Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.186 December 24, 1993 1) Ellen's assumptions (Roslyn Kalifowicz-Waletzky) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Dec 23 12:06:07 1993 From: Roslyn Kalifowicz-Waletzky <0005943838@mcimail.com> Subject: Re: Ellen's assumptions > nhg borrowings fully entrenched in central yiddish but unfamiliar >or at least marked in other varieties of eastern yiddish, e.g. kuzin, >tante, le(y)zn, geve(y)zn, onkl, aynladn, yetst, etc etc etc. How do you know that it was fully entrenched? What's the evidence? >since most 'grammarians' of yiddish were not of this dialect, >they seem to have had trouble distinguishing this class from type-2 >hokhtsayt-type borrowings. At the beginning of the counter-movement, I think you are right. But that is not so today. The dictionary of Uriel Weinreich (1968), whose native dialect was indeed not Central Yiddish, distinguishes among THREE types of daytshmerizms: those with a shvarts pintl (doubtful, e.g. aynladn), those with a drayikl (not recommended, e.g. hinzikht), and those not included at all (e.g. hokhtsayt). What I rant and rave are the darayikl- and hokhtsayt-types. My litmus test is what folksmentshn use, and I know many of them, including my mother (whose native dialect is Central Yiddish). She and my litvisher father use/d kuzin, tante, aynladn, and yetst, but not leyzn; and onkl only in America. In your group above, yetst and aynladen I think are marked in very few places, but lesn is still affected to many speakers. Why you include geveyzn in this group I don't know. I don't know it to be a daytshmerizm. > as the grandchild of a very simple polish jew who left >his goat and chickens in his village and came to america in 1890... who >barely knew the latin alphabet, much less german, i find it alternately >amusing and infuriating that his lexicon should be labeled 'daytsmerish' >by the litvak and bukovine mavens... 1) Nothing in your comment indicates what you know of your Polish grandfather's speech except that you could probably rule out Southeastern and White Russian Yiddish dialects. 2) Daytshmerizmen, certainly of the type-2 (hokhtsayt-type) that you are talking about were usually not found among "very simple Polish Jews" in 1890. In the period you are talking about, if they lived in the Austro-Hungarian territory and used German words from the co-territorial language, they knew it was pure German, not a more "refined" form of Yiddish. 3) A great many of the philologists involved in the standardization of Yiddish were litvaks, but there was a sufficient proportion of non-litvaks to give a fuller picture. The mutlitude of regionalisms in the standard language is one indication of that. 4) A full array of philologists and writers from all sorts of areas wrote against the use of daytshmerizms. 5) The Bukoviner maven is just the last major living one. He got a bad rep because he tried hard to create new terms from Yiddish roots to replace some of the daytshmerizms. Some are more successful than others. But one thing we know is that whatever is new takes as much getting used to as that which is foreign. It may sometimes take more effort to accept a Yiddish neologism since the changed form of something that is very familiar takes more getting used to than something that is completely new and different. But then again Yiddish speakers and their attitude toward their languages is strange. {Ellen is referring to Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter.} 6) The Yiddish lexicon that arose in territories where there was face to face contact between Yiddish speakers and German speakers, including Kurland, Prussia, parts of the Ukraine is during the same period we have been talking about, late 19th and early 20th century, has fully entered Yiddish and is not considered daytshmerish. That Bukoviner maven has in fact written all this up (biblio will be happily found upon request), e.g., whole corpuses of (Austrian) military, agricultural, and weaving terminology have entered Yiddish. 7) It's one thing to use Germanisms when you are living in German co-territorial area such as Slovakia or Hungary. It's another thing to accept daytshmerisms imposed from above for the reasons they were imposed when you personally have no contact with German language and culture. I don't get bothered by the use of "vinde" and "kar" as I do about certain daytshmerizms because, I know that that speaker doesn't believe that there is anything wrong with the words "fenster" and "oyto" oder "mashin". But I laugh at the affected daytshmerizms when I think that the person believes that he can elevate himself by using Germanisms. This connotation seems to be lost on the children of those native speakers-- which is natural. (It also