Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.057 July 12, 1993 1) Epes in other Germanic dialects (Victor Bers) 2) Introduction (Andrew Cassel) 3) German the Fifteenth Semitic Language? (Shleyme Axelrod) 4) Correction (Ellen Prince) 5) Philologus and water buffalo (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jul 11 13:05:24 1993 From: VBERS@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Epes in other Germanic dialects I have heard it in Switzerdutsch (?-"deutsch") and Alsatian. Victor Bers 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jul 11 14:38:58 1993 From: ACASSEL@delphi.com Subject: introduction I'm no linguist, and have only recently begun an informal self-course in Yiddish. But over the past few years I've been trying to translate and edit my grandfather's Yiddish history of his native town, "di shtat Keidan," published in 1930 by the Keidaner Farein of New York. Among the things I learned from this was that zeyde (who died in 1941, nine years before I was born), had collected folk songs in his youth, and was a major contributor to the 1901 book published by Ginsburg and Marek. Baruch Chaim Cassel was a stolz Keidaner, and was quite put out that the G.-M. book credited the songs he had collected as merely from "Kovne gubernie" rather than Keidan. In 1990 I brought this to the attention of Chana Mlotek at Yivo, who put me in touch with Dov Noy at the Hebrew University. The result was a footnote on p. 85 of Noy's re-issued (1991) Ginsburg-Marek (Bar-Ilan U. Press), which corrects this 90-year literary mistake. Sadly, the 1901 Ginsberg-Marek contained only lyrics; the money apparently ran out before they could publish the accompanying music. I'm hopeful that someday I'll turn up at least some of the tunes; my dream is to resurrect zeyde's music for his great-grandchildren, now aged 4 and 2. I've also got some grist for any Sholem-Aleichem scholars out there, in the form of 6 letters from S-A to my grandfather in New York in the period 1906-1908. (Some of these were published last year by Itche Goldberg in Yiddishe Kultur.) They mainly concern an attempt to translate and publish several works, including "The First Jewish Republic" and "Motl Peyse dem Khazan's" in the U.S. Nothing ever came of it, so far as I can tell; probably it was one of many not-too-successful ventures my merchant scholar-Zionist grandfather tried over the course of three decades. But they may be of some interest. For my part I'd like to find someone with detailed knowledge of S-A in that period, in the interest of establishing context and possibly shedding some light on my grandfather's early life. Anyway, I've got translations of the 1930 history, along with some delightful zichroines from other Keidaners of that period, available to be posted or emailed if anyone is interested.... Andrew Cassel 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jul 11 14:41:05 1993 From: Seymour Axelrod Subject: German the Fifteenth Semitic Language? The College Edition of the Harper-Collins German-English English-German Dictionary (1990) defines *Ganove* as "umg[angssprachlich=colloquial] crook", and *Edelganove* as "gentleman criminal". Can the Germanicists on Mendele tell us whether the similarity to Hebrew/Yiddish ganev/ganef is coincidental? If not, did German acquire these umg. words from the Yiddish or from the Hebrew? --Shleyme Axelrod 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jul 11 14:51:43 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: correction! when i said 'david werman', i of course meant 'bob werman'. zayt mir moykhl, the mind is shot... ellen prince 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jul 11 15:08:45 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: philologus and water buffalo i meant to write this last week but was giving noyekh a little rest, nebekh. however, i do want to say that the philologus article on penn and water buffalo was not the most responsible journalism one could hope for. first, it was never claimed that the influence at work was yiddish. the student was born in israel and went to a hebrew-based school here and it was hebrew that was at issue. second, no one 'found him innocent'--the complainants withdrew the charges, not inconceivably under pressure from above, which was not inconceivably more inspired by hackney's confirmation as head of neh than by a sense of fairness. (hackney is the president of penn, in case anyone is lucky enough to have missed that.) therefore, the case is not closed in the way that a real case that had run its course would be, and jocular and/or sloppy discussion, in the very newspaper that first ran the story and started the world-wide tararam nokh, is really not a great idea. third, i forget the precise wording but something like 'counsel for the defense' led me to infer that philologus is not aware that there was NO counsel for the defense ALLOWED. this is a serious case, at least to the young man whose college career and therefore future is on the line, and it really should be treated as such by journalists, even ones who hide behind pseudonyms. ellen prince ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.057