Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.216 January 15, 1996 1) Pluperfect (Ellen Prince) 2) Is Yiddish dying? (Esther Friedman) 3) Sholem Aleichem's work in Chinese (Norman Fishman) 4) Simon Dubnow Cultural Award (Allan Nadler) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 16:25:50 EST From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: Pluperfect thanks, neil, for noting that bavarian etc have the 'gehat' pluperfect too. that follows from their having lost the preterite, i would think. and thanks for the references. what i was interested in was the yiddish pluperfect with invariant 'gehat', even when the main verb takes 'zayn'. do you have any knowledge of that happening in bavarian etc? i'd be very interested if you did! thanks again. alan king, your post will be a lot harder to reply to! first of all, thanks! in a nutshell, i in fact also believe that slavic influence is at issue in this 'invariant gehat' pluperfect, but that's a long story that i'll spare you. what is clearer, however, is that there is no reason to suspect slavic influence in the yiddish pluperfect where (or when) 'gehat' alternates with 'geven', depending on the verb. that is, the loss of the preterite is a nice germanic phenomenon -- see neil jacob's previous post about it happening in bavarian. (yiddish has several million things in common with bavarian german, by the way, not just this.) now, once the preterite is lost and replaced by the present perfect, you'd expect to find the present perfect forming the pluperfect, which is just what you get, in bavarian and in yiddish. in fact, beatrice santorini has kindly supplied me with a token of this pluperfect in western yiddish (which had no slavic contact), from worms, dated 1642. ok, what i'm interested in is in those dialects of yiddish where a further change occurred -- the replacement of 'geven' by 'gehat' in the pluperfect, in those dialects that usually distinguish 'hobn' verbs from 'zayn' verbs. if you're still with me, and if you care, i can tell you my very speculative story on how this might have happened and how i think slavic was involved, but for now let me say that the influence i'm positing was a lot more indirect than what one normally thinks of. as for how common it is, it is very uncommon -- and in fact its low frequency figures crucially in my little story. but it exists -- i found 6 examples in olsvanger's royte pomerantsn, which is about as colloquial as written yiddish can get. (olsvanger, being a litvak, does not use 'gehat' with 'zayn' verbs, but this shouldn't affect the frequency.) as for what contexts it occurs in, it typically occurs in main clauses or in adjunct clauses (as opposed to, say, embedded complement clauses). (this is part of my little story too.) as for whether it might be considered 'an artificial construction from the point of view of the spoken language', i can't imagine how it could be. it might be considered markedly formal -- for that, you'd have to ask a native speaker with good intuitions about different stylistic ranges -- but artificial it ain't, if by that you mean something dreamt up by some academic. finally, what you say about the token you cite from sholem aleichem is puzzling without the prior context -- or whatever it is that makes you sure it does NOT have the meaning of a pluperfect. could you tell me what makes you think that? it's interesting to me if you're right since the same thing is happening in english, where pluperfects are often used without their traditional meaning, e.g. 'i didn't eat cheese before i'd been to europe'. so, if the yiddish pluperfect is losing its semantic 'pluperfectness', that too could be a not unusual germanic development and doesn't necessarily point to a slavic influence. anyway, i'd love to hear the context. and thanks again! ellen prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 17:40:26 -0500 (EST) From: eqf9768@is2.nyu.edu Subject: Is Yiddish Alive? To pick up the thread related to whether the use of Yiddish is declining, I needed to add my observations after an afternoon of shopping at Lord & Taylor department store here in New York City. Any time that you find yourself in Lord & Taylor, other than on Shabbos, you will be surrounded by large numbers of extremely stylish Hassidische women, frequently accompanied by their husbands wheeling the baby carriage. They often shop in groups and can be heard commenting and giving advice -- all in Yiddish, of course. Occasionally some Yinglish sneaks through, as it did today: "Kik uhn di shich, zei zenen gorgeous! Di vest zei konen trogen all over." In this context, it is easy to see the important role the Hassidische community plays in keeping Yiddish alive. A language can only stay current when it is used in the commerce of everyday living. I was surrounded by it all afternoon as I strolled from floor to floor. I highly recommend it for those times when you're feeling that you need to hear Yiddish used in those important, mundane situations, as it was so many years ago. Esther Friedman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 19:25:26 -0800 From: normf@ix.netcom.com Subject: Sholem Aleichem's work in Chinese I am writing this as a member of the Sino-Judaic Institute. The SJI is seeking funds to enable a scholar in China, and one of our members, to attend the New York commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Sholem Aleichem's death. Prof. Yao Yi'en, of the Foreign Language Institute of Shanghai, a member of the Shanghai Literary Translators' Association, and a Senior Research Fellow of the Shanghai Research Institute, has for decades been translating the works of Sholem Aleichem from Russian into Chinese. These translations have appeared in a wide variety of publications. An account of Sholem Aleichem studies in China by Prof. Yao, and a list of his publications are available on request. He is proud to have met with Belle Kaufman when she visited Shanghai. Prof. Yao has informed us of his keen interest in attending the aforementioned event. However, he needs financial aid for the air ticket and for living expenses during his visit. Please don't hesitate to contact me for further information on Prof. Yao or about the Sino-Judaic Institute. Anyone wishing to contribute to Prof. Yao's hoped for trip to the New York event can also contact me, or send a check payable to the SJI at the indicated address. If insufficient funds are collected, we will return the checks received from individual contributors. Mit a hartsikn dank...... Norman Fishman, Treasurer The Sino-Judaic Institute 2316 Blueridge Avenue Menlo Park, CA 94025 Norman Fishman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 08:28:25 PST From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu Subject: Simon Dubnow Cultural Award The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research cordially invites you to a ceremony celebrating the arrival of the complete prewar YIVO Archives from Vilna. On this occasion, YIVO will present The Simon Dubnow Cultural Award, in honor of the great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, for his heroic role in saving YIVO's treasures from destruction, and for his enduring contributions to Yiddish literature and Jewish culture. Wednesday, January 31, 1996. Program: 7:00 p.m. Park East Synagogue, 164 East 68th St. (between 3rd & Lexington Aves.), New York City. R.S.V.P. YIVO (212) 246-6080; fax (212) 292-1892. Allan Nadler (via Zachary Baker) [Two points of clarification regarding the above event: (1) YIVO expects to receive the second and final delivery of documents belonging to its prewar Vilna archives, at the end of January. At that time, as agreed upon with Lithuanian archival authorities, a significant portion of the documents received earlier will be returned to Vilnius, since they have been photo- copied. These copies have been integrated into pre-existing YIVO archival record groups, which will be microfilmed once processing of the entirety of the material received from Vilnius has been completed. The microfilm will be made available to the Lithuanian archival administration, and will include documents in the NY YIVO's possession since the end of World War II plus those that have been lately received from Vilnius. (2) Unfortunately, Abraham Sutzkever will not be able to be present at the upcoming celebration. There will, however, be several speakers on hand who will discuss his literary contributions and his role in helping to rescue YIVO's library and archives during the Nazi occupation. -- ZB] ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.216 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) 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 subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu ****Getting back issues**** 1. Anonymous ftp archives are available. ftp ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files A table of contents is also available, along with weekly updates. 2. 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