Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.272 March 7, 1996 1) Yiddish at Historical Linguistics Conference (Marion Aptroot) 2) Roykh (Aree Komar) 3) Bokser (Meyer-Leyb Wolf) 4) Unofficial Cracow's Yiddish page (Magdalena Sitarz) 5) Statistics on Yiddish groups (Miki Safadi) 6) Glaykhn (Khayem Bochner) 7) _Found Treasures_ (Bernard Katz) 8) Syllable onsets in Yiddish (Meyer-Leyb Wolf) 9) Yiddish program in Paris (Delphine Bechtel) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 16:30:07 -0500 (EST) From: aptroot@husc.harvard.edu Subject: Yiddish at Historical Linguistics Conference Those readers of Mendele who are engaged in research in historical linguistics may be interested in the 13th International Conference of Historical Linguistics which will be held at the Heinrich Heine University in Duesseldorf, Germany, 10 - 17 August 1997. One of the special topic areas will be *The development of Yiddish as a contact language*. Professor Marvin (Mikhl) Herzog of Columbia University will be among the plenary speakers. One page abstracts may be submitted either by mail (one hard copy accompanied by an ASCII-file on a diskette) or, preferably, by email (ASCII-file only) so as to arrive no later than October 1, 1996. mail: Dieter Stein Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf Anglistik III Universitaetsstr. 1 D-40225 Duesseldorf Germany email: ICHL1997@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de fax: 49-(0)211-811-3026 Marion Aptroot 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 22:34:58 -0500 (EST) From: komar@yu1.yu.edu Subject: Roykh I have been puzzled by the etymology of the Yiddish word "roykh" (smoke). Is it from the German "rauch" or from the Hebrew "ruakh"? Can there be a connection between the German and the Hebrew, say via the Yiddish, or perhaps even further back? Arre Komar 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 01:58:05 -0500 From: wolfim@chelsea.ios.com Subject: Bokser Theodor Gaster in "Festivals of the Jewish Year" devotes several pages to Tu-Beshvat and its customs. He quotes a poem from a Dzhudezmo "manual" for the holiday, which mentions the carob. The word used is 'alharuba', the Arabic name which is the etymon of carob. Looks like Sephardim didnt use the loshn-koydesh name either. They may well have been the bokser pipeline to the Ashkenazim. Meyer-Leyb Wolf 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 09:21:36 +0100 (MET) From: sitarz@iphthi.physik.uni-mainz.de Subject: Unofficial Cracow's Yiddish page I'm writing to let you know of the Unofficial Cracow's Yiddish Page accessible by WWW. This is a very modest project, however, I think that it might be of interest to some people subscribed to your list. Should you find it so, please repost the information about it on your list. http://www.cyf-kr.edu.pl/~ufsitarz/unyidd.html Magdalena Sitarz 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 07:16:00 -0800 From: msafadi@ucla.edu Subject: Statistics on Yiddish groups Si'z doh, efsher, statistikes vegn bateylikn zikh in Yiddish leyen-krayzn oder shmues-krayzn iber die velt? Are there any statistics regarding participation in Yiddish reading circles or conversation circles around the world? Miki Safadi 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 07 Mar 96 12:09:50 -0500 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Glaykhn Az s'kumt shoyn tsu reyd "glaykhn" ... The following passage, from a discussion of loan words in immigrant speech in Bloomfield's _Language_ (1933), is relevant: Soon after the German gets here, we find him using in his German speech, a host of English forms, ... He makes loan-translations, such as "ich gleich' das nicht" "I don't like that," where, on the model of English "like", a verb with the meaning 'be fond of' is derived from the adjective "gleich" 'equal, resemblant.' Some of these locutions, like this last, have become convetionally established in American immigrant German. (Quoted from the 1984 reprint, page 462) Since German Jews were important in the American Jewish community before large numbers of immigrants came from Eastern Europe, it seems plausible that "glaykhn" in Yiddish may have originated as "gleichen" in immigrant German. Is this plausible for England & Australia as well? By the way, for those who don't know, Leonard Bloomfield was one of the most important American linguists of this century. Khayem Bochner 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 17:17:33 -0500 (EST) From: bkatz@uoguelph.ca Subject: _Found Treasures_ Shirley Kumove's recent posting [5.264] prompts a reminder from me that anyone who has not taken a look at _Found Treasures: Stories by Forgotten Women Yiddish Writers_, owes it to themselves to do so -- a wondeful book! Bernard Katz Guelph, Ontario 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 17:31:32 -0500 From: wolfim@chelsea.ios.com Subject: Syllable onsets in Yiddish Neil Jacobs [5.269] has raised an interesting phonological point, which I suspect is made more difficult to get at by the apparently inconsistent romanizations in UW's dictionary. I emphasize 'apparent', since there may well be other, non-phonological reasons for particular romanizations. For instance, the pronunciation 'khezhbm' is so widespread that he selected it for the klal-shprakh, whereas in other cases there may have been no widespread form with phonemic merger. I wonder if Neil would clarify some details of Yiddish phonetics to enable others to help his investigation. It seems to me that in Eastern Yiddish, two obstruents in word initial position are both either voiced or unvoiced at the phonetic level and that any distinction between underlying voiced/voiceless pairs is due to the usually redundant fortis/lenis feature. For many (some?)speakers then, 'psak' and 'bsule' do not have the same initial consonant, though both are unvoiced. Is this impression borne out by your work? For some of the words cited, e.g. 'kdushe', 'sdorim', many speakers to not have an initial consonant cluster, but rather k'dushe, s'dorim. Is this correct? What do those who have zgule have in the initial clusters produced by enclitic s as in s'gayes, s'gopele, etc.? My apologies to Neil for answering a question with so many questions. Meyer-Leyb Wolf 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 07 Mar 1996 23:57:13 +0002 From: francois.boulanger@obspm.fr Subject: Yiddish program in Paris I would like to thank all those who expressed interest in the Yiddish summer program in Paris. As I had mentioned, I am only conveying the info to Mendele subscribers, but cannot answer all inquiries myself. All inquiries should be directed by mail to: ADECY (July 1996) seminar BP 720 75163 Paris Cedex 04 France Tel and fax: (33-1) 42.71.30.07 They are planning to open an e-mail account, and I will inform you on Mendele. _Please_ do not flood my own e-mail account with inquiries, I will not be able to answer them. Delphine Bechtel ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.272