Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.143 November 24, 1993 1) Frayland, grammar and argot (Arre Komar) 2) Mantsbil (Yankel Lantz) 3) Verb-first declarative/sch (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Nov 23 19:41:16 1993 From: "Dr. Arthur Komar" Subject: Frayland, grammar and argot The running dispute concerning proper Yiddish grammar, vocabulary, etc. seems to me quite beside the point since the issue as to what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect or argot is really a political issue. For example Dutch is regarded as a langauge while directly accross the boarder in Friesland virtually the same language is regarded as a platt, or dialect. French, a bastardized Latin resembling Black English in many ways, was the dialect spoken in the Ile de France. It was imposed by force on the rest of the country by Louis 14 in a draconian fashion. It is now of course regarded as one of the great languages of the world. However Catalan, a very ancient and interesting language never had a definite nation state of its own and thus lives in a linguistic twilight zone. Yiddish by the same token never attained language status since there never existed a state sponsor for an official version. In 1946 an attempt was made to create a Yiddish speaking state for the people liberated from the camps. The Dutch government was prepared to offer the Jews Surinam for that purpose. However the Zionists feared that the presure would be off the world commuity to crate a Hebrew state in Palistine should that happen. Golda Mayerson, Moshe Shertok and Dovid Grunbaum (yes they used to be Jewish in those days) used their connections in the Socialist International to lobby heavily against it. Frayland, as it was to be called, was defeated by 1 or 2 votes in the Dutch parliament. As a result for better or worse we now have a charming polyglot language which draws quite redundantly on the many languages of the world where Jews have sojurned. Shall we say Krieg or Milkhuma, Fried or Sholem, yes and Hokhtsayt or Khasene, or even such Americanisms as "Ikh glaykh dos" instead of the Germanism "Ikh hob dos gern". Or how about "Hebrayish" instead of "Ivrit"? Indeed if the purists would seek to ban all Germanisms from Yiddish we might as well return to Hebrew and have Yiddish give up the ghost entirely. After all Yiddish is basically a Mittel Hochdeutch dailect much as we hate to admit it. Fortunately the Yiddish speakers love the polyglot nature and the redundacies of the language even though , or perhaps even because, it vexes the academicians who love to codify and instruct. They forget that grammar is descriptive and not proscriptive. Inorder to determine Yiddish grammar it is necessary to go to those few survivng communities in Brooklyn or Mea Shearim where it is still a living language rather quibling over the proscription of dusty books. Un az men take vil nisht az dos tsvayte vort im zats sol zayn a verb iz es azoy geferlikh? Oyf Yiddish hot men brayres un mir hobn es lieb azoy! A dank far ayer tsayt. Arre Komar 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Nov 23 20:17:11 1993 From: RWLANTZ%JMUVAX.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: "mantsbil" I wonder if "mantsbil" is analagous to the Rheinhessian word "Mannsbild," meaning "chap," "guy," "Kerl," that sort of thing. Yankel Lantz 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Nov 23 21:10:18 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: verb-first declarative/sch [Hal Berman writes:] >It's OK for songs to start with a verb because of the literary rule >known as artistic license. Poetry is also exempt from proper grammar >at times. However, in writing or speaking for non-artistic purposes, >the rule stands. please, let us get a sense of proportion here. 'the rule', as you put it, is taken from a FIRST-YEAR TEXTBOOK. i am quite sure that weinreich never intended it to be construed as a complete description of the verb-first declarative construction. as for the facts, you reject all the songs we've listed as instances of 'poetic license' (that's quite an honor for the likes of _bin ikh mir a shnayderl_!) and you do not seem to want to read the studies that have been done of the construction. how about just reading yiddish works? presumably _der forverts_ is not too poetic for the purposes at hand? if it is, you should be able to find a million or so other works at the yiddish book center. and, in them, you will find many millions of verb-first declaratives that violate your 'rule'. -------------- to moyshe taube: i know you're out there--say something, mr. verb-first maven! -------------- Subject: sch [Yankel Lantz writes:] >The local paper recently carried an obituary for an elderly >Mennonite lady named Mrs. Elizabeth Schmuck. it's not at all surprising that the name is spelled with sch; it's a german name, after all. (means 'jewel', y'know.) > "Sch" followed by a consonant simply cannot be >pronounced any way other than soft, thus I see no reason why it >should not be as acceptable in Yiddish transliteration as "sh." first, there is a not uncommon variant spelling of _scrod_: _schrod_ (/skrad/). so sch followed by a consonant COULD be pronounced /sk/ in english. second, a reasonable transcription system uses the same symbols in all the contexts in which the sound occurs, which would preclude using _sch_ in schmuck but _sh_ in sheyn (since it COULD be mistaken for /skeyn/, right?). >Would a French Yiddishist really write "chmou...," er, "chou" or >"choustaire?" I'd be interested to know. a french speaker writing romanized yiddish and ignoring the internationally recognized yivo system could definitely write _ch_ for /sh/. in fact, i just got out an old record of line monty singing originally yiddish songs in french, produced in paris, and the second song is _cha shtyl_. (consistency was never a priority of the transcriber-in-the-street.) analogously, the standard french spelling for the arab woman's headgear, so much discussed in the french press a few years ago, is _chador_; obviously, this is from arabic, not yiddish, but the point is that _ch_ is the most natural graphemic representation of /sh/ in french. > YIVO hin, YIVO her, so what's the difference >between "schuh" and "shuh," ... not much, alas. do you mean _shukh_ 'shoe' or _sho_ 'hour' (/shu/ in Central and Southeastern Yiddish) or something else? (perhaps a litvak's hypercorrection of _ski_ 'ski'?) see the problem? ellen prince ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.143 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. 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