Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 5.212
January 11, 1996

1) Introduction (Dovid Tsukerman)
2) Apostrophes (Alan R. King)
3) Pluperfect (Ellen Prince)
4) Hasofe (Eli Katz)
5) Hasofe (Hershl Hartman)
6) Is Yiddish dying? (Hershl Hartman)
7) Is Yiddish dying? (Khayem Bochner)
8) Willie Wonka redt yidish (Hershl Hartman)
9) The Last Klezmer (Jonathan Dembling)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 19:44:55 -0800
From: davisc@adinet.com.uy
Subject: Introduction

Sholem Aleikhem!

Azoi vi m'hot gebetn tsu shraibn a por verter vegn zij, iz dos main "who is
who", in kurtzn.

Main nomen iz David Cukierman (oif Yiddish Dovid Tsukerman), 62 ior alt,
farhairat, 2 kinder (34 un 28 ior). Geboirn un voin in Montevideo -Uruguay.
Fun fakh bin ikh an economist.

Yiddish iz bai mir geven di ershte shprakh nokh far shpanish.
Main tate:Noiekh Tsukerman (geshtorbn mit 15 ior tsurik) a gevezener activer
cultur tuer un langioriker bundist, hot in mir aingeflantst main libe tsu
Yiddish un Yiddishe literatur.

Itst bin ikh a mitglid in der farvaltung fun der Yiddisher Kehile in
Montevideo. Akhuts dem bin ikh tetig in undzer Yiddish Club bai der Kehile.
Faraiorn hob ikh gegebn Yiddish-lektsies far dervaksene un gehat arum 18
shiler tsvishn zai,8 iungere fun 30 ior (studentn un profesionaln).
S'iz far mir a fargenign tsu zain in der Mendele-reshime, vu ikh hof tsu
krign frishe fraind fun der Yiddish-velt.

Agev volt ikh gevolt visn, vifl Mendelistn (oder Mendelianer) zainen do in
shpanish redndike lender.

Dovid Tsukerman

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 16:08:44 +0100
From: mccay@jet.es
Subject: Apostrophes

I would like to offer some comments or opinions on the issue of Yiddish
transcription or "romanization", in response to a recent posting by
Zellig Bach (vol. 5.203) proposing some additional uses of apostrophes.
With all due respect to Mr. Bach, I think the suggestions misguided both
"tactically" and "strategically".

According to ZB, we should write _mi'es_ not (YIVO) _mies_ to avoid
confusion with the _ie_ in English _frIEnds_, while _shi'er_ is preferred
over (YIVO) _shier_ to "differentiate it from the sound of the English
monosyllabic 'sheer'".  Similarly with the word for "mistake", _to'es_,
the problem being that (YIVO) _toes_ looks like a certain English word
having both a different pronunciation and a different meaning.  And so on
and so forth.

Is it the objective of transcribed Yiddish to provide an instant
pronunciation guide to any English-speaking reader who not only hasn't
learnt the alef-beys, but speaks no Yiddish, understands no Yiddish, and
has no experience with transcription systems? (In that case, perhaps
_mee-us_ would be a better transcription than _mi'es_; such things can be
found in tourist phrasebooks and the like.)  Or are we aiming at a
simple, functional, and internally consistent alternative system for
representing the Yiddish language that will be more accessible than the
so-called "Hebrew" (better, Jewish) spelling to an important part of the
general public (and also more available, for technical reasons, in
contexts such as Mendele)?  If the latter, then I think the YIVO standard
is all we need.

In the first place, the widely used YIVO system is a good one which seems
to meet the needs for which it was designed as well as any alternative is
likely to.  In particular, within the (quite coherent) internal logic of
the YIVO system, there is no real need for additional uses of apostrophes
as suggested by ZB.

But what are the needs or functions that such a "romanized" spelling of
Yiddish must serve?  "Real" Yiddish spelling, as consecrated by tradition
and arguably even required by the very nature of Yiddish as a language
culturally bound up with loshn koydesh, is in yidishe oysyes.  So
"romanization", surely, is merely a *transcription*?

Merely?  We would wish that to be so; such a state of affairs would
constitute a positive symptom for the language and the culture with which
it is (has been, anyway) associated. Unfortunately, though, there are now
many people, including many Yiddish speakers or semi-speakers, for whom a
transcription such as YIVO's is accessible while real Yiddish writing is
not.  Thus the de facto role of "romanized" Yiddish spelling is larger
than the term "transcription" ought to suggest, and I think we shall
ignore this at our peril.

