Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 08.002 May 18, 1998 1) Yiddish in the Yishuv (Mikhl Herzog) 2) Hebrew and Aramaic in Yiddish (A Manaster Ramer) 3) A movie in English, Welsh and Yiddish (Dan Leeson) 4) vilde chaya (harvey roy greenberg) 5) Adrabe: Two meanings (Louis Fridhandler) 6) chalah and maireh (Dick Braun) 7) Veb-verterbikher/ On-line dictionaries (Sholem Berger) 8) Oyto-terminologye (Shloyme-Khayim Cohen) 9) Yiddishland (Gitl Dubrovsky) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 00:45:42 -0400 From: "Mikhl Herzog" Subject: Yiddish in the Yishuv Re Susan Lerner's query (07.196) concerning Yiddish in the Yishuv. Two major works on this subject: M. Kosover, _Arabic elements in Palestinian Yiddish_, Jerusalem, 1966 Aryeh Leyb Pilovski _Tsvishn yo un neyn: Yidish un yidish-literatur in Erets-Yisroyel, 1907-1948_, Tel Aviv, 1986. Mikhl Herzog [Moderator's note: I would add recent and very interesting book "A marriage made in heaven: the sexual politics of Hebrew and Yiddish" by Naomi Seidman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) that deals at length with the various issues of Yiddish in the Yishuv. A lot of relevant information can be found in the books on Yiddish in Israel, e.g.: Joshua Fishman, Yiddish in Israel, In: The sociology of language in Israel / Hague: Mouton, 1974 Soll sein - Jiddische Kultur im judischen Staat / Augsburg: Olbaum, 1989 Mordekhai Halamish, Yidish be-Yisrael : al sofrim, meshorerim, omanim / Tel-Aviv : Eked, 1990 I.Z.Shargel, Mit fule emers / Tel-Aviv : Farlag "Yisroel-bukh", 1990 Also, there are many antologies of prose and poetry, e.g.: Erets-Yisroel in der Yidisher literatur / Tel-Aviv : Farlag Y.L. Perets, 1961 Oyf di shliyakhn fun heym: Erets Yisroel motivn bay di Yidishe prozayikers, poetn un eseyistn velkhe lebn un shafn in land / Tel Aviv : Veltrat far Yidish un Yidisher kultur, 1989 Yidish-literatur in Medines-Yisroel / Tel-Aviv : H.Leyvik Farlag, 1991 Antologye: in dem eygenem land / Buenos Aires, 1973 (Musterverk, 55) Geyt a Yid keyn Erets-Yisroel / Buenos Aires, 1978 (Musterverk, 75) Yisroel in di tfutses in der Yidisher literatur / Buenos Aires, 1981 (Musterverk, 85) iosif vaisman] 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 00:59:22 -0400 (EDT) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Hebrew and Aramaic in Yiddish As Mikhl hints, the precise origin of the Hebrew and Aramaic words in Yiddish is one of the many contentious issues in Yiddish historical linguistics. The background of Katz's theory that the Hebrew was borrowed into Aramaic and thence into Yiddish is important. Katz claims that everybody but him has held that the Hebrew and Aramaic words in Yiddish were borrowed not from speech but from specific Hebrew or Aramaic texts. I dont think this is true, and I believe that Katz is creating a straw man here. Moreover, whether true or not, the crucial point is that Katz claims that there are only two possible explanations: (a) these words came from texts or (b) they came from a colloquial Semitic language spoken by some group of Jews living in Europewho (or whose immediate descendants) created Yiddish. Moreover, he assumes that Hebrew could not have been this alleged colloquial language, for who would believe that Hebrew was spoken colloquially in medieval Europe, so it must have been Aramaic. This is the sum total of his argument for why the Hebrew came into Yiddish via Aramaic and not say the other way around. This makes no sense to me. Moreover, there is an obvious alternative to (a) and (b), namely, (c) these words came into Yiddish from a Semitic language or languages which were spoken (i.e., pronounced) but were not colloquial, i.e., from the Hebrew and Aramaic that were used by Jews the way Latin was used by non-Jews or even the way English is used today by non-English native speakers the world over. Katz's specific arguments for (b) over (a) have to do with the fact that in Yiddish words of Hebrew or Aramaic origin have a certain very distinctive property as far as how they are pronounced: with a few exceptions, all vowels are short in syllables closed by a consonant, which is why we have klal but pl. klolem, sod but pl. soydes. The fact that this is so was discovered long before Katz but its importance was seen by Katz because it is something which the Hebrew-and-Aramaic- in-Yiddish have this property but no pronunciation of Hebrew or Aramaic itself does. Katz as I said takes this to mean that we are dealing with a colloquial Aramaic, because only a colloquial language could have developed a peculiar pronunciation all its own. I dont think this follows at all: Latin in the middle ages and since has not been a colloquial language but it has developed all kinds of pronunciations in different countries, and so the Hebrew or Aramaic of Jews whose native language was something else could have too. There are other issues, too, but once again the answer depends on a detailed linguistic analysis of facts which by themselves may seem dry as dust but which alone can