Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.301 April 14, 1996 1) 'Di Shvue' (Rick Kuhn) 2) Some translation queries (Meyer-Leyb Wolf) 3) Peter O'Toole and the Yiddish Hamlet (Stan Bernstein) 4) "Yok" (Meyshe-Yankl Sweet) 5) The daytshmerism "als" (Zellig Bach) 6) Singer's 'lost' novel (Zachary Baker) 7) Apple Hebrew/Yiddish software (Khayem Bochner) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 14:06:22 +1100 From: rick.kuhn@anu.edu.au Subject: 'Di Shvue' Is anyone aware of any recordings of 'Di Shvue' that are still available? 'Di Shvue' was the anthem of the Bund (Union of workers in Russia, Lithunania and Poland), written by S Anski in 1905. Thanks Rick Kuhn 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 02:34:24 -0400 From: wolfim@chelsea.ios.com Subject: Some translation queries [re: Joseph Sherman post in5.300] 1. _krigelekh_. Rashi on Genesis XXXII:24 notes "he had forgotten some small jars". 2. _Rabi Reb Tsots_. Proverbial yakhsn & great Rabbi. Often mentioned by Bahevis, e.g in 'Mayse Tishevits': kegn ale dray [nief, gelt, gayve] iz keyner nisht gevornt, meg er zayn der rebbe R' Tsots. Also known as R' Ots. Meyer-Leyb Wolf 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 09:13:03 EDT From: hgvb87a@prodigy.com Subject: Peter O'Toole and the Yiddish Hamlet Mort Sahl tells this one: Peter O'Toole came to New York to appear in Hamlet. His Jewish cab driver struck up a conversation. "So, Mr. O'Toole, what are you doing in New York?" "I'm appearing in Hamlet. Have you seen it?" replied O'Toole. "Years ago, in the Yiddish Art Theater on Second Avenue" answered the cabbie. After a pause the driver mused "Do you think it will work in English?" Stan Bernstein 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 23:18:08 -0500 From: msweet@facstaff.wisc.edu Subject: "Yok" In a story in last week's New Yorker "Mother with Child" by Jonathan Wilson, the narrator's mother uses the word "yok" as a pejorative to describe the narrators gentile girl friend. The author explains:"*Yok* is Anglo-Jewish for Gentile. It's worse than "goy" or "shiksa." It connotes viciousness, brutality, and deep, irredemiable stupidity." Any of the Brit-ish Mendelyaner familiar with this word or its origins? It looks like "goy" backwards, with the unvoiced "k" replacing the "g". But that's a wild guess. Related to "yeke?" Meyshe-Yankl Sweet 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 18:24:44 -0400 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: The daytshmerism "als" In his reprint of Y. L. Perets's essay _Hebreyish un Yiddish_ (5.298,1, April 7, 1996), Leonard Prager corrected the old Yiddish spelling prevailing at that time [1909], specifically the unnecessary ayens /e's/ and the "puste" (empty, soundless) /hey's/, thus "blaybEn" to _blaybn_, and "oystsufiHrEn to _oystsufirn_, to conform with the YIVO romanization. Prager also corrected "heyligkeyt" to heilikkeyt, but today's literary Yiddish does not take double consonants, and the correction should therefore be "heilikeyt." As I had occasion to state in a previous post, the double /tes/ in _glatt_ kosher does not make it kosherer. Double letters occur only when a prefix ends with a consonant and the conjoined verb starts with the self-same consonant, examples: farruf [reference, allusion], oyssortirn [sort out]. tsunoyfflekhtn [intertwine]. Prager also singled out four (4) daytsmerisms in Perets's essay, and wonders which one might be considered "good, kosher Yiddish words." They are: 1) Gegenvart; 2) hantirn; 3) Tsershrayung; and 4) ufrikhtik. But he overlooked one daytshmerism (see below). With reference to No. 1, the word carries in Uriel Weinreich's MEYYED a clin (wedge), a typographical warning sign used to indicate in this dictionary that it is not admissible in standard Yiddish; No. 4 carries a heavy dot, here to indicate that it is doubtful whether admissible in literary Yiddish, No such warning signs about inadmissibility are found in Harkavy's YEH dictionary (YIVO's 1988 reprint of his second, expanded 1928 edition). Not only was Harkavy not proscriptive, but to the contrary he was totally permissive: In his judgment every spoken word in Yiddish, including a flood of Americanisms, was