Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.157 October 30, 1995 1) Dialects, standards and khsidim (Eliyahu Juni) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 29 Oct 1995 20:30:39 -0500 From: ao107@freenet.carleton.ca Subject: Dialects, standards and khsidim--bove kame In vol. 5.130, Arre Komar asked some questions which I've been meaning to darshen about for some time now. I know the subject has all but died, but I've been saving a bunch of digests and waiting for a chance to go through them, and have finally gotten around to adding my piece. (Arre's questions became connected to a wider discussion of dialects as well, so I'll kill two birds with one stone, and try to keep it somewhat shorter than the original Boves ;-}. My apologies to Reb Khayem Bokhner, whose motion "genik shoyn" I am so flagrantly disregarding.) Arre's questions were: 1. Is there a "proper" Yiddish, which dialect speakers are aware of and against which they measure their own speech? Or is Yiddish "only" a collection of dialects, and the "standard" just a modern academic construct? 2. How does the academic standard dialect relate to the dialect of the remaining native Yiddish-speaking communities? And if there are discrepancies, shouldn't the living language be authoritative, unless its speakers admit that they're speaking "colloquially" and not properly? I think the answer to the first question is yes, there is a "proper" Yiddish, sort of; but yes, Yiddish is only a collection of dialects. When I talk to native speakers about Yiddish, many of them repeat the platitude that "Yiddish isn't a 'real' language", and justify it on the grounds that every speaker of Yiddish modifies it and borrows from the surrounding (dominant) language according to their own whims, so there's no single (i.e. "real") language. But when they are themselves improvising, native speakers will sometimes contrast what they're saying with "real" Yiddish. For example: my grandparents will speak of renting an apartment as "ts'farrentn a dire", but when asked about it, will say, "of course, really in Yiddish you should say 'fardingn', not 'farrentn'." Also, when discussing dialects of Yiddish, my relatives will sometimes say that Litvishe Yiddish is "better" or "purer" than other dialects (no, they aren't themselves Litvaks). But they won't use it as a standard against which to measure their own Yiddish --they'll only say so when talking about different dialects or what's "proper" Yiddish. And they will say that so-and-so speaks a "good Yiddish," even if the person in question is not a Litvishese-speaker; it's more a matter of being able to express oneself, even in areas where most Yiddish speakers might be at a loss for words, without having to resort to wholesale borrowing. [I think their impression is that Litvishe Yiddish is less replete with local borrowings than their own (as opposed to borrowings which are common to all dialects, and become a part of the language as a whole); I have that impression too. (It occurred to me that to the Poylishe or Galitsyaner ear, Litvishe Yiddish sounds the most like German, but I don't know if that would determine what would be considered the better dialect; the pronunciation differences are not specific to Yiddish--they apply to Hebrew as well--so they may not be associated with Yiddish. It can't be because Litvishese sounds most like the standard--these are people who don't even know the standard exists.) Allan Edell suggested (in v. 5.136) that this sort of thing could be due to the Lite's intellectual reputation, but that doesn't seem all that likely to me.] So although there may be an awareness on the speaker's part of a "proper" way of speaking Yiddish, I don't think there is a specific Yiddish which is the proper one, and of which the various dialects are variations. (Ingerishe and Poylishe certainly don't consider their Yiddish to be vartions of Litvishe Yiddish.) So what is "standard" Yiddish? This is where my harangue begins. As Arre suggested, the standard is an academic attempt to codify a standard language from a collection of dialects. V'ilu la-avodim v'lishfokhoys nimkarnu hekherashti, ki eyn hatsar shoyve bneyzek haloshoyn (cf. Esther 7:4). It's not a particular dialect of Yiddish which is being touted as the standard (the way Parisian French is standard French). It's a supposed amalgamation of dialects, which sounds a bit strange to any and every native speaker. Its grammar and vocabulary are a mixture of all dialects, but I think most people's impressions of dialect differences come from sounds. To me (and I imagine to most ingerishe, poylishe, and galitsyaner speakers), the standard sounds litvish. [Allan said much the same.] But to litvaks, it sounds most un-litvish, because it has a khoylem and shin instead of kheylem and sin. (Ironically enough, it's exactly the same as modern Yeshivishe pronunciation (both Hebrew and Yiddish), which is the standard in today's "Litvishe" yeshiva world.) At the haymishe speaker's first glance, it smacks of imposing Litvishese as a standard. (To today's haymishe speakers, most of whom come from the ingerishe and galitsyaner khsidishe communities, that is not a good thing--in addition to the general cultural issues, there are overtones of litvishe yeshives and haskole. It bothered me too, and prompted some comments I made a while back about using litvishe diminutives and pronunciations of names.) And once indignant litvishe purists have set us straight, we realize it's an imposition of a non-dialect as a standard. Mayle, if you tell me that my dialect is wrong because dialect x is "right," I can laugh and go along (cf. Esther). But if you tell me that my dialect is wrong because it doesn't fit an artificial, pareve language constructed by a professor from a university, I can't accept that for a minute. (The fact that it's yidishistn and academics who are doing the imposing doesn't help.) It is analogous to an English academic composing a "standard" English which included aspects of British, American Australian, Indian and every other English dialect, and expecting all the English-speaking people in the world to stick to it. It's an insult to Yiddish, and Yiddish-speakers in general, to make us give up differences and pas-tsi to this "standard". [Reb Khayem Bokhner expressed some doubt as to the severity of Yiddish prescriptivism. My (limited) experience, especially outside Mendele, has been that many yidishistn are extremely dogmatic about the standard. Reb Khayim made allowances for the classroom, claiming it's necessary; necessary or not, I'm not so generous. And even outside the classroom, I have been repeatedly admonished that the way I am speaking is *wrong* (yes, people often do put it that strongly). One of my chastisers even insisted that there is no such thing as a dialect difference, except in the area of vocabulary; using 'mikh' and 'dikh' as reflexives, which is normal in most dialects, was categorically wrong by her. As for tsheperay among speakers of different dialects, it's usually in terms of better and worse, not right and wrong, and forms a most delicious part of Yiddish culture; see below.] Even for those of us who are good at swallowing insults, the standard is a barrier: I have an easier time dealing with (and translating to and from) litvishe Yiddish, which I know and don't quite love, than with a standard which is nisht ahin un nisht aher. For anyone who comes from the modern native-speaking community, Litvishese is familiar, even if it's not as common as the Hungarian dialect; the standard is utterly foreign. [Allan said (5.136) that the standard is the lowest common denominator, in that no one will find it jarring. I think otherwise: haymishe speakers may well understand it (we're mostly used to juggling dialects), but will often find it jarring, since it doesn't quite fit the dialect divisions we're used to.] And even more than the pronunciation and vocabulary differences, the "standard" loses out on the geshmak of the contrasts between dialects. (Miriam Isaacs made a comment in this direction in vol. 5.134, and I agree with her wholeheartedly; her evidence, Dzhigan & Shumakher, is ironclad.) The beauty of each of the dialects is that it has a particular character, in the way it sounds, the words it uses, and the cultural baggage it carries. The differences between, e.g., litvishe and ingerishe Yiddish are as much in the pictures and stereotypes they conjure as in the language. By just shifting some vowels, one can move from the image of an alter mirrer bokher, scrawny, sophisticated, cynical and earthy, to a galitsyaner oyberkhukhem, jolly, wisecracking, sharp, always three steps ahead of himself, at once deadly serious and not serious at all. Slow down, add a lisp and a singsong, and you've moved to the Hungarian balebatishe yid, comfortable, well-fed, stable, conservative, not too smart, definitely not too sophisticated, with down-to-earth ideas and aspirations. Drop the diphthongs and lengthen the vowels, and you have a Rumanian farmer--a Hungarian without the money or the refinement it brings. And that's just geography; slight shifts of vocabulary can take you from big city to tiny shtetl, from a yeshive to a rebbe's hoyf, or to a medeival 20th century farm, or the mikve on a Friday afternoon, or a cafe', or a meeting of the Bund. The more I've been exposed to the standard, the more I've realized how much it's missing; if you'll excuse my saying so, s'hot nisht kan taam in nisht kan rayekh. Someone recently quoted Reb Zellig Bach as saying that learning to speak a standard is a matter of building or maintaining self-respect. I don't see it that way. I do think that speaking/learning a particular dialect properly, as opposed to a mishmash, without losing its character and flavour, can be a matter of self-respect (I think someone else suggested this as well). But sticking to a colourless, arbitrary standard, and thereby subverting the expressiveness and beauty of the language, does not provide or maintain self-respect; for one who knows that beauty, it can be debasing. It's almost as if it had been translated into another language, and lost half its charm. We recently debated the advisability of promoting Yiddish literature in translation (the pro was seen as greater exposure, and the con as a loss of identity); for me, the "standard" is a step in the same direction. (to be continued) Eliyahu Juni ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.157