tell us what the language (and life) of early medieval Jews was like in and around Germany. Of course, the details dont only have to do with pronunciation. I will not try to draw any conclusions but the kinds of facts which are I think significant in deciding where the Semitic component of Yiddish comes from and how exactly it got there are the following: (a) Yiddish widely uses the Hebrew pl. ending -im and hardly ever the Aramaic -in (even though the latter was widely used in medieval Hebrew), (b) Yiddish has a number of words whose root is of Hebrew origin but with the Aramaic feminine ending -ta (Yiddish -te) but never an Aramaic root with a Hebrew suffix, (c) Yiddish has lots of verbs made from Semitic roots but these are always of Hebrew, never of Aramaic origin, and moreover (although some might dispute this, I am not sure) these verbs in all cases reflect real Hebrew verb forms (and I think it matters what forms these are, but I wont go into that now). As I have said before, it is only by pondering such details that we can discover the history of Yiddish. I may not agree with Katz about much, but his approach is right. You have to look at the details and find just those which point to a particular conclusion about the past. A Manaster Ramer 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 08:34:55 EDT From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@admin.fhda.edu" Subject: A movie in English, Welsh and Yiddish Now we need a Yiddish-Welsh dictionary!! >From "The Times" of London May 14 1998 ACTORS sometimes insist that learning lines is the easiest part of their trade, but those starring in a film about a Jewish boy who falls in love with a non-Jewish girl in South Wales before the Great War have had to learn them in three languages. Solomon and Gaenor has been shot in English, Welsh and Yiddish. The production, being promoted at the Cannes Film Festival, stars two Welsh actors - Ioan Gruffudd, who appeared in Titanic, and Nia Roberts in her first feature film lead. In the story, love triumphs against a backdrop of poverty and anti-Semitism. Maureen Lipman, who also has a leading role, enjoyed speaking Yiddish. "It is wonderfully onomatopoeic, an incredibly beautiful language," she said. Ms Roberts said that it had been daunting to face doing an emotional scene in English and then having to "recreate the same intensity" in Welsh. At first they occasionally mixed up languages, she recalled. The film, shot around Cardiff, is set in a Welsh mining community in 1911. It was written and directed by Paul Morrison, who said: "The juxtaposition of these two proud and hard-working peoples - the Jewish tinkers of eastern Europe and the Welsh mining and chapel communities - struck me as powerful material for a drama." Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 08:16:59 EDT From: HrgSmes Subject: vilde chaya I am a psychoanalyst and film scholar, currently reviewing THE BUTCHER BOY, film based on a strange, hilarious, terrifying novel by Patrick McCabe about a psychotic Irish youngster. In the course of writing the review, the phrase VILDE CHAYA popped into my head from my philadelphia youth. As recalled, this was used to describe a disobedient youngster of any age ranging up to late adolescence. I never heard it in connection with a girl. It was quite flexible. You could be called a vilde chaya in my suburban neighborhood for relatively minor offenses -- talking back to the teacher, God forbid -- not coming home in time for dinner so forth. But there were also dark allusions when one was thought to be out of earshot to -- the real item -- authentic vilde chayas, kids who had gotten into serious delinquent type trouble or ended up as "no goodbums" "jailbirds", even occasional lunatics. I would appreciate further enlightenment on the idiom. Up to what age can you be considered a vilde chaya? Are girls ever vilde chayas? I also sense that it is being used in a much more perjorative way today, with ominous ethnic overtones. In my time, and also according to my mother and mother in law, it could be used affectionately. I by the way was a frequent vilde chaya. Thanks in advance harvey roy greenberg 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 12:46:24 EDT From: Lfridhan Subject: Adrabe: Two meanings. To quote Yosef Gilboa (7.196, 4): The expression [adrabe] is most frequently used to mean "on the contrary" rather than "even more so". Apparently, a single word such as adrabe (which in English is rendered as an entire subordinate clause) can have two such different meanings, each taking off in very different directions. I must surmise that in written text, the reader's "take" must be determined by context. Perhaps in speech the listener's understanding may be helped by vocal intonation. I am reminded of the response by someone to an assertion with the English word, "Sure!" It can mean vigorous assent. On the other hand it can express strong skepticism if the voice is edged with sarcasm. My memory of the use of ad(e)rabe in Yiddish by my family and their