Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.149 November 30, 1993 1) Arre Komar's kluge verter (Mottel Lakin) 2) More on verb-first construction (Marnen Laibow-Koser) 3) Sch and sh (Meylekh Viswanath) 4) Talmud on cd-rom (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Nov 29 11:43:04 1993 From: Martin Lakin Subject: Arre Komar's kluge verter I find myself in reluctant agreement with Arre Komar in his understanding of the shift to Hebraization of names in modern Jewish History and in particular post Holocaust Zionism. There is certainly an element of what was called "Shlilat HaGaluth" or negation of everything that smacked of Eastern European Shtettledom and YIddish was certainly one of those things. "Self Hatred" it may be called, but here I differ somewhat. It was rejection of the former helpless, ingratiating, dependent image of Jews in favor of (yes! "the warrior image") a fighting pioneer who could create his/her own circumstances far more than brethern who remained in Europe. It reminds one of the bitter fight between Bund (Arbeiter Ring) and Zionists. YIddish got a "rep" for being the ghetto tongue, whereas Hebrew was of course the aristocratic language of the "proud heri- tage". Of course reflection makes one aware of how jingoistic it all is, but then so is the bottom line of identity. Mottel Lakin 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Nov 29 14:27:29 1993 From: laibow@brick.purchase.edu Subject: More on verb-first construction I spoke with my father (a native Yiddish speaker) about the verb-first construction; he said that aside from questions (Fort er in arbet?) he could only remember its use in a literary context. He couldn't recall hearing it in conditionals, but he hasn't actually had a conversation in Yiddish in years, so I wonder...... Marnen Laibow-Koser 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Nov 30 13:24:56 1993 From: meylekh viswanath (viswanath@draco.rutgers.edu) Subject: sch and sh Leigh Lisker writes: >As someone said, sch introduces a "superfluous" letter where sh is >presumably unambiguous (given the absence of aspirated s, except >across word boundary, this side of Korea). I know of one place this side of Korea, where 'sh' is not pronounced as in YIVO transcription. In Czech, e.g. 'na shledanou' means something like 'goodbye.' The 'shl' combination in the beginning is pronounced as an 's' sound followed by an 'h' sound followed by an 'l.' Meylekh 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Nov 30 14:42:30 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: talmud on cd-rom From: newsbytes@clarinet.com Newsgroups: clari.nb.apple Subject: English Language Talmud On CD-ROM 11/29/93 Keywords: Bureau-WAS Date: 29 Nov 93 20:52:55 GMT WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 1993 NOV 29 (NB) -- While the Bible and related religious documents have long been available in electronic format, the massive, 5,000-page Talmud containing Judaic law and commentary, has not been widely available. Now, Chicago, Illinois- based Davka, in cooperation with the Institute for Computers in Jewish Life, has published English and Hebrew versions of the Talmud on an Apple Mac-compatible CD-ROM. Besides making the documents more widely available, the electronic version of the Talmud, which includes Rashi's commentary in Hebrew, as well as the respected Soncino English translation in addition to the original Hebrew, is also fully indexed. The company claim that this allows the programs to be searched electronically using a bi- lingual search engine using just a word or two. Both versions of the text can be displayed simultaneously and scrolled together and there is also a topic index as well as the full-text search capabilities. The Macintosh CD-ROM is priced at $299. (John McCormick/19931129/Press Contact: Davka - 312-465-4070) ellen prince ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.149 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. 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