Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.169 November 14, 1995 1) Standard Yiddish (Bob Poe) 2) Zhargon (Chana Mlotek) 3) Poem about Yiddish (Chana Mlotek) 4) Soviet Yiddish songs (Chana Mlotek) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 95 15:33:31 EST From: poe@keps.com Subject: Standard Yiddish I'd like to make a few points that, I think, have not yet been raised on this subject. I am not a linguist, however, so I invite correction from those who know. (a) I have always had a mental image of the evolution of a language that starts in a prehistoric time when the language group is small and unified and all speakers speak very similarly. Then, as the group expands and spreads out geographically, various subgroups become somewhat isolated from each other, and their speech begins to diverge, forming regional dialects. Thus, one rational goal of a standard might be to restore and preserve the original root language, or otherwise to identify the common elements of the various dialects as a basis for a cross-regional lingua franca. (b) In practice, even if there is an identifiable common root, this is unlikely to happen. Instead, one dialect tends to become dominant over the others, because of the political, religious, cultural, commercial, or intellectual dominance of one region over the others. When a language group becomes a nation, the dialect of the capital or of the court may provide the basis for a standard. (I think I have read that different dialects were dominant in the history of English, because of the different political dominance of the regions at different times.) (c) But this is only the *basis* of a standard language. Typically, an aristocracy (of power, of wealth, of education, of culture) emerges in the dominant region and places increasing demands on the language as more complicated and subtle forms of expression are needed. Thus, a class distinction arises, which eventually transcends the regional distinctions. The standard language becomes larger, more powerful, more refined, more literary, more regular, more self-conscious. It does not supplant the dialects: ordinary people in London or Paris speak with strong local variants of the language, but intellectual discourse in those cities or in New York, Edinburgh, Sidney, or Nice, will tend toward the standard. It is quite common for a person to lose his or her local or regional dialect, more or less consciously, through education, although it may still tend to resurface in certain contexts. And I've been told that the "purest" French is not the "debased" speech of Paris, but that spoken in the Loire Valley, where so many of the aristocracy lived. (d) Once there is a (de facto) standard language, it tends to evolve alongside the dialects, but perhaps more conservatively. Certainly, the written language tends to slow down the process of change in spelling and (even) pronunciation. Thus, the way a language is spelled tends to reflect the way it was pronounced some centuries ago, when the writing system settled down. (e) In some cases, the standard may actually become codified and regulated by the "authorities". The Academie Francaise is the usual example given. This has not happened in English, for instance, where the authorities are kept busy enough keeping track of what *is*, rather than what *should be*. How does this apply to Yiddish? Well, the standard may well represent a refined, literary language that evolved from a dominant dialect, and the spelling (both in Hebrew and in Roman characters) is based on an earlier pronunciation of that language. (The YIVO reforms may have altered that situation somewhat.) In other words, it is probably *not* a synthetic fabrication of the scholars. So perhaps someone can comment on whether "oyf" was once pronounced as written in the Litvish dialect or in literary circles--say, 200 years ago. Or whether the "ey" pronunciation common in Litvish for "oy" in the standard is a more recent evolution in the common speech of the region. (Those seem to be the most prominent differences between common Litvish pronunciation and the standard spelling.) Some of us might have preferred a synthetic standard, which was constructed to be dialect-neutral, but history has proclaimed otherwise. I seriously doubt whether the preference for Litvish forms in the standard was imposed arbitrarily by a small number of scholars in the 20th century. Certainly, it is the standard language that should be taught in schools and that should be used for