fit to be included in his dictionary. Proscriptive warning signs such as clins are to be found only in both UW's MEYYED and in Stutshkov's _Oytser_ that was edited by Max Weinreich. In terms of Prager's use of the term "kosher" for good Yiddish words, one might say that when a word is marked by the Weinreichs with a clin, it means that in their judgement it is "unclean" for modern literary Yiddish... The daytshmerism that Prager overlooked: In Perets's following sentence "Di yidishe iberzetsung [fun khumesh] volt geven fil nenter tsum original als [sic] ale iberzetsungen in andere shprakhn." _Als_ is definitely a daytshmerism, and so glossed, after archaic, in the _Groyser Verterbukh fun der Yidisher Shprakh (vol. III). Max Weinreich and Zalmen Reyzn, among others, were very outspoken against the use of "als" in Yiddish and suggested 'vi,' 'far,' or certain adverbial forms as substitutions. In the sentence cited above, "vi" would have been very appropriate in place of "als" and convey in full the intended meaning. Zellig Bach 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 96 11:58:16 PDT From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu Subject: Singer's 'lost' novel "Der zindiker meshiekh: historisher roman," by Isaac Bashevis Singer, appeared in the "Forverts" from Oct. 5, 1935 to Feb. 22, 1936. The novel appeared under the name Yitskhok Bashevis. The source for this information is David Neal Miller's "Bibliography of Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1924-1949" (New York - Berne - Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1983), pp. 58-60. David Miller supplemented this bibliography with "A Bibliography of Isaac Bashevis Singer, January 1950-June 1952," which was issued as no. 34 of the YIVO series of Working Papers in Yiddish and East European Jewish Studies (1979). Awhile back, Roberta Saltzman of the New York Public Library's Jewish Division reported that she was working on an update to Miller's two bibliographies. Zachary Baker 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 96 12:18:35 -0400 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Apple Hebrew/Yiddish software I'm just catching up with the all the Mendele I missed while away on vacation, and have just noticed Morrie Feller's complaints about Apple's Hebrew Language Kit in 5.285. While it isn't everything we could wish for, the HLK is better for our purposes than it may have seemed at first to khaver Feller. It's true, as khaver Feller points out, that of the combinations that we need to write Yiddish properly, only pasekh tsvey yudn is available in the HLK as a single key-stroke. But all the other combinations can be produced by using two key-strokes: fey mit a dekhele, pasekh alef, komets alef, even khirik yud. (By the way, Yasminke Dowling's comments in 5.292 sound like they're based on the old version of the HLK, which you could get with Nisus if you bought their language key. The new (as of December 95) version, which as I understand it is _not_ available through Nisus Corp, is considerably better. All but one of the fonts supplied has the dekhele for the fey (and that font's ugly anyway ;-). One of the fonts (peninim khadashim) is even quite attractive; I though the fonts in the old version were awful.) I agree that it's tiresome to have to type two keys for something we think of as a single letter. I keep typing 'a', and forgetting to add the pasekh ;-) (Mac gurus: are there any ways to work around this? I know how to change a KCHR resource in Resedit, but I don't see any way to make one keystroke produce two characters ... If you have ideas, send me private e-mail, and I'll send a summary to Mendele.) And much as I like Nisus, it does have its problems. But after all the makeshift schemes I've cooked up over the years, I'm delighted to have a real word-processor that can handle Yiddish. Automatic line breaks and everything! a mekhaye ;-) Khayem Bochner ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.301 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.cis.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.cis.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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