Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 93 November 1, 1991 1) Introduction (Yankl Bisso) 2) Oysgegrint (David Sherman) 3) Introduction (Isabelle Kreindler) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 08:01:21 PST From: jim@inishbofin.island.COM Subject: Brief Bio Borekh-Hanimtse! I studied comparative historical linguistics at UC Berkeley [A.B. '79], and am presently working on an M.A. at Mills College in Interdisciplinary Computer Science (Natural Language Processing). I've also worked as a technical writer in the software industry, and now I'm working part time as a software archivist. My interest in Yiddish is about 3 years old. A friend and I visited his friend in Los Angeles who has a PhD in Modern Hebrew Literature (with a minor emphasis in Yiddish Lit). we got to talking about Yiddish, and soon he retrieved from the attic boxes of Yiddish books. He had been a buyer for the UCLA Yiddish library, and had usually picked up duplicates for himself. After getting a rudimentary rundown on the language and its literature, I hit the main library at UC Berkeley, and did some research on my own, trying to teach myself Yiddish (and a little Hebrew). This continues (haphazardly) to today. I also have a keen interest in films (I'm a movie critic on a local radio station), so I started to look for showings of Yiddish language films. So far, I've seen a couple of classics from the '30's [Yidl mit a fidl, der Dybbuk] and a documentary on the state of Yiddish in Israel today. My interest in linguistics today (besides the computational stuff) is in the relationship of standard dialects [AKA official languages] to non-standard ones. It's interesting how Yiddish, even though it has supported a literature, both original and translated works, has been consistently viewed as a jargon instead of a language. The latest addition to the Yiddish section of my library is the first Yiddish grammar (in Russian) to be printed in the Soviet Union in about 50 years. I guess now I'll have to get around to studying Russian soon. Jim (Yankl) Bisso Work: jim@island.COM School: bisso@mills.EDU 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 16:38:17 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.92 > In brief, my proposal is: oysgegrint. I rather like that one. Aside from Melekh's suggestion of "baytn zikh di kolir", Raphael Finkel and his daughter have suggested "roytln zikh". But then, what if they're turning yellow and brown instead of red? 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 31 Oct 91 12:34:06 IST From: isabelle Subject: Introduction (Sorry for this late introduction--I 'was joined' to the list before I even knew what E-mail was.) My name is Isabelle Kreindler and I am mainly occupied with the nationality problems in the tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union (exSU??) Since moving to Israel this has become my hobby -- I teach English as a foreign language at Haifa University. My connection to Yiddish is non-academic -- I was born in Riga and had spoken Yiddish with my grandparents (bobe and zeide loshen?) Feeling ashamed of being almost an illiterate, I have recently bought a Yiddish - Self Taught book, but haven't yet found the time to work on it. (Anyway, spelling is not so important if we use latin letters.) In the meantime it's a delight to find myself connected with so many Yiddishist enthusiasts via Mendele. Perphaps if some Yiddish-Russian problems come up in the future, I may be able to contribute. Thank you. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.93