Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.291 March 17, 1994 1) Yiddish purists (Rick Gildemeister) 2) Lewis Carroll in Yiddish (Zachary Baker) 3) Di Fir Kashes (Pinye Weichsel) 4) An introduction and a frage (Yonah Moshe Lakin) 5) An ofener briv fun a yidishist (Yude Rozof) 6) List of Yiddish periodicals (Steven A. Jacobson) 7) Shmushkele (Meyshe-Yankl Sweet) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Mar 16 16:24:37 1994 From: Subject: Yiddish purists One could write volumes on the issues brought up by Meyshe Yankl Sweet in his Tsey Kashes. There are the dialects and context-dependent forms of speech, and then, as I think Weinreich said in the preface to College Yiddish, that there must also be a language of culture. In a sense all refined languages are languages that no one has ever spoken, at least in their initial stages. What's so tragic about Yiddish, in my mind, is that this process was cut off by the Holocaust. Masha Leon of the Forverts once mentioned that even though she was from Warsaw she spoke the standard Yiddish of Vilna-Bund-YIVO, but how many people willingly yielded to it? Most prefer the language of heymishkeyt and varemkeyt. Zachary Baker of YIVO steered me to Mendele; my comments to him were that I admired YIVO-Yiddish so much for its purity, harmony, and pristine qualities; every word carefully chosen and refined. Maybe it depends what mood you're in. Someone once told me that Yiddish is a catch-all word for any German-based patois spoken by Jews. So where's the middle ground? I spoke to a noblewoman of Mallorca once about Mallorcan linguistic autonomy and the possible adoption of Catalan or standardized Mallorquin. She was pro-Castilian for the following reason: as long as we all speak Castilian in formal situations, Mallorquin is safe, because if we adopted some sort of Mallorquin as an official language, whose would we choose? Would we accept some sort of Catalan? She feared that the local patois would wither away. Let Castilian prevail, and the language of each Mallorcan village and class would prosper in the hearts of the people. I hear her voice in this debate. The difference is that Yiddish never reached the point of having a standard (like Castilian) that was widely accepted. If anything is widely accepted it's the stage pronunciation. Anyway, too many cups of coffee, but I resonate with the issues brought up by fraynd Sweet. Rick "Henekh" Gildemeister 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Mar 16 16:41:17 1994 From: Subject: Lewis Carroll in Yiddish As a Yiddish bibliographer I am embarrassed not to have the answer to a question posed to me once by a devout member of the Lewis Carroll Society, to wit: Has anything by Carroll appeared in Yiddish translation? (This question is spurred by recent references in MENDELE to T. S. Eliot and J. R. R. Tolkien.) A search of the YIVO Library catalog revealed that we had no books by Carroll, but burrowed in my failing memory (too much sherry after hours) is a rendition of "Jabberwocky" in Yiddish, which begins with the words, "S'iz gevorn brilik" (or "s'iz brilik gevorn"). Can anyone help me locate the full text -- with proper bibliographical citation, mind you, so that I can pass it on to my Lewis Carroll khosid -- assuming such exists? A slithy dank. Zachary Baker 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Mar 16 16:47:56 1994 From: Subject: Di fir kashes Not surprisingly, all of the Yiddish versions of Di Fir Kashes that have appeared so far perpetuate the error in the usual english translation of the opening line. It is not, in fact, a question, but rather an expostulation. It should be: Vi andersh is di nacht fon alle andere necht! Pinye Weichsel 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Mar 16 18:32:13 1994 From: Subject: An introduction and a frage My name is Yonah Moshe Lakin and am currently studying Yiddish at McGill University. My professor mentioned Mendele, and being the computer freak that I am, I thought subscribing to Mendele would be a fun way to learn things about Yiddish that I wouldn't learn in my class. Now the frage. In my class we were going over some sentence translations. One of the sentences we had a big debate over. Here it is: Were you at home at when I called you? We came up with a translation of: Bistu geven in der haim ven ich hob dir/dich gerofn? Now the