Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.136 November 19, 1993 1) Leyenen/lezn and Standard Yiddish (Bob Hoberman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Nov 18 12:16:02 1993 From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: Leyenen/lezn and Standard Yiddish My Litvishe parents differentiate leyenen and lezn as Khayim Bochner described: me' leyent di teyre in shul, me' lezt a bukh. (Ikh veys nisht, tsi leyent men a seyfer oder lezt men.) Here's a related question: a student whose parents' Yiddish uses lezn (pronounced leyzn) asked me what the past participle of it was, and I wasn't sure, so I went to look it up in Weinreich. What do I find there? No definition or grammatical information, but only a cross-reference to leyenen and the little wedge symbol that means "inadmissible in the standard language." I find that very sad. With the dwindling human resources that Yiddish still has, can we afford to throw anything away? Does anyone else feel that way? Even more so the little black dot (blackball) that means "of doubtful admissibility in the standard language"--"a sofek tsi derlozlekh in der klal-shprakh." To me those are about the saddest words ever written about Yiddish. They imply that someday someone will decide whether to accept the word, and that their decision will affect the usage of a substantial community of Yiddish-users (not just students). It's clear that even now the standards of standard Yiddish have little influence on many, perhaps most, of those who speak, write, and publish in Yiddish nowadays, that most of them are far more influenced by the need for cohesion of their particular communities, and probably by a need to differentiate themselves from all others in language as in dress and customs. Could Weinreich really not have seen this? I feel the same way about standardizing Yiddish spelling. I don't think it's necessary, for two reasons: 1. Not all languages have fully uniform spelling in practice, as we English speakers (and speakers of many other European languages) feel is the sine qua non of a "real" language. In modern Hebrew, for instance, there is quite a lot of variation in the use of vav, yud, and alef to indicate vowels. Nearly everyone (but not 100%) agrees in principle on "ktiv male", "full spelling", which uses "extra" vavs and yuds that would not be in the word if vowel dots were used, but the details in practice differ. (For instance, shulkhan 'table' is written shin-vav-lamed-khet-nun in "full spelling", but in "lacking spelling" lacks the vav and has in its place a kubuts [three diagonal dots] under the shin]; mikhtav 'letter' usually lacks a yud even in "full spelling", but I've seen a yud in it in some respectable publications.) Although there is a standard issued by the Hebrew Language Academy (and changed several times in the last 40 years), far from everyone adheres to it; not even all schools. Each newspaper has its own policy, and you will frequently see a word spelled differently (in respect to vav, yud, and alef) between a headline and the body of an article. To take a different example, Dutch has "reformed" its spelling several times within living memory, so that a Dutch friend in his 40's tells me that his parents spell some words differently from him while nowadays again slightly different rules are taught in school. In Chinese there are many unofficial variant characters in use, even within the PRC, not to mention Taiwan and Hong Kong. 2. No orthography is designed chiefly for learners of the language; writing systems are for people who already know the language. Therefore, it is not necessarily of the highest priority for Yiddish spelling to indicate the pronunciation. Given the dialect variation, there are several approaches that are used in languages around the world: (a) select one dialect as the standard, and make the spelling system fit it, ignoring the other dialects; (b) develop a system that, while it does not fit the phonetics of any one dialect, provides a form from which the various dialectal pronunciations can be deduced, in most cases; this is the case in the writing system used by modern Christian speakers of Aramaic (Syriac), and much less neatly by English; (c) develop a system that is maximally simple, even if two or more sounds are written indistinguishably, so that it can be easily learned by anyone regardless of dialect. The YIVO spelling of Yiddish is pretty much on model (a), with a bit of (c). Not a bad choice, considering the alternatives (write the vowels according to proto-Yiddish?!). 3. The urge for further standardizing Yiddish spelling presupposes that there is a community of users whose lives would be made easier, and especially that there is a population of children who will achieve their dominant literacy in the language. But nowadays there's next to no-one who reads and writes more in Yiddish than in any other language. Even for those who read Yiddish the most, the majority of what they read was written earlier than the modern standard spelling or by people who ignore it. And this will always be the situation from now on! Any Yiddish student has to become comfortable with various styles of spelling. So, to my mind, the sooner and more they see variation the better. How should they be taught to write? Might as well be the YIVO standard, but let's not get hot under the collar about it. I hope I haven't made myself persona-non-grata in Yiddish circles. I know a lot of people feel strongly about these things, even dedicate their lives to them. I hope I haven't offended anyone. So, what IS the past participle of lezn? Bob Hoberman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.136 Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files