Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.036 June 16, 1993 1) Scanning Yiddish texts (Beatrice Santorini) 2) Yiddish -- The Fifteenth Slavic Language? (Ellen Prince) 3) Yiddish NPs and Basque (Dvoyre Halperin) 4) Iddish (Bob Werman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Jun 15 13:42:31 1993 From: beatrice@zora.ling.nwu.edu (Beatrice Santorini) Subject: scanning yiddish texts i am looking to buy a scanner to read texts in yiddish (and preferably german as well) and would appreciate any and all information and tips. the scanner needs to be compatible with a mac IIci and/or a sun sparc station. please reply to me privately---i'll be happy to summarize for the list. thanks. beatrice santorini 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Jun 15 14:05:56 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: Yiddish -- The Fifteenth Slavic Language? i'd just like to add a tragi-comic addendum to khaim bochner's articulate and patient reply re wexler's claim that yiddish is slavic. wexler also has another 'theory': modern hebrew is yiddish. therefore, following wexler (and aristotle), modern hebrew is slavic. this has one wonderful implication: israel can save lots of money by closing all the ulpans--the russian olim already know hebrew! :) ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Jun 15 15:12:05 1993 From: Debra Halperin Biasca Subject: Yiddish NPs and Basque I recently examined noun phrase (NP) word order in about 20 genetically and areally diverse languages. Included in this study were adjective phrases such as "a very good child," which my native Yiddish speaker translated as "zeyer a guter kind." This construction occurred in transitive sentences, like "I hit a very big truck, " so it differs from the English "That was really a big truck." In English, we would not say "I hit really a big truck." Rather, we say "I hit a really big truck." Aside from Basque, which places its intensifier ("very") outside the noun phrase [oso etxe ondia = very house big] no other language in my study separated the intensifier from the adjective it modifies. German does not have this construction. My question is, does anyone know how Yiddish acquired this construction? (Hebrew doesn't have it either). Did German have such a construction earlier? When? Dvoyre vos voynt in Colorado P.S. The Boulder Yiddish Club held its first meeting June 13th and it was well attended and ale hobn gut farbrakht! If Mendelniks know any Yiddish speakers in the Boulder, CO area, please e-mail me at: biasca@ucsu with the relevant information and I will contact them before our next meeting in July. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Jun 16 08:49:21 1993 From: RWERMAN@vms.huji.ac.il Subject: Iddish The following fashkal or proclamation, was handed to me by Gella Fishman, who asked me to pass it on to Mendele and other interested parties: ************************************** [Hebrew] Histradrut ha-Admori"m [In English] Histadruth Admorim 1605 - 48th St., Brooklyn, NY 11204/(718)327-0196/(718)327-8007 _____________________________________________________________________ [Hebrew]A VOICE PROCLAIMS LET US RESTORE PAST GLORY LET US SPEAK ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY IN "IDDISH"![SIC] IT IS THE LANGUAGE IN WHICH OUR FOREBEARS AND OUR RABBIS NB"M [may their spirits rest in the hidden places of heaven] ZY"E [may their rights defend us] SPOKE IN _____________________________________________________________________ a)With all our hearts we call all our brothers Children of Israel THAT THEY MAY SPEAK "amongst them" "and to their children" only and exclusively a tongue that is acceptable to us, from our forbears and our teachers of blessed memory through the generations AND IT IS THE "IDDISH" LANGUAGE! that is a strengthening of religious belief to stand against the temper and damages of time that are destroying the pure spirit and the holy spirit of our holy people, hy"v [may the Lord guard them and save them]. b]We do call all Roshei Yeshivot Shlit"a, and to all heads of Institutions of Bet Ya'akov, Shlit"a THAT THE TEACH AND SPEAK TO their students, male and female, ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY IN THE TONGUE WHICH WE RECEIVED FROM OUR TEACHERS, THE "IDDISH" LANGUAGE, to fulfill an article of xz"l [our masters of blessed memory] (Ediot 1:3, TB Brachot 47a) A man "is required" to speak in his Rabbi's "language." The IDDISH language that our ancestors and rabbis zy'e [may their rights defend us] spoke some "hundreds" of years, (even before the generation of h"k [the holy] Ba'al Shem Tov -- and the Gr"a [Vilna Gaon] zts"l [of blessed memory] who are the hold great ones who sanctified the language and it is the true strengthener of religion shey'z [that thereby] put a fence around themselves and the words of Torah that they not yhy' [be] at the mercy lechv"m [of idol worshippers] as Rabbi Ami said (TB Hagiga 13a vbthkv"z [and in the Tikkunei Zohar] page 166a) that "it is forbidden to receive Torah from those who speak foreign languages ble"z [in a foreign language], AND IT IS LIKE PLACING AN IDOL [ashara] IN GOD'S HOLY TEMPLE" eyy"sh [see there]. Come let us gather strength to restore past glory, and strengthen our generation against assimilation x"v [God forbid] among hechv"m [the idol worshippers], and to strengthen them by way of the holy Torah, received by us from generation to generation. IN THE NAME OF THE ADMORI"M SAMUEL SHMELKA RUBIN, ADMOR FROM SOLITZA ******************************************* While at first glance defenders of Hebrew are liable, as I was, to see in this proclamation an attack on Hebrew, it is not meant to be. Indeed this is an attack on the use of English in the Yeshivas, a drawing back from Art Scroll and translations of Steinsaltz. At all events this seems to be a real, although strangely motivated, appeal for revitalization of Yiddish. My questioning of local sources shows that the signatory does indeed exist and prefers to talk English in visits to Israel. Thus, he also seems to be a non-supporter of Hebrew. __Bob Werman rwerman@hujivms.bitnet rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.036