Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.135 November 19, 1993 1) LC practice on dates (Paul Maher) 2) Yiddish shayles, cont. (Ellen Prince) 3) Reb and snow (Hershl Berman) 4) The extra n-sound (Khaim Bochner) 5) Forms of address (Khaim Bochner) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Nov 18 10:34:53 1993 From: "PAUL MAHER" Subject: LC practice on dates In response to Zachary Baker's note on 666 wherein he states that "The Library of Congress, in its wisdom, no longer uses Hebrew letters to represent Hebrew dates ..." LC uses "Western-style arabic numerals for numerals in the vernacular" not only for Hebrew, but also for Arabic alphabet, Far Eastern, Greek, Indic, etc., materials. This practice is based on Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Second Edition, 1988 Revision, rule C.5A and rule C.5D which was adopted by the Canadian Library Association (Ottawa), the Library Association (London), and the American Library Association (Chicago). "The above reflects my personal opinion, and not necessarily that of my employer." Paul Maher Leader, Hebraica Cataloging Team Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division Library of Congress 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Nov 18 12:13:42 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: yiddish shayles, cont. to all native yiddish speakers: molly diesing has pointed out a potential problem with the sentences i asked about, so please substitute the following, in which the 'es' is optional in 2, 4, and 6. (you can put it in or leave it out, whichever sounds better--that's not what i'm concerned about.) so, nokhamol, are the following ok? do some sound better than others? 1. ven/az es geyt a shney, fort er in arbet. 2. geyt (es) a shney, fort er in arbet. (to mean the same as 1) 3. afile ven/az es geyt a shney, fort er in arbet. 4. afile geyt (es) a shney, fort er in arbet. (to mean same as 3) 5. nor ven/az es geyt a shney, fort er in arbet. 6. nor geyt (es) a shney, fort er in arbet. (to mean same as 5) (i don't care whether it's ven or az; take your pick. also, as mentioned above, i don't care whether there's an 'es' or not in 2, 4, and 6; take your pick.) vi alemol, a sheynem dank. ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Nov 18 11:41:00 1993 From: Hal Berman Subject: Reb and Snow Reb: I don't know the feminine version if there is one, but reb is only used when you know the person. It is a sign of earned respect, not just politeness. You all wouldn't call be reb Hershl, but someone who knows me might... Geyn a shnei (I hate transliteration): One thing that I have to make clear is that the VERB must always be the SECOND SENTENCE UNIT. therefore it has to be "es geyt a shnei" It can not, I repeat NOT, be "geyt es a shnei". Secondly, es geyt a regn un es FALT a shnei. So the whole sentence needs reworking. I hope that things are a little clearer. Hershl Berman. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Nov 18 13:56:11 1993 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Re: the extra n-sound Eliyahu Ahilea writes: > In polish language sometimes the n-sound is dictated not by the >letter n but by a sign (like the french cedille) under the preceding >vowel, like in Walesa (pronounced "valensa", ... > this polish characteristic probably got into Yiddish words, >including (as > above) words originated in Hebrew. None of the real Slavicists here have spoken up, so I'll give it a shot: (mevinim zoln farshteyn az ikh pruv do tsu derklern mit poshete verter, nisht dafke pinktlekh ...) While the nasal sounds in certain Polish words are indicated only by an accent mark in standard Polish spelling, this doesn't mean that those sounds appeared mysteriously or by themselves. In most cases the history of the word is known, and the nasal sound has always been there (although it's been lost in most of the other Slavic languages). So, for instance, "five" in Polish is "piec" (with a hook under the 'e', and an accent mark on the 'c') pronounced roughly "piench". Compare that "n" with Greek "pente" (or Yiddish "finf"), and you can see that there has been a nasal sound in the Indo-European word for "five" (reconstructed as *penkwe) for LONG time. The point is that Polish doesn't particularly add nasals when they weren't there already. And so this doesn't help us explain how these Hebrew words, which didn't originally have nasals, acquired them. Khaim 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Nov 18 13:59:49 1993 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Re: Forms of address Howard I. Aronson writes: > In traditional Yiddish society, one addressed a man politely using > 'reb' plus first name. Is anyone aware of an equivalent polite way > of addressing a woman? Thanks. Khotsh me hert es zeltn, ken men, azoy vi ikh farshtey, nutsn "mores" (mem reysh sof) far a froy azoy vi me nutst "reb" far a mentsh. Khaim ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.135 Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files