frage is the use of rofn in this case accusative or dative? Yonah Moshe Lakin 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Mar 16 19:33:44 1994 From: jrosof@sas.upenn.edu Subject: An ofener briv fun a yidishist "What is it with the Yiddish purists, trying to create a language that was never spoken?" Azoy shraybt Meyshe-Yankel Sweet, mole zikherkeyt az naronim zenen di vos zenen mit im nisht maskim. Ikh halt zikh far a yidishist. Ikh bin an akhtsnyoriker bokher, a student in kaledzh vos hot a sakh dekherets far mame-loshn vos ikh hob beyerushe fun frierdike doyres. Di shprakh iz tsu mir nisht dergan balpe nayert ikh hob zikh gedorfn oyshuln on keyn shum limudim. In hayskul bin ikh geven a talmid fun daytshish. Ingikhen hob ikh zikh genumen tsu der arbet fun lernen di shprakh fun mayn bobe. Geton hob ikh dos durkh zayn a frayviliker gehilf bam Yivo un durkh koyfn tsaytungen un zikh tsuhern tsu WEVD in New York. Bislekhvayz bin ikh gevoyer gevorn fun di spetsifishkeyt fun Yidish legabe daytshish. Kh'ob ayngezen az yidish iz a loshn far zikh. Dermit iz gekumen der farshtand fun eygnartikeyt akeygn zhargon. Zhargon heyst a shprakh on takones, on a bashtimtn oysleyg, vort-oytser, un gramatik. Lemoshl, dos vort ekelhaft volt beshum oyfn vaponem nisht gekent zayn a gingoldn yidish vort: -haft iz nisht a yidish adyektivisher sufiks: mir nitsn -lekh, tsi -dik, oder vos se'zol nisht zayn, ober -haft iz dokh treyfns fun a shoykhet a galekh! Di azoy gerufene "purists" hobn nisht bedeye oystsuhargenen s'geredte yidish un ayntsushteln a shprakh ufdosnay. Punkt farkert! Mir viln vider uflebn di gute verter inem geredtn yidish vos zenen letstns untergegan inem fardaytshevetn yidish fun der tsaytung-proze. Mir viln a yidish vos di klasikers hobn banitst, nisht dos Avrom Kahnishe nokhmakhn fun di daytshn mit shtume alefs un goldblatts (mit tsvey tesn!) Zol Meyshe Yankl leynen Dr. Motkhe Shekhters "The Hidden Standard" vu er dertseylt vi dos Literarishe yidish hot genitst daytshe kriterye tsu standardizirn mame-loshn. Ikh volt veln shrayn nokh meyn af der teme, ober ikh muz geyn atsind. Zol lebn dos oytentishe yidish! Yude Rozof 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Mar 16 21:01:20 1994 From: Subject: List of Yiddish periodicals Does anyone have, or know of, a list of periodicals in Yiddish, including newspapers, journals, newsletters, and giving addresses and subscription costs? I would like to see such a list, and it would be useful to others -- for example, the editor of the "From the World of Yiddish" pages in the Yiddish Forward expressed surprise at being informed that there is a second weekly Yiddish newspaper, Naye Tzaytung, in addition to the soon-to-be-closed down Letste Nayes. So far I've found out about Yiddish periodicals just by stumbling upon them so to speak Steven A.Jacobson [This is a question that the shames should have asked long ago. He now asks that replies be sent to the list for editing. A summary will then be printed. nm] 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Mar 16 21:58:13 1994 From: Subject: Shmushkele Allow me to clarify--I hardly meant to "malign" my dear mother (ze zol zaan a gute bayter) by suggesting she may, even inadvertantly, used a term for the female genetalia in an endearing way to my infant sister. I was merely suggesting the possibility of code switching, very common in bilinguals, in which certain subjects or sentiments are only expressed in their mother tongue, and not in the 2nd language of the common culture. This is a quite commopn sociolinguistic phenomenon, and I've known a number of people who were quite prudish in their English and passionate in their mamaloshones, whether Spanish, French, Hindi, Russian or whatever. Whether my mother "meant" to use the diminutive of "shmue" can hardly be ascertained, as she's in yene velt, but it sounds more likely on both phonological and semantic grounds than "smotchik", of which the diminutive would be something like "smotchkele." And wouldn't it make far more sense to refer to a cute girl infant as "beautiful little pussy", rather than "beautiful little pacifier?" Meyshe-Yankl Sweet ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.291 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU 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 Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net