Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.179 November 13, 1994 1) Yiddish script & YIVO (Arn Abramson) 2) /redt/ and /bistu/ (Arn Abramson) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Nov 94 21:22:02 EST From: abramson@uconnvm.uconn.edu Subject: Yiddish script & YIVO Two postings of the last few days, one by Dovid Braun and one by Meylekh Viswanath, touch on old questions in the development of writing systems as to how much linguistic information should be captured by the orthography. Thus, some argue, contrary to the spelling reformers, that in English it is good to keep the letter G in the word "sign," which is pronounced the same as "sine," in order to show the relationship with "signify, signal,"etc. but not with "sine." But I do not mean to get into a discussion here about the fit between English orthography and English speech. Let us turn to Yiddish. Dovid reminds Shleyme and me about the possibility of the same letter occurring twice in a row in YIVO transcription when two morphemes abut, the first ending in the same consonant as the one at the beginning of the second. He is right; that is the practice; however, it should be understood that the point taken from an earlier discussion by Zellig Bach is also right. All the examples used by us for the forbidding of two consonant letters in a row were, in fact, single morphemes: ale, bobe, Got,etc. (An exception is "Yiddish," which is Yid + the ish suffix; however, the suffix does not begin with /d/ or any other consonant.) In the stored version of our FAQ, then, Shames Noyekh ought to add something like this: "If, however, two meaningful elements within a word (morphemes) come together such that the first one ends and the second one begins with the same consonant, the letter for that consonant occurs twice in a row." Dovid's examples could be given. At the same time, I wonder about Dovid's remark, "even though, in fact, the consonants are pronounced as if only one were present." Does he mean, e.g., that in "onnemen" the speaker does not normally remove the tip of his tongue from the upper gum ridge (alveolar ridge) after saying "on" and then put it back to say "nemen," he is surely right, but it is my impression that the /n/ is significantly longer in, say, "Er vil onnemen" than in "Er vil yo nemen." (If my examples are unidiomatic, forgive me; the phonetic point is still valid as long as my obssrvation is correct.) In some languages consonant length--or gemination-- has a distinctive function even within the word, as in Italian, Finnish, and Estonian. In their use of roman script, the orthographies of these languages use double letters in such cases. My point here, then, is that if I, a non-native speaker of Yiddish, am right in my phonetic observation, there is all the more reason to incorporate Dovid's addition in our notes. Meylekh's question is relevant to this discusson. He writes,"Ikh vil ober visn, zugt men take 'redt' tsi 'ret?'" Obviously, the answer is that one pronounces the word /ret/. The roan spelling "redt" is a real _transliteration_, i.e., a conversion letter by letter, from the Yiddish spelling reysh-ayen-daled-tes. On the one hand, the spelling "ret" would be phonetically clear and would not have confused Reb Maylekh; on the other hand, the spelling, much as in the case of English "sign," has the possible virtue of reminding us that it is part of the conjugation of the verb /redn/ 'to speak.' If I had written Shames Noyekh's remark, quoted by Meylekh, "azoy redt men!," I would have written "ret," but this seems not to be the convention. Curiously enough, there are instances in which the morphemic or lexical information is not preserved in the writing. On this board I have seen "bistu" for /bis du/ 'are you (fam.).' It also occurs in Yiddish script in the equivalent way way: beyz-yud-samekh-tes-vov! the rendition "tu" must be meant to reflect the lack of a contrast between /d/ and /t/ immediately after /s/ and the impression that the consonant is more like a /t/ than a /d/. (Leigh Lisker remarked on this in a posting some time ago . No one responded.) Compared with the writing of "redt," this is paradoxical. Why not preserve the information that it is the pronoun "du"? Again, I ask, as I did in my recent remarks on Hebrew quotations in Yiddish as contrasted with integrated Hebrew-Aramaic loanwords, whether one of our professional Yiddishists might comment. Arn Abramson [The stored version of the FAQ will be appropriately amended. nm] 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Nov 94 21:42:04 EST From: abramson@uconnvm.uconn.edu Subject: /redt/ and /bistu/ Just after sending my long comment on Dovid Broun's comment and Meyelekh Viswanath's question, I read Mikhl Herzog's explanation about the practice of preserving morphological information in YIVO orthography --and, I guess, in Yiddish script. He is a distinguished Yiddishist, and I accept his answer with pleasure, but I would like hime to comment on the paradox of the spelling /bistu/ for the expression /bis du/ 'Are you (fam.).' In my comment sent out a little while ago,I said that this surely violates the principle Mikhl mentions. The absence of a space for a word-break in that spelling does not help me,since it is generally true in running speech, in language after language, that there need not be, and there usually is not, any phonetic sign of a word boundary. Arn Abramson ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.179 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 Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu