Mendele: Yiddish literature and language --------------------------------------------------- Contents of Vol. 1 no. 7 May 29, 1991 1) More on Yiddish in English (Ellen Prince) 2) Even more (Frank Silbermann) 1)------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 May 91 13:52:48 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol. 1 No. 6 i have a few comments in response to dave's comments. >Note also that in many cases there is no English word that *really* >has the same meaning, and carries the same connotations, as the >Yiddish word that's used. it's a little more complicated than that, i think. for many of the words, they had no particular connotion in YIDDISH--it's only as borrowings into ENGLISH that they acquire these connotations. >> Whatever the reason one wants to be with a >> Boro Park family--for a simcha, for a shid- >> duch, for companionship, for chinuch, for >> chizuck,...the Committee and its 90 baalei >> battim welcome you (Jewish Journal, Dec. 12, >> 1975, p.22). > >Can you really translate simcha and shidduch? Note that even >where these words do have English translations, the use of the >Yiddish word restricts the meaning to "a Jewish X". One might >refer to a "celebration" or "festivity", but these have a much >wider meaning. A simcha is specifically a Jewish event that is >celebrated within the Jewish traditions. according to my admittedly imperfect intuitions, if one is speaking YIDDISH, one can perfectly well speak of a shidekh between gentiles or even a mixed one (tho the presupposition of matchmaking makes a mixed one a bit unusual). and certainly there can be goyishe simkhes, no? it's only when they're used in english that they get specialized that way. (and i don't think they do for everyone.) >There's also some question as to whether these usages are Yiddish >brought into English, or Hebrew brought into English. Some are >clearly Yiddish. But, as a test, consider how many of the words >might be used by an Israeli living in the U.S. (with a different >accent on a word like "simcha", of course). don't brush aside the placement of the accent so easily! in fact that tells us that the word came into english from yiddish, not from hebrew. for example, many anglophone jews have two words in their english lexicons--shabes and shabat. it's very clear that shabes had to come in from yiddish (the old hebrew -th was pronounced in yiddish -s--typical german accent, after all), whereas shabat is clearly from modern hebrew. (old hebrew th became modern hebrew t, plus the stress remained on the second syllable.) (oh, sorry--the movement of the stress to the first syllable in a two syllable word is a typical germanic feature--english did it with all the french words it borrowed, too.) i should add that, with simkhe, it's not only the difference in stress, it's also the last vowel--/a/ in hebrew and schwa (mid central lax vowel) in yiddish and english. >> Since we had only one Sefer Torah it was >> agreed that the Ashkenazim would leyn first >> ...and we leyned after the roll call (Jewish >> Life, July 1973, pp.45-46). > >What's unusual here? To leyn has a specific meaning (to read >from the Torah during services). What other word could you >possibly use? "Read" would *not* have the same meaning. >The same goes for Sefer Torah, which is a specific object >for which there is no other convenient term. again, leyn in yiddish is read. men leyent a tsaytung, a briv, vos es zol nit zayn, even a porno novel... it's only in english that it's limited to torah reading. >I would agree that these are all examples of Judaeo-English. >Whether the words migrated into Judaeo-English through Yiddish >or through Hebrew is probably irrelevant. of course, leyn couldn't possibly have come from hebrew since it's not semitic. (it's claimed to have come into yiddish from some romance language, i believe.) i should add that, as a linguist, **i** don't find their origin irrelevant--tho i realize it's not an earth-shaking issue. >> And my favorite: >> >> We must practice Ahavoh not Sinoh; we must >> build Yiddishkeit, not destroy it. If a >> non-frum boy moves into your neighborhood.. >> be mekarev him (Darkenu, July 1975, p.7). > >Again, perfectly normal speech, if you live in the Orthodox world. >Ahavoh and Sinoh have arrived in the language directly from Hebrew >rather than through Yiddish, I would venture to say. Again, all the >words given are simply the most convenient and appropriate words to >use; the parallel English words pale in expressiveness, and would >not convey the right connotations. i agree that some of these are 'technical terms' and don't translate well. but others aren't. what does non-frum have that non-observant lacks, other than an ability to make the hearers feel warm and in-group? (i'm not putting down the importance of feeling warm and in-group--in fact, there's a long literature on that as a motivation for code-switching in general--i'm just pointing out that there's no NECESSITY for using most of these.) and now i'll stop hocking you a tshaynik, as we used to say in brooklyn. 2)------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 May 91 13:43:49 CDT From: Frank Silbermann Subject: RE: Mendele Vol. 1 No. 6 > Can you really translate simcha and shidduch? Note that even > where these words do have English translations, the use of the > Yiddish word restricts the meaning to "a Jewish X". One might > refer to a "celebration" or "festivity", but a simcha is > specifically a Jewish event that is celebrated within > the Jewish traditions. I presume, then, that Israeli Arabs don't have simchas. (Does this mean that modern Hebrew has a different word for the general concept of `celebration'?) > Next time you're in an Orthodox shul listening to a drosha > pretend you're not Jewish and don't understand a word of Hebrew, > Aramaic or Yiddish. Then see if you can understand any of the drosha. I always assumed this was due to one of the following reasons: A) Ignorance of the English translations for some words. B) Inability to translate the concepts into English due to a shallow understanding of the concept itself. C) Desire to distinguish in-group people from outsiders via a special in-group slang, much as adolescents are prone to do. (Why else must Pharoah be called `Paroh' in the middle of a speech that otherwise is in English? Was `Paroh' a specifically-Jewish Egyption king?) It seems redundant to embed a declaration of one's Jewishness into every sentence. I must admit, however, that since I've begun hanging around Orthodox people, I've started to pick up some of these habits (e.g. calling the Sabbath `Shabbas'). Frank Silbermann fs@cs.tulane.edu Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana USA