Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 195 March 26, 1992 1) The 'origins' of Yiddish (Ellen Prince) 2) Various (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Bagels and bialys (Margaret E. Winters) 4) Recorded Yiddish music (Sholem Ruveyn Benjamin) 5) Distinctions (Moishe-Nussen Eytan) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Mar 92 15:09:46 EST From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: Paul Wexler Hinda Feldman writes: > >The following ad appeared in the yawningly staid publicity >put out in last Sept .-October's edition of the >Harrassowitz Book Digest. > > Paul Wexler The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A Slavic > Language in Search of a Semitic Past >... yes, fact would be stranger than fiction, if in fact wexler were reporting facts. or even reasonable inferences. HE IS NOT. his 'evidence' is entirely of the most superficial lexical and morphological type--on the basis of such evidence, english would come out being 'really' a romance language (as opposed to the germanic language it is) much much more decisively than yiddish comes out being slavic--or hebrew comes out being yiddish. i could rant on for many screens' worth on how outrageously nil his 'research' in this domain is, but i won't unless someone wants a private ranting. let me just say here that he is TOTALLY IGNORING the domain of SYNTAX, which shows very clearly that hebrew is semitic, infinitely closer to arabic than to yiddish, and that yiddish is germanic, infinitely closer to new high german than to 'sorbian' or any other slavic language. he claims that yiddish is 'relexified sorbian' and hebrew is 'relexified yiddish'--however, he is just throwing the term around and is misusing it egregiously. creole languages are said to 'relexify' when they KEEP THEIR SYNTAX but trade in certain lexical items for those of a new language (e.g. when a new colonial power takes over). therefore, the *syntax* is the crucial indicator of what kind of language one is *really* dealing with, genetically. yiddish syntax is clearly and unambiguously germanic (and non-slavic), and hebrew syntax is clearly and unambiguously semitic (and non-yiddish). wexler NEVER addresses the issue of syntax at all and CITES NO SYNTACTICIAN in his opus--not a one--in spite of the fact that germanic syntax has generated an enormous amount of research in the past 15 years. so he has IN NO WAY given us the slightest reason to think that a relexification story is even worth checking out, much less the right story. if these issues were politically neutral, i'd just write his stuff off as non-research, up there with a pakistani book i saw a few years ago claiming arabic is the 'original language' and other drivel. however, it is not politically neutral and as such is the most irresponsible thing i have seen in linguistics in the 26 years i've been in the field. and yes, you can quote me. i've already said this to him publicly and am still awaiting a reply. finally, i'm not worried that he'll 'undermine' the field in any way--the field has responded to his farkakte claims with the embarrassed silence they deserve. what i fear is that the *popular* press, here and in israel kholile, will take it up and give it publicity. and this we really don't need. ellen prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Mar 92 17:56 EST From: ZOGUR%CUVMB.BITNET@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Dave: to add to your list of pairs: yontev/khoge, besoylem/tsvinter; there are more. This is a Jewish-Gentile distinction, not to be confused with other pairs like shtarbn/peygern, esn/axlen, etc. which function as plain vs. pejorative. There's yet another category of plain vs cryptic: redn/dabern and still another of plain vs. euphemistic: pishn/mashtn zayn. Ellen: A propos of restaurants, Chinese, Baleboste, etc., there's a store on Bvd St Michel in Paris called (approximate spelling) Toyu Voyu. Not a very Jewish neighborhood. saydInteres: I'll use it in a sentence. Az se reygnt indero:sn, gayt menisht ara:n dorkh di front; me gayt ara:n dorkhn saydInteres. flEtelet: "flat to let" solefIte: "self-heater" a device that no home should be without. David Braun: Add these to your list "Daber nisht, der orl iz meyvn kol diber" From Moravia "Shtike, di zeygestn shmeyet" "zeyg" is a Western Yiddish term for "orl/goy". Etymology? Mikhl Herzog 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Mar 92 22:04:42 CST From: GA3704%SIUCVMB.BITNET@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: bagels and bialys Ellen Prince doesn't KNOW (:-)) how bad things are west of the Hudson. In Southern Illinois they think they know what bagels are - no one could ever develop strong teeth on these. They are basically soft rolls, not very good, with a hole in the middle. As for bialys and hamantashen, no one has ever heard of them! Sigh! Margaret 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Mar 92 23:02:08 EST From: sbenj%Athena.MIT.EDU@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.193 Re: Jeff Finger's Yiddish Anthology question.... I don't have the answer you are looking for, BUT...I assume you are referring to a recorded anthology and not books (I was trying to imagine how you might enjoy Paul Robeson singing from a book and reached this astounding conclusion). I just received the Arbeiter Ring's most recent Jewish music catalogue and am astounded at the collection of recordings they've assembled. There are in fact several anthologies listed with similar vocalist mixes to the one you describe. One they have is called The Golden Years of Yiddish Music, Vol 1 (I believe the other 3 may not be in print) which features a lot of the classic Yiddish singers on a single tape. Now if it were books you were talking about, Hebrew U. did publish a fairly useful 4 volume "Anthology of Yiddish Folksong" a few years back. The Workmen Circle catalogue is definitely worth getting though. Sholem Ruveyn (Sheldon Benjamin) 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 26 Mar 92 08:58:25 GMT From: me%suzuka.u-strasbg.fr@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.192 5) Dave writes: I don't understand many of the distinctions above (i.e., exactly what the difference is between shtarbn and peygern, for, for that matter, niftr zayn). As far as I can tell, the difference between'shtarbn' and 'peygern' is what in French you would call 'mourir' and 'crever' (dunno the exact word for this in English); as for 'nifter zayn', it's 'to pass away' -- or some other lenient and roundabout way to say 'to die'. Can someone start a list (based on the above), with English translations and explanations as necessary, that we might collectively expand on? This is a fascinating topic. Well, above is a (tiny) start; just ask for precise distinctions -- although some in the citation are unknown to me (eg 'tsinter', 'byela-tserkov' -- must be Polish, or even 'shvarts-tum' that I easily understand but never heard of). I can think of a couple of others: shmadn/mgayer zayn (convert from/to Judaism); You got it wrong Dave: 'shmadn' is not 'convert from' but 'apostasize' (mebbe it's only a nuance, but it makes a hell of a difference for a Yid, as distinct from a mere Jew -- distinction between the last two should be obvious!). and bukh/sefer (the latter referring to a religious book; are the terms mutually exclusive, or is sefer a subset of bukh?). I would say they *are* exclusive. Never would my Mum call 'A la recherche du temps perdu' a 'sefer'. More generally I totally agree with Yude-Leyb that most often the difference is between ordinary and pejorative use, although for me 'khazer' is definitely non-neutral. However I would call all this stuff 'socio-linguistics' (some of my former colleagues at Univ. Paris V studied 'l'argot des etudiants' and here they study 'l'alsacien'), the interest being very dubious to me -- unless you tie it up with the whole environment of the Yiddish-speaking folks;. Moishe-Nussen ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.196 As of 3/25/92 Mendele is distributed via Listserv. In order to minimize confusion, please play by these rules: If you wish to send something to Mendele's readers, write to: mendele@yalevm or mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu If you have technical problems or simply want to have a private shmuess with the shames, write to: nmiller@trincc or nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu