Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.084 August 18, 1993 1) Nokh a mol transcription (Khaim Bochner) 2) Grubyan (Khaim Bochner) 3) Lafayette Klezmorim (Fishl Kutner) 4) Standardized transcription (Itsik-Ayzik Aronson) 5) Bisti (Leigh Lisker) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Aug 17 17:41:31 1993 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: nokh a mol transcription I would like to enthusiastically second Arn Abramson's point that our richness of dialects is not a reason not to use a systematic transcription. If a litvak writes "sheyn" instead of "shoyn", I don't have any more trouble understanding that than when I hear it said that way. But if he/she writes "shane" (English-style) or "schehn" (German-style), I feel like I'm puzzling out a code (and don't always have the patience). I hope my friend Moyshe Waldoks won't mind my picking on him as a recent example: I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds "strieml", "zveytns", etc. harder to understand than "shtrayml", "tsveytns". If I try to write in my parents dialect, Lemuushl, az iyekh dertsayl aakh az baa ints zugt men "kenaynehuure", it may be hard to read for people who aren't familiar with Galitsiyaner Yiddish, but I think it's still easier than if I wrote: Limooshle, as eeuch derzale ach as ba ins soogt mann "kenninehowrie". (Dos heyst, oyf klal-shprakh: Lemoshl, az ikh dertseyl aykh az bay undz zogt men "kenaynehuure" onshtot "keyn ayin hore".) -- Khaim 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Aug 17 17:52:03 1993 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: grubyan Ellen Prince writes: > 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? Actually, no ;-) Most suffixes don't take stress, but the ones that form pejorative terms for people (men?) generally do: shayderuk', yungatsh', frumak', all with stress on the last syllable. I think Yudl Mark points this out in his grammar, but I haven't had a chance to check. Anyway, grubyan' fits this pattern. The next question is: where does this pattern come from? The suffixes all look Slavic: can one of the Slavicists tell us what their stress characteristics are? -- Khaim 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Aug 17 18:21:42 1993 From: Philip Kutner Subject: Lafayette Klezmorim Melinda Saveleva states that the Lafayette Klezmorim are the only such group in Indiana. My list of 120 U.S. Klezmer groups does not list any other one in Indiana. 32 of the 50 states have Klezmer groups. CA has by far the most with 29. NY is next with 17 and followed by MD with 8. Any subscriber to DER BAY may receive a copy of this list or one of Yiddish teachers or Yiddish clubs by merely sending a SASE to: FISHL c/o der bay 1128 Tanglewood Way San Mateo, CA 94403 Fishl 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Aug 17 20:50:27 1993 From: hia5@midway.uchicago.edu Subject: Standardized transcription Bob Goldberg complains about the "standardized" (YIVO) transcription of Yiddish.But the YIVO transliteration is a one-to-one Latinization of the Hebrew letters used to write Yiddish. It really doesn't reflect any dialect, since, e.g., transliterating giml-vov-tes gives a sequence of letters "gut," which just as giml-vov-tes is pronounced either /gut/ or /git/. But to -transliterate- giml-vov-tes as "git" is impossible--giml-yod-tes is /git/. I can't see any reason to oppose the YIVO transliteration. As for the YIVO orthoepy--it's wierd. I know of no other language where the only acceptable stage pronunciation (a Southern Yiddish) is diametrically opposed to the "literary norm," self-proclaimed by YIVO. As a Litvak, I'm very happy that YIVO arbitrarily chose basically a Litvak norm for their "literary norm." And as a teacher of Yiddish I'm even happier, because, unfortunately, there is -no- way of arriving at a stage pronunciation (Galitsyaner yidish) from the orthography. Howie (Itsik-Ayzik) Aronson 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Aug 17 20:52:37 1993 From: llisker@babel.ling.upenn.edu Subject: bisti In reading the discussion of how to spell Yiddish I was taken aback by the spelling of the third "word" of the song that made the hit parade during WW2, and would like enlightenment.Why is bisti not spelled as two words, probably bist di. If phonetic judgment says that either the t or the d must go, then bis di seems just as reasonable as bist i. But a Yiddish speaker of my close acquaintance rejects bisti as simply nonsense. Leigh Lisker ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.084