Furthermore, it is another de facto reality that the "romanized"
transcription we give to Yiddish is often the one that will be seen and
read by the rest of the world, and strategically it will probably help to
give the impression of a "serious" language (cf. the old "Is Yiddish a
real language?" question) if it appears "in public dress" with a uniform
standard spelling, rather than in the impressionistic free-for-all still
too often encountered, now imitating English, now assimilating to German,
then disguised as Hebrew ....

So the issue of how to spell Yiddish in the Latin alphabet is, today, a
more important, a more delicate, and potentially a more polemical matter
than if we were discussing how to transcribe, say, Hebrew, Arabic,
Japanese or Mongolian in the Latin alphabet, languages with their own
writing systems for which a Latinized transcription is a peripheral or
technical issue of possible scholarly interest but little sociolinguistic
import.

Alan R. King
Gipuzkoa, Basque Country

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 14:28:20 EST
From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu
Subject: gratitude (re pluperfect)

a brokhe oyf mendeles kepele! today brought two very very helpful notes,
the one on mendele from meyer-leyb wolf and a private one from beatrice
santorini. my joy knows no bounds! _thank you_! and long live mendele!

ellen ('nanook') prince

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 11:47:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: katz@sonoma.edu
Subject: Hasofe

It's true I understood scarcely a word of David Sherman's discourse
[5.211] on the khazn and his demand for a hasofe.  I acknowlege myself as
an amorets in re matters of religion and ritual, without enough knowledge
even to proclaim myself an apikoyres, which is surely my inclination.

Nevertheless I would be willing to bet (but who would decide the bet?)
that "hasofe" in the ironic line "az m'vil nit dem khazn, heyst er zikh
nokh gebn a hasofe" simply means, as it usually does in everyday
Yiddish, a raise in pay.

Eli Katz

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 00:24:38 -0500
From: hershl@aol.com
Subject: Hasofe

David Sherman zol zikh nit ibernemen. As an implacably secular Yiddish
speaker, I understood much more of his post (V5.211) about the minutiae
of shabes services--though I can't figure what it has to do with
Yiddish--than I have of the pluperfect discussion.

Hershl Hartman

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 00:44:03 -0500
From: hershl@aol.com
Subject: language death

Before one can decide whether Ellen Prince's references [5.211] about
dying languages have any relation to Yiddish, one must know whether these
languages created a written literature and, if so, its magnitude and
whether literary works continue to be written and published in those
languages.

Hershl Hartman

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 96 09:19:21 -0500
From: bochner@das.harvard.edu
Subject: Is Yiddish dying?

Tsufelik hot Miryem Shmulevitsh-Hofman geshribn oyf undzer teme in dem
Forverts di vokh:

"Ober ven ikh bin gegangen in der arbeter ring mitlshul mit azoy-fil un
azoy-fil yorn tsurik hot men punkt azoy baveynt di marokhe fun idish vi
m'tut es haynt. zet oys, az mir hobn zikh tsugevoynt tsu der klog un lebn
zikh oys in fridn mit der brokh. Ober idish hot zikh ir kheshbn. zi lakht
zikh oys fun aykh un fun mir un fun yene lopete-bagreber vos shteyen
shoyn greyt mitn kadish zint ... zint dos idish eyfele hot zikh bavizn
oyf der likhtiker shayn. Iz lomir shpayen der velt in ponim, un ongeyn
mit undzer arbet letoyves mame-loshn."

Forverts, dem fiftn yanuar 1996, zaytl 19.

Khayem Bochner

8)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 00:44:09 -0500
From: hershl@aol.com
Subject: Willie Wonka redt yidish

Don't remember who posted the message about the use of Yiddish in the
dialogue of the film "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," but it
included the line: "Willie Wonka (played by Billy Wilder) says a few
lines in Yiddish in addition to other languages."

Replies my daughter, Gail, a Dahl devotee (who learned Avrom Reyzin's
poem "un zol vi vayt" for her graduation from shule) and to whom I
forwarded the posting: "It's _Gene_ Wilder, not Billy Wilder."

Hershl Hartman

9)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 02:59:32 -0400 (AST)
From: j_dembli@husky1.stmarys.ca
Subject: The Last Klezmer

Does anyone know if the film "The Last Klezmer" is available on video,
and if so, how to get it?  I seem to remember it being advertized in the
(English) Forward quite a while ago, but I haven't seen it anywhere.  I
hope I didn't miss my only chance.

Jonathan Dembling
Halifax, NS

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 5.212