Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.144 November 24, 1993 1) Yiddish 'spelling' (Michael Shimshoni) 2) Genug grammar (Howard Kaplan) 3) Starting with a verb (Khaim Bochner) 4) Starting with a verb (Abe Igelfeld) 5) Verb first (Neil G.Jacobs) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Nov 24 04:06:55 1993 From: Michael Shimshoni Subject: Re: Yiddish 'spelling' I was somewhat surprised to notice Yankel Lantz's amusement about: >The local paper recently carried an obituary for an elderly >Mennonite lady named Mrs. Elizabeth Schmuck. Don't laugh. I'm sure >there is a perfectly reasonable etymological explanation. If you Why laugh when Yankel himself surely knows the German meaning of Schmuck, so its use is not surprising by a Mennonite. What is funny about the obituary for a Jewish lady called Betty Diamond, which is pretty close to the above name? I am not always disinclined to use certain words when I am making a strong point and my audience understands it, but goyim are exempt from that. When our sons were born, I vetoed frequently a name my wife suggested, because "it is something dirty in Arabic, Hungarian or Polish etc.". In Israel with so many languages understood, one has to be careful, but a gentile in America? That is going too far. >Would a French Yiddishist really write "chmou...," er, "chou" or >"choustaire?" I'd be interested to know. I am no Yiddishist and my French is very poor. I have recently had much contact with a French Oleh, who does speak English pretty well, but, at least at the beginning, when he wrote to me, it looked odd to read Chabbat Chalom, or Chavou'a Tov. BTW I would have written in "French Yiddish" "chouster", but I am no mumkhe on that. Michael Shimshoni 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Nov 24 08:57:53 1993 From: HKAPLAN%AM.mrgate@woods.uml.edu Subject: genug grammar I love Mendele. After a day dealing with deadbeat administrators, armies of students and phone calls from vendors I'm ready for Mendele. BUT, what's with all the grammar stuff? The language is near death and I'm afraid the grammarians will kill it off altogether. Is there nothing else to discuss? Howard "Haitch" Kaplan 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Nov 24 09:47:19 1993 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Re: Starting with a verb Hal Berman writes: > However, in writing or speaking for non-artistic purposes, > the rule stands. "In consecutive word order, the inflected verb is the first sentence unit. The use of this word order implies the words 'so', 'therefore.' Note the distinction: Ikh hob gevart oyf im. I waited for him. Hob ikh oyf im gevart. So I waited for him." page 122, _College Yiddish_, Uriel Weinreich, copyright 1949. "Keynmol shtelt men nit stam azoy dem beygevdikn teyl fun verb oyfn same ershtn ort. Faran in dem shtendik a gevise kavone ... Reyshis-kol trefn mir es -- bay a lebendikn dertseyln ..." page 377, _Gramatik fun der yidisher klal-shprakh_, Yudl Mark, 1978. "... ikh for eynmol aheym fun boyberik, opgezetst dos bisl skhoyre, a gantsn transport, kez un puter un smetene un shar yerokes. ZITS ikh fartrakht, vi der shteyger iz, in himl-zakhn ..." page 97 (in the morgn-frayhayt edition of 1937), _Hodl_ (chapter 4 of _Tevye der milkhiker), Sholem Aleykhem, 1904. You'll find that this construction is a prominent part of colloquial story-telling style in Yiddish prose. -- Khaim 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Nov 24 11:31:35 1993 From: igelfeld@math.toronto.edu Subject: Starting with a verb Hal Berman says poetic license. Nu, nu. Gefelt es im yo zikh azoy uftsufirn, iz zol er; gefelt es im nisht, iz meyle. Abe Igelfeld 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Nov 24 10:25:08 1993 From: Neil G Jacobs Subject: Verb first Just a side note on the verb-first discussion: The use of finite verb in "sentence-initial position" to show that the sentence is linked to a previous sentence is, of course, discussed in the Yiddish linguistic literature, as in, e.g., conveying the meaning "so...". What I wish to add is that this verb-first thing as a strategy of units larger than the sentence seems to carry over into varieties of Jewish German in the early 20th century. Thus, see Matras (1991) for Jewish German speech from the *Judendoerfer*. As well, this feature has been suggested for interwar Vienna Jewish (German) Speech, discussed in a paper in progress (by me). I mention this, since this verb-first discourse feature appears to be characteristic of Jewish speech, as opposed to non-Jewish German speech. (Thus, for example, in Matras's paper (in ZDL), where Jewish speech uses verb first to mark off some sort of discourse- type units, non-Jewish German speech from the same locale uses specific lexical markers: na und na, etc.) Neil G. Jacobs ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.144 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