Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.157 December 22, 1996 1) Slavic influences on Yiddish syntax (Meyer-leyb Wolf) 2) Yiddish Poems for beginners (David Baron) 3) On writing subject titles (Zellig Bach) 4) Oy with an umlaut (Johannes Seppi) 5) Der B'rit Chadash (Bob Werman) 6) Widze (Nechama and Gershon Winer) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 23:05:25 -0500 (EST) From: wolfim@chelsea.ios.com Subject: Slavic influences on Yiddish syntax Thanks to Ellen Prince for the broad-ranging discussion of some putative examples of Slavic influence on Yiddish syntax. Some brief comments: multiple wh-fronting -- I'm puzzled about your problem with getting examples from informants. 'ver vos zogt...', 'ver mit vemen hot getantst...', 'vos mit vos shtimt nit...' etc. seem pretty unexceptional to me, though they are like Olshvanger's instance and unlike your sentences calqued from Slavic languages. Maybe its only possible in embedded sentences 'ver vos zogt gedenk ikh nit' may be OK but 'ver vos zogt' is not because, unlike the Slavic languages, Yiddish doesnt do multiple wh-fronting in main clauses. position of zikh -- I'm more likey to be misled by another fact: Yiddish also allows the older order as well 'zey zenen gekumen zikh gezegenen mit im'. double imperative -- There are other idiomatic expression with 'geyn' which also seem to lack imperatives, e.g. gey(t) shoyn gey(t) 'go on!'. I don't think the double imperative is peculiarly Yiddish; we dont know how widespread the construction is in the German dialects or even in the Germanic languages. English has it, for instance ('go tell Aunt Rhodie ...'), but there is no straightforward negation, cf. 'don't go telling your mother...'. It seems to be connected with the "go and" construction, but I'm not sure what the historical details are. Meyer-leyb Wolf 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 10:09:26 +0200 From: davidb@accentsoft.com Subject: Yiddish Poems for beginners I would recommend the book of poems by Eliezer Schindler (z"l) (He his Rabbi Alex Schindler's father and was an expert on Chassidut) The poetry is a delight, of simple vocabulary, musical (there are several tunes by Jehoshua Wisser, a noted library immaginable. So check yours--who knows? David Baron 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 22:33:59 -0500 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: On writing subject titles In a recent post (6.148) our Noyekh Miller discussed at some length the importance for archival reasons to properly title a subject topic, and to show at the same time the connectedness of different contributions on the same topic. This will, of course, facilitate future research in the _Mendele_ volumes. To shape a good and proper subject title is an art in itself. Big newspapers have people specializing in writing headlines -- to distill the contents of a news story or article in a few, short words. The art of writing a subject title over a post to _Mendele_ is in many respects similar: Herewith, a critical sample of my own: I published here an item with the subject title. "Do iz nito in nishto" (6.142). Admittedly, I was misled (captivated, if you will) by the sound of the serial komets-alefs. For greater clarity the subject title might have read "Do iz _mer_ nito in nishto ["mer" no more], or even more accurately and to avoid any possible ambiguity, "do iz mer nito in 'nishto farvos'." True, the effect (or the "subjective" charm) of the triple komets-alefs would have been lost for the sake of greater precision and inclusivity, but that is one of the problems: do not try to squeeze everything into a subject title, It should by all means stay short. And so, to all Mendelyaner: E-mail to _Mendele_ your posts (contributions) with appropriate subject titles to ease, in some measure, Noyekh's burdens. As you certainly know, all contributions to _Mendele_ (in the form of posts) are tax-deductible... Zellig Bach Lakehurst, NJ 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Dec 96 11:53 GMT+0100 From: jseppi@xpoint.at Subject: Oy with an umlaut I got a copy of Olsvanger's "Rosinkes mit Mandlen", first published in Basel in 1920. The foreword says the language is that of the Jews from Litauen, the vowel is written 'e^j' and described as sounding like open o-umlaut follewed by j (which would be y in English). Johannes Seppi 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Dec 96 12:23 +0200 From: rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il Subject: Brit-hadash[a] It should be chadasa[h] of hadasha[a], as brit is feminine in Hebrew. Usually the missionaries are careful about their Hebrew. Mine is stamped "Yiddish Pentateuch/ Tentative Edition" and on the cover "Sefer Torah N'vi'im u-chsuvim/ das izt/ die gantze heilige shrift fan dem alten/ testament/ tray und richtig iberzetzt fan lashon hakoydesh oyf yudish-deitsh/ fan/ mordechei shmuel bergman/ und zardefaltid iberzehen/ fan/ r' aharon bernshtein/ gderukt in landan/ oyf kasten der britishen und oyslendishen bibel geselshaft/ 1893. The Yiddish is heavily Germanized, beginning, "im anfang had gat geshafen di himel und di erde. und di erde var vist und le'er und finsternist var oyf dem abgrund und der daist gattes hat geshvebt oyf dem vaser. und gat hat gezagt es soll veren licht, und es ist geveren licht. . ." Bob Werman Jerusalem 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 18:41:29 +0200 From: winer@euronet.co.il Subject: Widze In 1937 in Warsaw a small book of Yiddish poetry was published. _Velt In Tsoim_ contained Baruch Gelman's poetry. He was a native of Widze in the Vilna area, and in fact, some of the poems tell of that shtetl. He died at the hands of the Nazis when he was only 31 years old. Several years ago we in Israel (Winunsky in Widze until 1930) photocopied the book and republished it, for the purpose of remembering important personages of our shtetl. Nechama and Gershon Winer ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.157