Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 182 February 21, 1992 1) Various (Yude-Leyb Proger) 2) Yiddish and Yiddiskayt (Ruvn-Mendl Turkel) 3) Yiddish and Yiddiskayt (Moishe-Nussen Eytan) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 10:15:48 IST From: YUDE-LEYB Subject: MISC. Mikhl: I am afraid you missed the point about _zhargon_ . It is well known that it was once a legitimate name for Yiddish and used by many Yiddish writers -- but that was over half a century ago. You don't refer to a black today as a _Negro_. A word's meaning has a time context. Mikhl, Moyshe-Nosn, Bob: The _klafte_ explanation was too simple. The plural of Y. _kelev_ is _klovim_. Bob Werman assures me that _klafte_ is from Aramaic, which solves the problem of why it has that form in WY, EY and Isr. H. slang. Problems of the word's semantic history remain. It must have entered Y. at an early date, but was it already used figuratively when borrowed, or did the fig. use develope in Y.? At the beginning of the 20th c. in Germany at least, among the speakers of Jewish German (which contained many words from WY) _klafte_ was a playful designation for a woman who henpecked her husband. It must have entered Isr. H. slang (by which I always mean informal speech) through both Jew. German and EY speakers. One would need to interview a lot of people to ascertain this for certain, but the word in Isr. H. seems a bit closer to USA _bitch_ , though not quite as harsh. It is interesting that _klafte_ rather than the more transparent _kelefte_ became current. Heb. didn't borrow Aram. _klavto_ as a doublet for _kalba_. As in many other instances, H. reimported a word of H-A. origin via Yiddish. Presumably in the Aram. word the final unstressed komets aleph becomes a shwa /klafte/. Bob's comment that scholars suggest the "proper" pron. is /kalb'ta/ raises the question how the vowel dropped out of the first syllable inAram. Syncopation is common enough, but are there comparable instances of /klafte/ < /kalb'ta/in Yiddish? It would be interesting to know if if the Vaynraykh-Kats debate over text-transmission vs. contant inheritance (yerushe) could illuminate how the Aram. word got into Yiddish. David Neal: You are right that "orthography... bespeaks ideology," .e.g. as in the Soviet spelling codex vs. the traditional spelling. But your exs. show you are talking about transcription, not orthography. You are talking about the way varieties of Hebrew (Isr. H., Ashkenazic H.) and Yiddish are romanized. In the specific Israeli context in which I used the romanization _mezuza_ and _mezuzot_ -- which you object to -- these romanizations are appropriate, being representations of Isr. H. In a Yiddish context I would follow your suggestion and practice -- you are one of the people who understands the importance of correct transcription -- and write _mezuze_, _mezuzes_ and in an Ashk. Whole H. context I would write _mezuzo_, _mezuzos_. I heartily agree that the way one romanizes Jew.langs. is significant. The mistakes can reflect plain lack of knowledge, a desire to simplify matters by following whatever spelling seems prevalent, or something more -- perhaps even a confusion in defining and ordering one's Jewish values, a confusion over what is "Jewish", what "Israeli ", what "yidishkeyt", etc. Certain romanizations of Jew. langs. reflect value confusion rather than consciously-motivated symbolic political acts. B. Harshav's use of Isr. H. in place of Ash. Whole H. transcriptions in his recent _The Meaning of Yiddish_ was a mistake in my opinion, and we should discuss. It was not necessarily an act of cultural imperialism. The Jewish language wars are over and today we need to respect each and every religio-ethno-cultural "territory" within the pluralistic Jewish commonwealth. This is another reason why we need to transcribe accurately --so as to deal fairly with the marvelously revernacularized modern Hebrew world, the still vibrant religio-cultural sphere of Ashkenazic Hebrew and the declining yet ever-resurging Yiddish-language domain. For great Yiddish scholars like Niger and Sadan, we had one literature in two languages. Even linguistically, there is no firm divide between the language boundaries of Hebrew and Yiddish. And, of course, ver s'ken nit ka ivre iz an amorets. And none of us know enough. Yude-Leyb Proger 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 10:28:03 EST From: rmt51@cas.bitnet Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.179 Regarding Martin Davis's observation of unaccented final Yiddosh vowels being degraded into long E: I also observed it in Boston when I moved there from New York almost thirty years ago, and found it the epitome of something to "set one's teeth on edge." It seems to me as though the speaker might be confusing such final vowels with (English) diminutives or child language. Bravo to Bob Werman on his bemoaning the lack of background in Yiddishkeit among many of Mendele's contributors. As a "frummie" myself I am appalled at the general level of ignorance. The problem, of course, is how to transmit that aspect of the language in the absence of a religious environment. I have yet to find a solution. Rick (Ruvn-Mendl) Turkel 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Feb 92 16:24:21 GMT From: me@SUZUKA.U-STRASBG.FR Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.179, 4) I concur with what Bob Werman has to say about Yiddishkeit, although not religious myself. I get a feeling of deep sorrow and chagrin to see what Jews and Yiddish have become in the U.S., nay in the world. But you Americans are supposed to have received the heritage and to be the biggest jewish community. As for the aramaic origin of 'klafte' I am not so sure, although I am sure Reb Werman is much more savant than I shall ever be. The reason is quite simple: as I wrote to the list, all Hebrew words in segol-segol (eg kelev, deleth, melekh etc) originate from the form in patah- (or kamats?) shevah (and/or the converse), ie kalb (or klab). Moreover in `Had Gadyah, the dog is 'kalba' (terminal letter: aleph): "dehikkah lekalba, denashakh leshunra, etc". Finally, please stop the hebrew-baiting (cf the discussion about 'mezuzah') if you do not like yiddish-baiting -- and I confess that when I hear some israelis do that I get quite upset -- although I did hear about the Canaanite movement. ==m-n ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.182