friends was to mean, "On the contrary," never, "Even more so." However, I have been taught by Sholem Aleichem's talkative characters that both meanings occur in Yiddish. Louis Fridhandler 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 16:33:53 -0400 From: "Richard Braun" Subject: chalah and maireh I've been corresponding with a matzah manufacturer concerning their kashrut/pesach certification shown on their package, namely the phrase, printed in hebrew letters, 'mir nehmen chalah fun yeder maireh'. The word at issue is 'maireh', translated by them as 'production batch'. This makes sense within the context of the sentence, but what exactly is the derivation of maireh? The closest I can come is the German 'Meierei', meaning a milk business. But this seems far fetched. How can you get 'production batch' from it? Any ideas on this out there? Thanks for your help. Dick Braun 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 23:39:35 -0400 From: "Sholem Berger" Subject: Veb-verterbikher/ On-line dictionaries Ikh hob zikh nor vos ongeshtoysn in a vunderlekhn veb-resurs. "A Web of On-line Dictionaries" (http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard/diction.html) bashteyt fun gor a langer reshime fun shprakhn-verterbikher vos zaynen tsutritlekh afn veb. Hekher hundert shprakhn bavayzn zikh af ot der reshime, un unter yeder shprakh geyen es arunter a tsol bazundere bikher. (A tsveyte reshime, "A Web of On-line Grammars" [http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard/grammars.html], farbindt dem banitser mit gramatikes un lektsyes fun a tsol shprakhn.) Tsvishn di leshoynes -- a sakh minoritet-shprakhn: baskish (Euskara), katalan, chamorro, cherokee. Ober yidish? Mayne khaveyrim yidishistn veysn shoyn dem entfer. (S'iz yo do a farbindung tsu epes a "Yiddish Dictionary Project" bay penn, nor dos iz aponem untergegangen.) Ikh veys az der yivo arbet shoyn haynt af a kompyuterizirtn verterbukh, nor s'iz a ris in hartsn az undzer shprakh hot nisht keyn plats tsvishn azoy fil andere khosheve leshoynes. Ikh hob nisht keyn praktishe eytses, nor ikh hob gevolt tsutsien ayer oyfmerkzamkayt tsu nokh a bleyz vos darf (un efsher meg?) oysgefilt vern. The Web sites "A Web of On-line Dictionaries" and "A Web of On-line Grammars" (URLs above) give access to hundreds of on-line foreign-language dictionaries, grammars, lessons, and tutorials, among them resources for a number of minority languages: Euskara (Basque), Catalan, Chamorro, Cherokee, etc., etc. It should come as no surprise to supporters of Yiddish that our language is unrepresented (with the exception of a Yiddish Dictionary Project at Penn which has been discontinued). I understand that YIVO is working on a computerized Yiddish dictionary, but are there no steps to remedy this state of affairs that could be taken in the meantime? Sholem Berger New York 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 23:26:33 -0400 From: "Steve Cohen" Subject: Oyto-terminologye Tayere Mendelistn: Ikh hob itst a 21-khdoshim-alt kleyner, Danele, ver hot lib alerley oytos un mase-oytos. Ikh ken nit di verter far ale di sortn oytos, ts"b: Fire truck Police car convertible Cement truck limousine construction vehicle (bulldozer, crane, forklift, etc.) ambulance pickup truck van school bus greyhound bus (i.e., long distance bus) double-decker bus etc. Oykh vil ikh lernen zikh di nemen far avyonen: jet fighter plane propeller airplane biplane space shuttle supersonic airplane hang-glider etc. (Ikh ken luftbalon, dirizhabl, helikopter, avyon, raket.) Tsi hot Yugntruf gemakht a reshime verter? Mir hobn an english bukh far kinder vegn avyonen un oytos, ober ikh ken nit zogn im af Yidish. -Shloyme-Khayim Cohen 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 09:50:13 EDT From: GDubrovsky Subject: Yiddishland I know well the passion and nostalgia for "der alter heym" whose memory was a living presence with my Yiddish speaking relatives who looked back towards it always, and for the language in which they lived and in which they endlessly discussed and argued. My only quibble is an artificial construct of "Yiddishland" for Yiddish literature. Yiddish literature is the crown of Yiddish, created by intellectuals and poets who gave voice to both the passion and the nostalgia. Those who did not live in the shtetlakh of Eastern Europe cannot know about that world without reading the literature. I have been immeasurably enriched by it. But, my relatives read the Yiddish tsaytung, and were not necessarily conversant with 'literature.' Their Yiddishland was in their hearts, in their mouths, and in their memories. They took these with them, wherever they went. They weren't necessarily 'religious,' but the memory of their 'religious life' in 'der heym,' was a pervasive influence on their behavior in America. I think I learned as much from them as I did from the literature I later read. Zay mir gezint. Gitl Dubrovsky ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 08.002 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html