Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.133 October 10, 1994 1) El-Al's disdain of Yiddish ('eynekh Sapoznik) 2) Splitting Mendele (David Sherman) 3) Streams of sound with meaning (David Sherman) 4) Yidish oyf Mendele (Khayem Bochner) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 00:46:37 EDT From: Sapoznik@aol.com Subject: El-Al's disdain of Yiddish Let me add a word about the dismissal of Yiddish by the El-Al higher ups: In 1979 after the release of "Future and Past" Kapelye's first LP, I sent a promotional copy of the disc to El-Al and suggested that since this was a "Jewish" airline and since they offered the obvious Hebrew and not-so-obvious Italian, Spanish, French and other languages, they offer a cut or two of Yiddish to their passengers as part of their in-flight entertainment. I received a curt and inane reply which defended their employing other languages and not Yiddish, because they could point to passengers speaking those other languages but not Yiddish! (I guess all those khsidim must be yammering in Esperanto...) 'eynekh Sapoznik 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 10:02:20 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.ca Subject: Splitting Mendele Mikhl Herzog writes: > Mendele is the result of an earlier schism > prompted, several years ago, by precisely the concerns that seem to > trouble you now. The split then was a much friendlier one than the tone > of your message suggests the next one might be. Since I used to operate mail.yiddish, from which Mendele split off, I think I can comment here. Noyekh's concern about mail.yiddish was that it was all jokes and ditties, with no serious discussion. To my suggestion that he start serious discussion, he replied that the serious Yiddish academics wouldn't participate as long as the mailing list contained jokes and ditties. Hence Mendele was formed, in May 1991, and since we started to see duplication, I eventually stopped mail.yiddish. Meanwhile Mendele has gotten somewhat more relaxed, and jokes do show up. I sense that Noyekh isn't worried about them, since the overall tone of Mendele is very different from the old mail.yiddish. But I think Mikhl is misreading Howard Kaplan's concern. By all means let Mendele be a place for scholarly discussion. But that does not mean its primary content should consist of criticism of others' Yiddish orthography or grammar. I believe in following the YIVO standard of romanization, but I also believe that public criticism of those who aren't familiar enough to use it is pointless. Better would be a polite _private_ note to the "offender", accompanied by a summary of how to do it the YIVO way. Then maybe Mendele can revert to more interesting and fruitful discussions. (P.S. the mail.yiddish archives can be downloaded from news.lsuc.on.ca, directory "pub/mail.yiddish", files 01 through 53, via anonymous ftp. Or I can mail them to anyone who wants them. It ran from October 1988 to March 1992, so I guess it is just now being overtaken by Mendele as the world's longest-running Internet Yiddish mailing list!) David Sherman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 10:20:44 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.ca Subject: Streams of sound with meaning Evelyn Quartin Feins writes: > I've also figured out that " en der hame" was three words even > though I heard it as "endrame." I believe this is particularly common for people who learn Yiddish in a home environment but never learn about alternative dialects or how to read and write (both of which force you to separate the morphemes and understand how your streams of sound are strung together). When my wife (Simone) and I first met in 1977, I spoke no Yiddish but had studied German and Hebrew (and was studying Linguistics in undergrad at the time), and she used it with her parents (who are survivors, from Poland originally, and came here after the war). I decided to learn Yiddish so that I wouldn't be left out of her family discussions (and we later decided to speak only Yiddish to our kids, who are now fluent, but that's another story). At one point early in our relationship (and early in my study of Yiddish), Simone told me that she'd spoke Yiddish "fun kindvazoo". Kindvazoo? What's a vazoo? Simone had no idea; the phrase just meant that she'd always spoken Yiddish. It was some time before we were able to dissect the phrase, assisted by my analysis of Simone's vowel patterns, and realizing that "oo" as a word ending is actually "op" or "on". (For example, to tell a child to get down from somewhere they shouldn't be, "standard" Yiddish is "gey arop", while we say "gay aroo".) The phrase is actually "fun kindvayz on" -- from childhood on. David Sherman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 10:38:40 -0400 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: yidish oyf Mendele Ikh bin letstns geven tsu farnumen onteyl tsu nemen in di shmuesn oyf Mendele. Nor eyn gedank vil ikh dafke araynvarfn in dem shmues vegn dem nivo fun yidish oyf Mendele: Dos vos ikh volt zeyer gevolt zen, iz az di vos kenen gut shraybn yidish zoln dos take ton, un take oyf Mendele. Es farshteyt zikh, az es zenen do faln ven me vil der gantser oylem zol dafke farshteyn, un in aza fal muz men, tsum badoyern, shraybn english. Nor ven me nitst yidish nor tsvishn di vos kenen redn un shraybn gants flisik, hot men take veynik gelegnheytn nitsn di shprakh, un veynik gelegnheytn zikh tsu lernen di shprakh. Iz, lozn di vos kenen gut yidish shraybn ofter _oyf_ yidish! Di groyse keners veln poshet hanoe hobn. Di vos farshteyen gut yidish, ober leyenen (oder in englishe oysyes, oder bikhlal) kumt zey on shver, un di vos farshteyen shvakhlekh, veln hobn fun vos zikh tsu lernen. Un di vos farshteyen nisht veln hobn a gelegnheyt tsu zen az mame-loshn lebt nokh alts, un ven me vil farshteyn vos es tut zikh, muz men zikh a bisl bamien, un oyslernen di shprakh ;-) Khayem Bochner ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.133 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu