Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.252 March 3, 1997 1) Soviet Yiddish orthography (Bob Werman) 2) Soviet Yiddish orthography (Dovid Braun) 3) More on "tsadik" and "tsadi" (Gilad J. Gevaryahu) 4) Hebrew words in Yiddish (A. Joseph Ross) 5) Hebrew words in Yiddish (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 2 Mar 97 21:57 +0200 From: rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il Subject: Yiddish orthography in Communist Russia Marc Chagall returned to Russia to live the dream of a new world promised by the victory of the Bolsheviki. His stay was a rich period of productivity for him but the dream was not realizable and the years he spent in Russia, his homeland, in the 20's, were a passing phase in his life. One powerful painting of that period is a graveyard in Vitebsk. I was always impressed that he spelled "eretz" in the logo on the graveyard gate with an eyin [instead of an alef] and thought it an example of am-ha-ortzus [ignorance]. But in light of the discussion of the changes in orthography, I realize that I might have been hasty; the eyin may be an example of "reformed," purist Russian Yiddish orthography. Can some one help with that? And when were the changes in final constanants made, in Stalin's time or before that? I have a sense of deja vu or deja apercu when I read the justifications for Yiddish spelling to be ivris rayn [cleansed of its Hebrew roots]. Have we learned nothing? What did Santayana say about learning from history? I should have said ivris fray, no, to be a purist, shouldn't I have? When will we ever learn? Yidn!!! Bob Werman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 02 Mar 1997 17:01:05 EST From: dovid@mit.edu Subject: Soviet Yiddish orthography as "Power to the People!" Those who focus on the "affront to tradition," "de-Hebraization," "dissociation of Yiddish from religious culture," "anti-Hebraist stance" and/or "anti-Zionist stance," etc. so commonly associated with the reformers of Yiddish spelling in the Soviet Union fail to notice (often, surely, because of their political allegiances or philosophical outlook) that the reform towards spelling Yiddish vocabulary of Semitic origin in sync with the rest of the Yiddish vocabulary could be looked at as an *appropriation* or a *(re)claiming* (to use some trendy terms) of these vocabulary items for *all* speakers/readers/writers, independent of their social class origins, (non-)religious upbringing, or sex (since content and depth of education depended on these factors). [Pardon the length of the sentence.] Btw, thanks to Bob Rothstein (as always) for _source_! And I don't understand what Iosif Vaisman is referring to when mentioning tes-shin and zayen-shin. Probably I misunderstood the point, but these combinations have nothing to do with the Soviet Yiddish spelling reforms. Dovid Braun Cambridge, MA 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 15:24:15 -0500 (EST) From: gevaryahu@aol.com Subject: More on "tsadik" and "tsadi" Although the original and correct pronounciation and spelling of the 18th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is tsadi, the usage has been tsadik at least from the mid 1940s and on. I grew up in Israel, and was surprised one day, later in life, to find out that the letter was "tsadi" and not "tsadik. See the Hebrew dictionary by Gur (Gruzofsky) 2nd edition, 1947, p. 841, where he listed the usage "tsadik" as slang. Did it come to Hebrew via Yiddish? Probably not. Harkavy calls this letter "Tzadi" 1896 edition p. 279, while Weinreich "Tsadek", 1968, p. 339. If the change from Harkavi "tsadi" to Weinreich "tsadik" is reflective of the time of the change; then both Hebrew and Yiddish moved in about the same time? A personal unsubstantiated guess is that the known word tsadik was adopted because it is easier to say, remember, and use; but then that reason existed for a long time, so why did it change only in our century? In fact I think that the more elaborate reason goes back to the Talmud B. Shabbat 104a "tzadi kefufah ve'tzadi peshuta; tzadik kafuf vetzadik pashut" [=a bend tzadi {letter} and a straight tzadi {letter} connotes a bend tzadik {a person} and a straight tzadik {a person}]. Thus I would not be surprise if research will find the letter name used both as tzadi and tzadik for centuries both in Hebrew and Yiddish. Gilad J. Gevaryahu 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 23:24:28 -0500 (EST) From: lawyer@world.std.com Subject: Hebrew words in Yiddish Every time I think I've gotten thoroughly tired of this topic, someone says something that makes me feel compelled to reply. Sholem Yafe says [6.246] that English words derived from Greek are written with English letters, and by that reasoning, Hebrew words used in Yiddish should have standard Yiddish spellings. Wrong analogy. Greek, Hebrew, Russian, or Yiddish words used in English are written with the Latin alphabet and given some semblance of a phonetic English spelling. Likewise, German or Russian words used in Yiddish are written with the Hebrew alphabet and a Yiddish spelling. A better analogy is how English uses words from other languages that also use the Latin alphabet. German, French or Spanish words used in English retain their German, French, or Spanish spellings, although their pronunciation is often anglicized. And Hebrew words used in Yiddish retain their Hebrew spellings, although their pronunciation is often Yiddishized. A. Joseph Ross 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 From: nmiller@trincoll.edu Subject: Hebrew words in Yiddish Joseph Ross is mistaken I think. While it's true that Greek words are these days rendered in English (and phonetically) that was often not the case before 1950, particularly in Britain where an easy familiarity with classical Greek was _the_ hallmark of the cultivated gentleman. An easy familiarity with Hebrew (and even more so Aramaic) among Yiddish speakers plays and always has played the same role as a mark of social class. A single example? Try "makhtese", a word used everywhere but which these days often goes unrecognized in the original two Aramaic words. (I've tested.) Skeptical readers are urged to make up their own word lists and run their own tests. Was this always a problem? Sure. Almost all women. Lower-class children. What, after all, are the vowel markings in the makhzor for if not to make it easier for the uninitiated to pronounce a loshn- koydesh word correctly? And what are these markings if not the functional equivalent of phonetic spelling? The rise of literary Yiddish in the 19th century coincided with urbanization and a rapid increase in secularization. A growing chunk of the Yiddish-reading public had little or no first-hand familiarity with Hebrew. That was the situation in post-revolutionary Russia. And so for the same reason that Greek is now usually written phonetically in English.. Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.252