מענדעלע

Born to eastern european immigrants and raised in Chicago. wrote a memoir with lifetime friend of same ilk, (which is looking for a publisher) called " growing up yiddishist, socialist, zionist", subtitled, paying admission to your own birthday parties. anyone on this list should be able to fill in all the blanks.

annette baran

I had the privilege of visiting the Freedmans in Philadelphia and seeing a bit of his amazing Yiddish music archive. I cannot begin to relate how exciting it is to see. Welcome to the Mendele community Bob and Molly!

Sheldon Benjamin

Charles Jones asks in the latest issue of Mendele (Vol 4.105) about the romanization of Yiddish and Hebrew in Libraries and according to the "Yivo system."

He asks why the Yiddish "mekhaber" is spelled by major libraries as "mehaber" with the a dot under the h. He questions whether this is not an authentic romanization system given its wide use. The answer is unequivically that the word mekhaber should NOT properly be romanized with the h-dot. In Hebrew the latter word should be written with h. but in Yiddish--never.

The reason why is that Hebrew is a Semitic language and Yiddish is an Indo-european Germanic language. Hebrew like Arabic, possesses a distinctly Semitic consonant which sounds like a heavily aspirated h. Although largely dead in modern Hebrew spoken use the sound continues to be written in Hebrew with the letter h.eth. It is certainly still pronounced in Arabic.

Yiddish is not a Semitic language and its phonology is Indo-european. In modern Yiddish words of semitic origin such as mekhaber the h.eth is articulated as khes. Thus the khes is identical to the kh sound in the Germanic-Yiddish word gerekht (right). Although Yiddish (excluding Soviet-Yiddish orthography) writes words according to their Spelling in the Semitic stock language (Hebrew, Aramaic), no Yiddish speaker pronounces Beth-'olam, but rather Beys-oylem, and it is inappropriate to transliterate the Yiddish word according to the reconstructed pronunciation norms of the Hebrew of the Masorites who standardized Hebrew pronunciation of religious texts hundreds of years ago. No one would suggest that when transliterating English to the Cyrillic alphabet that we transliterate flower according to the norms of the root French fleur--it would be absurd.

Without question, the YIVO guidelines do immeasurably more justice to Yiddish pronunciation than do the guidelines noted by Mr. Jones. The system which he mentions perpetuates the idea that Yiddish is a jargon to be broken down etymologically rather than to be taken as a fused unity.

This having been said, di gantse toyre is nokh nisht oysgeshept gevorn: It is not always clear how to romanize the Semitic component of Yiddish: adayem/adayom/ad-ha-yom? What if a book has a title in Hebrew--ie. the Loshn-koydesh title is not part of general spoken Yiddish? E.g. a book titled ma'amaqim (to use Hebrew orthography). I recently saw a book thus titled. If I have vocalized the title correctly I may now pose the question, how should one transcribe this? In Ashkenazic whole Hebrew, the title would be vocalized maamakim. But in Yiddish, to look at the example of Hebrew ma'ariv, the two a's fuse into the dipthong ay, thus maymakim. Thus we face the question, should we transliterate maymakim or maamakim or maamakem, etc.? In view of these spelling difficulties, the idea of spelling the Semitic component according to Hebrew romanization standards is suddenly attractive. On the other hand, davenen ma'ariv verses mayrev leaves a Yiddish speaker with a bad taste in his/her mouth.

Iz vi git men zikh an eytse?

Yude Rozof

Evelyn Feins asked (4.104) about the term "macaronisms." That term, or its related adjective "macaronic," is used to refer to texts containing a mixture of languages. (It is apparently derived from an Italian dialect word related to "macaroni," and was used to suggest the random arrangement of pieces of macaroni on a plate.) The term was first used in connection with writers in various European vernacular languages who peppered their texts with Latin words and expressions, presumably to show off their erudition. I used the term in an earlier posting to Mendele to refer to what are known in the Yiddish linguistic/folkloric tradition as _mishshprakhike lider_. It is clear, however, that Yiddish mixed-language songs are often highly structured and bear no resemblance to macaroni on a plate.

Bob Rothstein

A new starting-level textbook "Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture" by Sheva Zucker is published by The Workmen's Circle. Book is available from the Jewish Book Center of The Workmen's Circle (phone 800 922-2558 x285, fax 212 532-7518, e-mail stephendowling@weiser.com).

A soon-to-be "must" textbook written by an experienced Yiddish teacher. Applies state-of-the-art techniques of language instruction, beginning with the alef-beyz. "...has many benefits: up-to-date language, uniform spelling (according to YIVO standards) and much more." - Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University.

Iosif Vaisman

Ikh zukh nemen fun bikher tsu araynshteln in unzer bibliotek. Zeyer khushev iz a historia fun der Yidisher shprakh, kultur, y literatur. Ikh veys nisht tsu men ken dos gefunen in eyn bukh. Dos makht nisht oys. S'ken zayn etlikhe bikher. In algemeyn zukh ikh a gantz historia vi di shprakh hot zikh tsushpreyt iber gantz Yurop. Ikh hob di yidishe enciclopedia, ober dos vet nisht aroyshelfn mentchn velkhe vil borgn bikher. M'hot mir gegebn tsushtayer a por groshn tsu koyfn a por bikher. Ikh vel zeyer shtark arbetn tsu poyln bay di balebatn mer vi a por groshn. Derfar muz ikh hobn a reshime fun bikher. Ikh beyt aykh aleman mir aroystsuhelfn mit mayn uvde. Ikh vinch aykh ale a g'mar khesime toyve.

Kayle Goodman