seems that people never heard that the prevailing feeling for a great many centuries was that the mark of true lomdes oyf Yiddish is loshn-koydish komponentishe verter.) The defensiveness about one's family's speech on Mendele by people who don't speak Yiddish on a daily basis is sociolinguistically interesting. It's of course a whole different story when we are talking about native Yiddish speakers position on this issue. Some of us became interested in Yiddish perhaps as a way of defending and confirming our family's ethnic identity, language, unassimilatedness, etc. I think that I shared in that feeling as well, when I first became a Yiddishist. Hence, the anger and hurt here. But the perspective is different if you are both a native speaker of the language and a daily user of it with your peer group and family. Shoyn opgeret fun when one of your tasks is to transmit it to others. Then one has a life in Yiddish along with everything else. You, Ellen, seem to be more focused on speaking ABOUT Yiddish than IN Yiddish. I want to do BOTH and thus our priorities differ. So, saying "get a life" is a real cheap shot and I am disappointed in you. That the term lezn has taken hold in some Yiddish speech communities is obvious. That it is difficult for some to understand why others want to uproot any part of the Yiddish corpus, I know very well. The anti-daytshmerist's arguments I am sure seem no better than the (daytshmeristn's) behaviour being complained about. To the children of the native speakers who used daytshmerizms, my point is opaque and confusing. I understand all that. But what isn't clear here is that there is also a co-existing large population where the use of daytshmerizms is both foreign and marked and these are not the people who have ever walked into YIVO, no less read any linguistic commentary on the issue. It just so happens that I come from that speech community and I must tell you that I first had to learn what all those daytshmerisms meant because I never even heard them and I am Austrian-born. Moreover, half of my family (and my native dialect) also comes from the Central Yiddish area -- the area supposedly so entrenched with New High German borrowings. However, defending my family's linguistic honor is not at all the reason why I first raised this issue on Mendele. I initially raised this issue because I minded my friend Bob Hoberman's type of complaint that in view of Yiddish's imminent death, why are the Yiddishists still complaining about the use of daytshmerizms (Vol. 3.138). Now, I have my own pains and complaints about what Yiddish speakers, kultur tuers and Yiddish linguists are doing at this time. And I voiced those complaints in my first posting here. But as an active Yiddish speaker, I mind it when those that I believe can but don't speak Yiddish complain that their much admired linguistic heros in the final death scene that they sit and watch from their comfortable seats in the theater is getting too heated, too noisy, too bloody for their comfort. Please, please, they say, only dignified, reserved, and graceful dying swans is what's required in the final act of this play. We want to be able to eloquently write about the pathos, the martyrdom and the heroic beauty in the death of our hero Yiddish. We will then produce great paeans to Yiddish. Sorry guys, I say, none of us Yiddish speakers owe you such a neat package so that you can neatly fold away your guilt at discarding the spoken language. None of those standing on the outer periphery of this drama is going to get that from us. If Yiddish is going to die with our generation, with us, the children of the grine, I'd rather go out fighting, and I don't care how bloody the stage gets. I have this attitude because I feel that so many people with a large passive and even active knowledge of Yiddish choose not to see how much Yiddish activity still goes on, how viable a great deal of it has been and still is even for urbane young English speakers in America. For example, very few on Mendele really get into the water and, e.g., come to Yidish-vokh and participate in Yiddish. Now that Jews in America have demonstrated how assimilative we are, what's left to prove? Yet, so many who can speak the language still fear that if you speak Yiddish, you're going to get stuck in that fargrebt unsophiticated shtetl or in their parents' greenness. The impression seems to that no truly sophisticated, worldly person bothers to master the Yiddish language. Ridiculous! It never stood and it never flew! Or, as one friend of mine Fred Schwartzman once put it: "Speaking Yiddish has NEVER had the least effect on mine English." :-) Reyzl ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.186 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