intellectual discourse. Non-native speakers should (first) be taught the standard. But the dialects are the living speech of the people, and no one should be ashamed to use one if he or she is fortunate enough to have grown up speaking it or has otherwise acquired it. They even play a role in the written language--for instance, for realistic dialogue in fiction and drama--, just as in English or other modern languages. This last comment raises one more question: how do you indicate dialect pronunciations in writing? I have seen it written several times on Mendele that the YIVO orthography can be used phonetically for this purpose, but I'm not completely convinced. In particular, how does one indicate the distinction between long and short vowels, which has been lost in the standard? E.g., der zun vs. di zun: Should we write "der ziin"? "der zi:n"? "der zihn" (got zol ophitn!)? And how do you do that in the Hebrew alphabet? Bob Poe 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 21:40:31 -0500 From: zishe@aol.com Subject: Zhargon With respect to the so-called disparagement by Sholem Aleichem in his usage of the word "zhargon" in referring to Yiddish, may I suggest that Prof. Michl Herzog is correct-- his argument is substantiated in Max Weinreich's _History of the Yiddish Language_, where a section is devoted to this subject (5.4). Up to the beginning of the 20th century Weinreich writes _zhargon_ was used as a neutral designation. "In Sholem Aleichem's miscellany _Yiddishe folksbibliotek_ (vol. 1, 1888), we read: _'Di hefkervelt: a zhargonish verk'_... _'Zikhroynes iber zhargonishe shrayber'_...At the end of the volume the editor, Sholem Aleichem, writes 'about Jargon orthography' and calls for 'a Jargon grammar.' In this article Mendele is included among 'our best Jargonists'... In a letter to Spektor in 1902, Sholem Aleichem wrote: 'Ah, Jargon, Jargon! Who knows what role it is destined to play among our people.'" Weinreich mentions other titles of works that were called Jargon, and were later changed to Yiddish. In my research of folk poets I came across a poem by the Maskilic poet Michel Gordon (1823-1890), author of popular songs like "Di bord" (The Beard), "Di mashke (Whiskey) and others. Incidentally, Peretz wrote that Gordon wasn't known because "our Hebrew, Polish and Russian writers are always silent about the work and influence of jargon." Michel Gordon has a poem "Der kadokhes" in which he hides himself under the name of Jargon. Jargon (Gordon) laughed at Kokher's (a made-up name) beard and therefore he's suffering from ague. (See my paper "A gilgl fun Mikhl Gordon's _Di bord_" (Transformation of Michel Gordon's _The Beard_), _Yivo Bleter_, xxxv, 1951, pp.299-311). Chana Mlotek 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 21:40:31 -0500 From: zishe@aol.com Subject: Poem about Yiddish The poem is entitled "Yiddish" and it was written by Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923). Chana and Joseph Mlotek, who conduct a bi-weekly column in the Yiddish newspaper _Forverts_, "Perl fun der yidisher poezye" (Pearls of Yiddish Poetry) have been replying to such inquiries as yours now for 25 years and readers can avail themselves of this service. In the original there are ten stanzas- (Is this too long to print?) but there are some minor differences in the text that Anno cited. The third stanza he cites is the last (the tenth stanza) of the poem. Last stanza: Es megn gebn undzere pney Far undzer shprakh a groshn, Mir lakhn zikh oys fun zey Un reydn mame-loshn! Chana Mlotek 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 21:40:31 -0500 From: zishe@aol.com Subject: Soviet Yiddish songs [Anna Shternshis's] idea (5.161) of finding the Jewish elements in the first collection of Moshe Beregovski is interesting. The singling out of Shabes might also apply to your theme: "Dem eynem tog shabes" (Beregovski no. 13-14); "Shabes farnakht, vi me zet nokh nit keyn shtern" (18); "Shabes baytog iz a yomer mit a klog" (43); or "Rosh-khoydesh elel, mamenyu, oyfdernakht" (45). Studying in kheyder: "Ikh hob opgelernt eyn blat gemore, / Ikh bin a yingl fun dem kheyder aroys." (no. 50, also 51:3) Speaking Yiddish: "Kinstlekh redt er rusish gut - Yidish nit kayn vort" (34:3); "Rusish redt er on a shir, - Yidish nit kayn vort" (37:3) Anti-Semitic utterances and references: "Un itster - iz dokh ongekumen Petlurovtses" (no. 25); "Podn'ali nagajki i kriknuli: zhidy!" (no. 32). Chana Mlotek ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.169