Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.214 January 14, 1996 1) Is Yiddish dying? (Moyshe-Zekharye Beker) 2) Is Yiddish dying? (Norman Rosenblatt) 3) Is Yiddish dying? (Ellen Prince) 4) Hasofe (Hershl Hartman) 5) Tracking down an article (Louis Fridhandler) 6) WWW Yiddish site (Bobbi and Michael Zylberman) 7) Farpotshketing? (Daniel Bugel) 8) Willy Wonka (Michael Godfrey) 9) The apostrophe in Romanized Yiddish (Zellig Bach) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jan 96 07:53:29 PST From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu Subject: Dovid Katz on the 'death' of Yiddish Far di vos interesirn zikh in dem kloymershtn untergang fun yidish, kent ir leyenen Hirshe-Dovid Katses zeyer a faynem opruf tsu der opshatsung fun Philologos, in letstn numer "Forverts" (fun 5tn yanuar, 1996): "Yidish shtarbt shoyn vider..." Prof. Kats redt tsu der zakh, halevay zol der englisher "Forward" iberzetsn zayn artikl un farshpreytn far zayne leyeners. Moyshe-Zekharye Beker For those who are interested in the supposed death of Yiddish, you might wish to read Dovid Katz's very fine rebuttal to Philologos' recent assessment. See the latest issue of the "Forverts" (January 5, 1996), "Yidish shtarbt shoyn vider..." [Yiddish is dying once again]. Prof. Katz deals cogently with the topic; now, if only the English "Forward" were to publish a translation of his article for its readers! Zachary Baker 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 20:06:03 -0800 From: nrosenbl@interserv.com Subject: Life of Yiddish I normally ignore discussions about the putative death of Yiddish, since it's obviously alive; but a recent personal experience seems worth reporting. Having a routine appointment with the doctor, and knowing that the office wait can often be quite long, I took along a softcover book (in Yiddish) to read while waiting. After the appointment, while paying the bill, I placed the book on the counter. The young secretary (perhaps 20 or fewer years old), noticing the Yiddish title, asked what the language was. As I was anxious to finish my business and leave, I answered, simply (though pleasantly): "Yiddish," with no further explanation. After a moment she asked: "Where is that spoken?" At this point I realized that I had an obligation to explain, and told her that it was the language of the Eastern European Jews who were murdered by the nazis, and that many Jews, including myself, still spoke it, and worked to revive it as an expression of the culture the nazis tried to destroy. Suddenly, what had for her been ancient history learned in dry textbooks, came to life. Surprisingly, she knew more about recent Jewish history than I would have expected of a non-Jew, especially a youngster. I was pleased that she applauded the efforts to restore Yiddish culture through its language and its arts. She asked many questions about Yiddishkite (a word that was new to her), and we spent a pleasant quarter-hour on my favorite topic. What most impressed me was this young non-Jewish girl's intuitive recognition that possibly the greatest honor we could do for the victims of the khurbm would be to perpetuate their language. Norman Rosenblatt 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 14:47:28 EST From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: language death hershl hartman writes that the relevance to yiddish of the research on dying languages depends on whether or not they have a written literature and, if so, how big it is and whether it's still being produced. to which i reply: uh, yiddish should be so lucky to have the written literature of the two dead languages i mentioned, latin and sanskrit. and yes, there is still literature being produced (and published...and read) in both of them. the fact remains that a language is considered 'dead' or 'alive' according to whether children are learning it in the normal way that children acquire languages, and the presence or absence of a written literary tradition and corpus is irrelevant. children acquiring a native language do not know (or care) about its literature... ellen prince 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 03:18:40 -0500 From: hershl@aol.com Subject: Hasofe Checking Eli Katz's message in di sforim--dictionaries, that is--I find that both Weinreich and Harkavy give _no other_ definitions for hasofe than "appendix (to a book); raise (in pay)" (Weinreich); "1) supplement; 2) addition; 3) raise (_of salary_)" Harkavy. Nothing new. While Yiddish derives many words from loshn koydesh, the meanings are often quite different. That might just imply that Yiddish is historically secular in its outlook. Hershl Hartman 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 19:35:54 -0500 From: lfridhan@aol.com Subject: Tracking down an article A few years ago, I read a very interesting journal article, and I thought I had copied it. I can't find it. I have forgotten the reference, but not the subject matter. I believe the title includes something about the _secular dimension of Yiddish culture_. One of the points made was that in the late 19th and early 20th century, the American Yiddish-speaking Jews having suffered from religionists in Russia were determined to erase religion from their lives. Some even went so far as to organize a Yom Kippur Ball to assert both independence from and ridicule of their religious heritage. The article made the case (I believe) that it was eventually found impossible to eradicate reference to Judaic traditions from the language. It just did not _feel_ Jewish. Can anyone recall such a paper? If so, I'd appreciate the reference. It contains material that I believe is relevant to appraisal of current movements that seem to try to remove Judaism and Yidishkayt from Jewishness. Louis Fridhandler 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Jan 96 21:35:00 1000 From: mzylberm@ozemail.com.au Subject: WWW Yiddish site Recipients of Mendele may be interested in visiting a new World Wide Web (under construction) site set up by the J.Waks Cultural Centre Inc.. The page provides information on Yiddish oriented organisations in Melbourne Australia. The page uses English and Yiddish. The Yiddish is not in the form of an image file but is entered as normal text. The page provides instructions and pointers on how to set your WWW browser to read such text. The address is http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mzylberm Comments and suggestions would be appreciated. Bobbi and Michael Zylberman 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 16:06:25 +0000 From: bugel@innet.be Subject: Farpotshketing? This is a message forwarded from the Lantra-l translators list. I thought it might be of interest to some of you. I think the verb should be a bit different. Can anyone help out, perhaps by mailing directly to lantra-l@searn.sunet.se ? Here is the post: ___________ >farpotshket (Yiddish): Something that is all fouled up, especially >as the result of an attempt to fix it. Can the transitive verb "to farpotshket" be counted upon as the one million and first word of the English language? ____________ Thanks, Daniel Bugel 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 11:44:10 -0500 (EST) From: mgodfrey@runt.dawsoncollege.qc.ca Subject: Willy Wonka Not having seen the movie I do not know what Gene Wilder said in Yiddish, but fervently hope it was something that would make R.Dahl's ears burn, that rabid anti-semite. But, then, the medium itself is the message, isn't it? The item was documented in the (British?) press some years ago. At the risk of appearing revisionist, I must say I never much cared for his work, even before I knew he didn't care for ours. Michael Godfrey 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 21:36:51 -0500 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: The apostrophe in Romanized Yiddish I wholeheartedly align myself with the criticism by Marion Aptroot (5.208) and Alan R. King (5.212) about my suggestions for apostrophes in romanized Yiddish (5.203). Since these suggestions were solely delimited to readers and speakers of English, as evidenced by a number of examples, readers and speakers of _other_ languages might find a need for new signs and symbols to meet special phonetic or spelling characteristics of these tongues, and such an approach would be tantamount to opening a Pandora box. The YIVO romanization system is a universally accepted system to transcribe Yiddish in all languages using Latin letters, and it is therefore best not to tamper with it. Mendele readers will find an in-depth study of the YIVO transcription system, with details and explications, in David L. Gold's article "A Guide to the Standardized Yiddish Romanization" in _Jewish Language Review_ (Vol. 5, 1985, pp. 96-108). Zellig Bach ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.214