Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.237 February 23, 1997 1) Place names (Joachim Neugroschel) 2) Place names (David Herskovic) 3) Place names (Halina Goldberg) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 13:57:06 -0500 (EST) From: achim1@cris.com Subject: Place names In regard to Meinhard E. Mayer's posting (Vol. 6.236): the Italian name for Munich is "Monaco di Baviera" (not Bavaria). And while hitching through Italy I often heard "Monaco di Germania." His information about Czernowitz was very substantial--however the Romanians still call that city "Cernauti" even if it's not the official name forced by the dominant culture. Again, the name depends on the given language. The province itself is called "Bukovine" or (locally) "Bikivine" in Yiddish, and while Germans call it "Bukovina" they sometimes resort to the Germanization "Buchenland" (land of the beech trees)--especially during certain well-known eras. In regard to the pronunciation of the French capital in another posting, Yiddish normally pronounces the final consonant--though in texts influenced by Russian you'll also find "Parizh" (as in Russian). Joachim Neugroschel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 23 Feb 97 08:59:22 EST From: 100114.750@compuserve.com Subject: Place names Despite Uzhgorod being so called for the last I don't know how many years I have still to find an Uzhgoroder yid. They all come for Ungvar. Some of the names retained, especially by Chasidim, have, I suspect, a lot to do with prestige rather than ignorance of local developments. Take for example the Stanislover Rebe. Should he decide to be known as the Ivano Frankover Rebbe, as the place is nowadays called, he'd have all his khsidim heading for the exit. Nokh mer, ver volt zikh meshadekh geveyn mit an Ivano Frankever aynikl? A not too different reaction of voting with limbs more normally associated with motion would be experienced in Klozenburg should the Rebe experience a bout of Geographical correctness and rename himself the Clujer Rebe. In similar vain, pandemonium would break out if the elders of Willamsburg were to adopt Joachim's Neugroschel's proposal and change its name to Vilneburg. What would the Vilne Goen say to his name on that bastion of khsides? And what about the khsidim? You'd sooner see Baghdad renamed Albrightburg than khsidim renaming the Maye Sheorim d'Brooklyn to the Yerisholayim d'Lite. The phenomenon however is not exclusive to place names. Our dear Diana, Princess of Wales, as she must now be known as part of her ksibe settlement, is still referred to by our dear yidelekh as Lady Diana. Ay since then she has been Princess Diana and then oys Princees? A kashe of a mase. And didn't Yankev ovini, lehavdil eylef havdoles, change his name, and yet we still know him as Yankev. Even Avrohem, who changed his name from Avrom, only made his new name stick thanks to an explicit prohibition to refer to him by his old name. And didn't our dear shames Noyekh, so called since unto him a child was born (6.23? years ago, to be precise) sign himself Norman on the very message he wrote 'place names die hard but we don't know why'. Zol zikh ayner dervargn tsi zogen that the shames lacks a sense of humour. Farfaln, that's the way we are. Lech Walesa zol zikh iber kutsken in Gdansk ober inzer zaydes kimn alts fin Dantsig; inzere zaydes zenn okh aros fin mitsrayim in hobn gornisht gehat tsitin mit di egiptn; Irritable Bowel Syndrome blabt bokh vaytig; Mental Health iz loy olayni meshige in Yugoslavie vet shtentig zan Yugoslavie. David Herskovic 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 21:03:51 -0500 (EST) From: spudic@aaron.music.qc.edu Subject: Polish "L" with a slash With reference to the estimable Joachim Neugroschel's posting Vol 6.234) please allow me to add to the discussion concerning the pronunciation of the Polish "L with a slash." The original pronuciation is similar to the Russian pronunciation of the "hard L." This pronunciation is maintained today in Eastern Poland (eg. Bialystok region) nd can be heard elsewhere in Poland, in particular from the pre-war eneration, and that includes Yiddish speakers. Currently, in central and western Poland one hears the same letter pronounced as an English "W" and the Polish technical term for this sound translates into something like "non-syllable-forming U." It is not the "soft L," but this "W" sound that replaced the "hard L" in all words, including my birthplace, Lodz (incidentally, there are other diacritical marks in this word that disappear in the English transliteration and a discussion of that can take us well into the spring!). But even further along these lines, I am not certain that the resettlement strategies as described by Reb Neugroschel were most responsible for this change. The descriptive "repatriations," would be better judged as a "westward jump," not a "westward push." The people in post-war eastern and central Poland remained pretty much in place. But the territories in the West, deserted by a population of German origin that migrated to the "Vaterland," were secured by those Poles who in turn were scrambling away from territories annexed by the Soviet Union; and of course among those settlers were included Jews. These settlers therefore brought with them their eastern pronunciation of the "L with a slash" and logically should have had a determining effect upon this pronunciation.... But interestingly enough, something quite different seems to have happened: the "W" sound, present in the Polish language before the war and referred to as "dialect L," took over the original sound used in high Polish. This process is perfectly understandable if we realize that a majority of the Polish intelligentsia was systematically exterminated by the Nazis; nor was this process hindered by the Communists, who (surprise) did not take kindly to the flaunting of one's noble or intellectual ancestry. As a result, most of the the educated Poles of today are inevitably of more humble ancestry, which all told explains the transformation of this particular paradigm from the colloquial into the standard (by the way, a similar thing happened with the "H" and "CH" sounds in Polish). Halina Goldberg Bayside, New York [Would it be excessively stringent on the part of the shames to suggest that with this (intelligent and informative) post we've reached the Outer Limits Of What Constitutes A List About Yiddish? nm] ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.237