekh viswanath (viswanath@draco.rutgers.edu) re: wexler's theory I am perplexed at the attacks on wexler's theory of a slavic origin for yiddish. Not that I support this theory. What perpelexes me is the postings that we have seen from reyzl, ellen and khaim bochner that 1) acknowledge not having read wexler's article and 2) reject his theory. Now if this theory were some kind of private meshugas that wexler mutters to himself and to everyone in his presence, that may be one thing. But this article was published in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Is this not a respected journal? Does this not make it a subject of discussion in the public domain? Must one not,. then, acquaint oneself with the theory first-hand, and then, only then refute it? I have myself made several attempts to read Wexler's piece, and the comments on it. Wexler has presented a lot of evidence, and has attempted to build what seems to be an internally consistent theory, taking into account and responding to expected criticisms. A lot of the attack on him is either on methodological grounds (i.e. what constitutes a theory), which seems wrong to me in that they essentially refute Wexler's theory as being inconsistent with currently accepted theory, or they produce evidence that is inconsistent with Wexler's theory. The latter kind of refutation is what is necessary in order to reject Wexler's theory; the more the better, not the first kind. And even then, there is still the question as to whether the kind of renewed investigation into the Slavic origins of Yiddish will lead to an ultimately better theory than is currently available today, (even if that is not going to be Wexler's theory). This is the sort of response to Wexler that I would like to see in Mendele, something that will enlighten non-linguists, rather than proclamations ex-cathedra. Meylekh. (I hope there will be at least as many informed responses to Wexler as attacks on my post, as a result of my request here.) 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Jun 21 16:19:45 1993 From: rmt51@cas.org (Rick Turkel) Subject: Korten I remember my grandparents, a"h, playing a lot of cards with their lantslayt while I was growing up. The term they used for "queen" was "meydl." I have no idea if it was a form of euphemism, or if that was the proper term in their part of Poland (Bendin/Bedzin). I recall their Yiddish as containing a fair number of English borrowings (they were in the US over 40 years by the time I was growing up), but I don't remember ever hearing anything like "kvin." Rick Turkel 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Jun 21 20:33:29 1993 From: NMILLER@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Unimportant announcement/important request Dear friends: Mendele is about to make a change which will be entirely invisible to you, which is why it's unimportant: on or about July 4 Mendele will be edited from Brookline, MA instead of West Hartford, CT. At the present time, copy is sent from one of the Trinity Suns to Yale and from Yale to you. After the move copy will proceed from Brandeis to Trinity etc. This move will affect you in no way whatever. Please continue to address your posts as you have in the past. And archives will still be stored at Trinity. But the shames does have a problem. The Brandeis machine is very busy, which means that editing--even when it's done via Telnet at Trinity--gets to be a bit sluggish. So, would you please help to reduce editorial time by remembering these two basic requests: 1) provide a usable subject line, and 2) edit your copy to eliminate all the stuff that Mendele doesn't print anyway--such as multi-line signatures, extensive quotes from previous posts, etc. A hartsikn dank aykh. Noyekh ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.030