Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.206 November 30, 1994 1) Western Yiddish folk music (Dovid Braun) 2) A teacher(?) learns from a student! (Louis Fridhandler) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 02:16:08 EST From: dovid@mit.edu Subject: Western Yiddish folk music On the subject of music, it was very pleasant to read Arre Komar's recent contribution (of a number of issues ago). His latest communication on the subject, however, warrants comment. "An interesting question was raised concerning western Yiddish folk music. In fact there doesn't seem to be any. [...] [T]rue secular folksongs dealing with romantic and personal topics seem to [have] arisen suddenly in Poland in the 18th century, [...] it seems to have been the spontaneous creation of the women who spoke true mama [sic] loshn, rather than the more sophisticated hebraized Yiddish of the kheder [sic] educated men (which seems to be getting more popular among academicians in recent years)." As for the last point regarding Yiddish stylistics (viz., the register used in academic Yiddish), I know of no documentation in the literature for the validity of this statement. In fact, I know of the opposite: there have been summonses to maintain Talmudic style in Yiddish expository prose (Yudl Mark's article "Lomir ufhitn di ashires fun talmed-khokhems shprakh" from the 1950s [?] is, if memory serves me correctly, the title of one such well known manifesto.) And recall that kheyder is Jewish primary school, so saying that academicians are using kheyder-loshn isn't giving them much credit -- it is just as sophisticated as children learning khumesh can be expected to be. So I assume that Komar means the register of Jewish scholarly discourse. But I also know of no serious claim in the literature that the Yiddish used by academes today is any different from the Yiddish used by academes in previous years. There are a number of Mendele-readers who are quite well acquainted with Yiddish academic writing both of today and years past, and I wonder if they would concur with my subjective feeling that no special "Hebraicization" has occurred in the register of academic discourse. (A "Yiddishization" -- yes, i.e. expository prose has come to reflect the facts of the various registers and styles of spoken Yiddish more and more over the past century.) Ober nit dos bin ikh oysn, as you can see by my subject line. I wish to correct an error of reasoning and a factual error which inhere in the statement "there doesn't seem to be any [western Yiddish folk music]". Firstly, it would probably be the assumption of any student of culture that where there are groups of people, there is music (instrumental, song, what-have-you). When looking at a specific ethnic group, then, negative evidence is not instructive (the Talmudic dictum "loy yodati eyno rayo", i.e. '[the claim] "I did not know" does not constitute evidence'). In our specific instance, this would translate into the faulty logic of the claim "unless you have evidence that group X has some form of musical expression, assume that they don't". Fortunately, we don't have to rely on conceptual arguments to derive the claim that "mayrev-yidn" had folkmusic. We can simply open one of the classic collections of Yiddish folkmusic. Take, for example, Y.-L. Cahan's _Yidishe folkslider mit melodyes_. Since they are quite entertaining (linguistically, poetically, culturally), let me reproduce songs #264-266. This way, readers will get a glimpse of some "Western Yiddish" in full, running text as opposed to the single words or phrases usually adduced in discussion of the dialect. These songs, you will note, fit Arre Komar's definition of folkmusic, viz. "secular [creations] dealing with romantic and personal topics". (Note, also, that these are not criteria that the present-day folklorist usually uses for determining the "folkness" of a cultural ceation -- does the Peysekh song "Mo adabro, mo asapro, ver ken zogn, ver ken reydn, vos di eyns batayt" not fall under the category of Yiddish folkmusic because it is of a religious nature? -- but that's another story.) (The following is a transcription of the text presented in Cahan, which itself is a transcription of Western Yiddish into the writing system of Eastern Yiddish. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual pronunciation, especially of the vowels and diphthongs, is quite different from the way it is presented by Cahan, a non-linguist. But we'll have to leave that to our imagination and to those who know more about Western Yiddish phonology than I to further clarify. By the sequence "ou" is meant the vowel sound in American English _so_ or _sew_.) Cahan #264 - ----------- ven de matesdorfer madelokh zayn nokh ezoy eydl gey iekh doukh liber tsi de ritlens kreydl dou zougt de kreydl: iekh vorf dekh eros; gebt eyr ir noukh e poar barkhezlokh derouf The footnotes tell us that Cahan collected this song from Roze Halbershteter, born 1852. Max Weinreich, who edited the 1957 edition of Cahan's _Yiddish Folkslider..._ glosses the song with the following approximation: "The girls of Matesdorf may be real fine, but I nevertheless go to Kreydl, Ritl's daughter. Says Kreydl: 'I'm throwing you out!' So he gives her a couple of khales on top of everything else".(_barkhes_ are 'khales' in Western Yiddish.) Cahan #265 - ----------- shabes ouvnt zougt de mame: netl, tsik de u! tsik de nur day aler shenste shabeskladl u. tomer kimt der khosn in nemt dekh oune gelt; e mise mad tsi patern iz git far de gantse velt M. Weinreich indicates in the footnotes that _netl_ is a girl's name and _tsik de u_ is the equivalent of Eastern Yiddish 'tu zikh on'. The reader of Yiddish should find the rest of the song discernible (if quite different from the language we're used to). Cahan collected this from Hermine, the daughter of Roze Halbershteter (of #264 fame), who was born in 1890. Cahan #266 - ------------ shabes ouvnt zougt de mame: zali, ti dekh u, kensti mit mer mitgeyn in tantszal enu. ti der dayne ale shenstn shabesklader u, tomer vird zikh aner ferlibn in du. dali, dali, day, ezoy zougt mer, ezoy, e mise mad puter tsi vern iz ka shpileray. vasti ferheyrat zay, makhst dokh in krey ay; dous iz doukh va nur puter zay Key: zali = 'girl's name'; u = modern Yiddish 'on'; enu = mod. Yid 'arunter'; in du = 'in dir'; zougt mer = 'zogt men'; vasti = 'vestu'; makhst doukh in krey ay = in English: 'you soil yourself in horseradish'; puter zay = mo. Yid. 'poter zayn'. All three songs are from Ayznshtot (Eisenstadt); the last one is also from Lackenbach. These are in Burgenland (part of Austria, bordering on Hungary.) I hope you enjoyed this very basic introduction to Western Yiddish folkmusic. I personally know very little about it, but obviously there is "what to know". Dovid Braun 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 29 Nov 94 20:26:34 EST From: 74064.1661@compuserve.com Subject: A teacher(?) learns from a student! Of course it was bound to happen! A beginning Yiddish student in Israel has taught me a lesson I should have had right up front in my mind. At my advanced age, I tend to think of myself as having things to teach, and I do. But as I pointed out in an earlier post, contact with a student is always an opportunity for the teacher to learn important lessons, solicited or not. Miriam Halkin is, as she says, a beginner in Yiddish. She forcefully, on target, made a most important point about the desirability of accurate, grammatical Yiddish on Mendele. As a beginner, she wants to feel confident that she is not misled grammatically, orthographically, idiomatically, etc. Do we need a better lesson than this? Do not Mendele subscribers feel a responsibility to the young 'uns? Isn't that the only way to see that Yiddish lives? Thanks for the lesson, Miriam. (A lebn af dayn kepele! I hope that's correct. Don't ever hesitate to check with your local teacher(s).) Still, I am interested in reading all contributions, corrected or uncorrected, from beginners who are bound to stumble, or from veterans who may have a more casual approach to grammar, etc. I vote for an inclusionary policy. Louis Fridhandler ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.206 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. 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