Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 6.069
September 26, 1996

1) Yiddish is going off the air! (Ellen Prince)
2) Yiddish is going off the air! (Adam Whiteman)
3) Pi pa po (Joachim Neugroschel)
4) "Um-" and "un-" (Joachim Neugroschel)
5) "Um-" and "un-" (Anno Siegel)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 15:17:26 EDT
From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu
Subject: Yiddish is going off the air!

i don't know the reasons for this move but i would suspect it's a
question of money. when wevd went from a powerful fm station to a weaker
am station in order to produce the english _forward_, i felt terrible.
but then i saw the english _forward_ and i think it was a great move --
this is the best jewish-interest newspaper i know of, by a long shot! in
fact, i think it's maybe the best paper all around in this country.
besides, the paper is for the whole world while wevd is for nyc and the
surrounding 'burbs only. but maybe if we all subscribed to the paper,
they'd be able to afford to keep some yiddish programming on wevd! so
maybe you should all do yourself a favor AND do a mitzve and subscribe!

ellen prince

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 25 Sep 96 20:49:34 EDT
From: 74031.775@compuserve.com
Subject: WEVD and Yiddish Radio in NYC

I have often felt very fortnuate that I live in one of the largest, if
not the largest, Yiddish speaking cities in the world - New York.  We
benefit from a large number of Yiddish/Yiddishist institutions though
unfortunately Yiddish radio (WEVD) of late has been getting weaker and
weaker.  For those of you who are not aware, WEVD and The Forward, are
owned by the Forward Association.  "The Station that Speaks Your
Language" doesn't speak much Yiddish these days, nor any other language
for that matter, except English.  Much of the programming is devoted to
financial talk radio (in English).  A number of years ago the Forward
Association sold the WEVD-FM for a reportedly $70 million or so.  As
part of this transaction they received a station on the AM band,1050,
which is the current WEVD AM.  Those of us in the Yiddish community
rejoiced at the news that a Yiddish institution was blessed with such a
large sum and we assumed that the Yiddish Forward and WEVD would be
financially secured for many years and that we, the NY Yiddish speaking
community, would benefit from a rich array of cultural programming.  We
were apparently wrong.  It appears that the Forward Association has used
much of the money to support the English Forward leaving the Yiddish
Forward and WEVD's Yiddish program wanting.

Quite a number of our Yiddishist circle have refrained from discussing
this issue "in the open" for a variety of reasons but, if it is true
that the Yiddish programming on WEVD is in danger of being liquidated,
then there is nothing to lose but another vital cultural institution
that benefits the largest Yiddish speaking community in the world.  I
urge you to follow Ruvn Millman's suggestions and make your voices
heard.

Adam Whiteman
Queens, NY

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 18:11:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: achim1@cris.com
Subject: Pi pa po

In regard to Johannes Seppi's posting [6.067], he is probably right
about the North (and I would add) Central German origin of "pipapo"--for
the simple reason that in the evolution from Proto-Teutonic to Old High
German, initial _P_ became _Pf_: e.g. English "pepper" vs. German
"Pfeffer," English "paw" vs. German "Pfote", and so on.  modern German
words beginning with a simple _P_ are generally of foreign origin:
"passen" from French "passer", Viennese "Palatschinke" from Hungarian
"palaczinta" (I'm not quite sure of the spelling), "auspowern" from
French "pauvre" and thousands more.  That development is also reflected
in Yiddish, in which German initial "pf" usually became a simple "f":
ferd, feffer (from "Pferd", "Pfeffer"), etc.  Most Yiddish words
beginning with a simple "p" are likewise of non-Germanic origin:  poter,
poips, etc. A Germanic word like "poyer" (from German "Bauer") got its
"P" because in southern German the proto-Teutonic "b" became a "p".

Joachim Neugroschel

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 18:11:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: achim1@cris.com
Subject: Yiddish prefixes "um"

In regard to Zellig Bach's posting [6.068] regarding "um" I'd like to
point out that this Yiddish prefix has two different origins in medieval
(and modern) German:

1. "un"--which negates (as it also does in English) the word it is
attached to.

2. "um"--which, corresponding to the Romance prefix "trans", implies a
change of some kind:  "(sich) umziehen" to change clothes,to move house
It can also mean "around, surrounding" etc.:  "Umwelt" = environment,
milieu, etc.  Both prefixes entered Yiddish, becoming homonyms, and both
are productive and have and still are attached to any number of old and
new words--a lot more than fifty, as stated by Bach, since the negative
"um" attached to countless words, can also be attached to new borrowings
or neologisms. Bach's statement that Yiddish  "umkumen" implies "dying
at someone's else's hands is not quite accurate.  It does mean to die
violently but the cause doesn't have to be a human being:   "Er iz
umgekumen in a shturem," etc.

Joachim Neugroschel

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 09:51:34 +0200
From: anno4000@lublin.zrz.tu-berlin.de
Subject: "Um-" and "un-"

Zellig Bach's observation (6.068) that the prefix "um-" often, but not
always means negation of the unprefixed word has a simple explanation.
In German, there exist two distinct prefixes "un-" and "um-".  "Un-" is
unambiguously a negation, just like in English.  The function of "um-"
is harder to describe in general terms;  it usually means some- thing
like "around" and is also part of Yiddish "arum".

Now, in Yiddish, the negational "un-" seems to have become "um-", at
least in cases where it is attatched to a word beginning with a labial.
I'm not sure if the unmodified "un-" also exists in Yiddish, no example
comes to mind.  So the two prefixes have become undistinguishable,
leading to the phenomenon Zellig has observed.

Anno Siegel
Berlin (Germany)

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End of Mendele Vol. 6.069