Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.081 August 16, 1993 1) Shnipishok (Rick Turkel) 2) Yivo transcription for lyrics (Ellen Prince) 3) Transcription vs. transliteration (Zachary Baker) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Aug 16 10:34:47 1993 From: rmt51@cas.org (Rick Turkel) Subject: Shnipishok Neakh Zide wrote, in mendele 3.056 (sorry, but I've just caught up after being ridiculously behind in my reading for the past few weeks), to ask about the place name Shnipishok. I remember my father-in-law a"h, a shtarker litvak, using this name in much the same way that my southern-Polish family used Patshutsh (Paczucz?), i.e., to refer to somplace far away. The latter is a real place, but far distant from Bendin (Bedzin), whence my grandparents came. I always assumed Shnipishok was a real place, but since I've also heard (and used) 'Yenemsvelt' in this context and recently heard 'Kenishkakn' from a friend in Detroit (I was driving at the time, and nearly hit a tree!), I'm not really sure. These kinds of terms tend to be pretty local - obviously, no one from near Patshutsh would use that name to refer to someplace far away. Ver veyst, maybe they said Bendin. Rick Turkel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Aug 16 12:14:27 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: Yivo transcription for lyrics i think one could be in favor of a standard (e.g. yivo) transliteration orthography for general prose purposes and still use a more sound-based one for lyrics and poetry and any other situation where the intent was to convey a regional dialect. what would you do if your group could actually read yiddish? the problem would be the same, of course. the whole issue of what dialect is used for artistic performance in yiddish is a very interesting one. as i understand it, the theatre ignored the newly proclaimed standard, so prilutski came out with a 'compromise'--a second standard dubbed 'teater-yidish', which, so far as i can tell, is identical to the voliner yidish that the actors were using anyway! i guess he wanted to be sure to find a standard that would be accepted. :) the reference is: Prilutski, N. 1927. Di yidishe bineshprakh. Yidish Teater 2.129-44. btw, i was told by the singer emil gorevits that, as late as the early 1970s, it was FORBIDDEN to use any dialect other than standard yiddish in the yiddish state theatre in moscow. (and we can't blame the kremlin for this bit of totalitarianism!) what is to me very amazing is that just about everyone DID finally adopt either standard yiddish or teater-yidish in performance, with a very few exceptions. most of the exceptions involve some sort of mockery or else special uses of nonstandard regional dialects for certain songs only (shartse karshelekh is typically sung in central 'galits' yiddish; moishe oysher uses his native southeastern 'tote- mome lushn' for certain southeastern songs, as do the barry sisters, etc. i'm not counting isa kremer, who always sang in 'tote-mome lushn', since she'd reached stardom before the standards were proclaimed.) the only real exception i know of was a singer named sarah gorby, who sang EVERYTHING, including serious/romantic/high-falutin' songs, in her native 'tote-mome lushn'. i actually did a study charting her use of the dialect in recordings over a 40-yr period, the results of which were that she clearly was trying to hold on to it but that it was slipping away in spite of her intentions, no doubt due to all the subtle and not-so-subtle pressures to avoid stigmatized dialects (she was living in france and recording there, in south america, and in israel). i can give you some references, if it interests you. ----------------------------------- to cary, on spitting three times: they don't spit three times only in chicago! i was raised in brooklyn with the knowledge ( :) ) that spitting three times (or at least making a ritualized spitting movement and sound, which i've always rendered as 'ptui ptui ptui') is an effective means of warding off a 'nehore' (or 'canary', in my native yinglish). it follows 'kinehore', as in 'oy, azoy sheyn kinehore ptui ptui ptui!' ------------------------------------- to beatrice and others, on -ian: one problem with the -yan of grubyan being cognate of the suffix in oxonian etc is the stress: it's grubYAN, whereas one would expect GRUByan if it were a suffix, no? if it's germanic, it would presumably have to be a compound noun to get that stress (hence my folk etymology making it akin to french grosjean); you guys have convinced me that it's slavic. anybody know the slavic etymology? ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Aug 16 12:52:11 1993 From: BM.YIB@RLG.STANFORD.EDU (Zachary Baker) Subject: Transcription vs. transliteration Bob Goldberg's comments in MENDELE 3.080 reveal a common misapprehension of the difference between transcription (represent- ing the vsoundsv of a language) and transliteration (representing the vspellingv of a language written in a non-Roman alphabet). When one is citing a Yiddish source in, say, a bibliography, or when one needs to romanize a headline in a Yiddish newspaper, the proper approach is to "transliterate" -- and regardless of how the author or the romanizer pronounces the words, the accepted Yiddish transliteration scheme is the YIVO standard. I should add that, when used in this way, the YIVO system is actually an amalgam of transliteration (for the non-loshn-koydesh elements of the language) and transcrip- tion (for loshn-koydesh elements). The YIVO system may also be used for the purposes of pure transcrip- tion (perhaps with a note indicating that the transcription is based on a particular dialect of Yiddish). Indeed, the example given by Bob Goldberg ("Ba mir bisti git, ba mir hosti 'it'") is perfectly compatible with vtranscriptionv of Yiddish according to the YIVO system. I might add that, for the purposes of bibliographical citations, I really do object to those who "improve" the romanization by turning "idish" (when it's spelled with an alef) into "yidish." True transliteration, as I say, is intended to represent the spelling used in the cited source. The problem with certain other Yiddish transcription systems (e.g., those used by professional linguists), for now at least, is that they cannot be used in electronic forums such as MENDELE. But that is a technical obstacle only, as far as I'm concerned. The inability of this medium to display the symbols used in linguistic transcription serves as an argument (for the time being) to rely on the YIVO system, whether used for transliteration or transcrip- tion purposes. I'm sure this is all as clear as mud. Zachary Baker, YIVO Library ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.081 If your message is intended for MENDELE, please write to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu If you want to discuss personal business or have a shmues with the shames, please write to: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles.