מענדעלע

Three publications with regard to Bonnie Burt's request about Jewish Music Alliance [5.275]:

TITLE: Reuven Yuklson : zibetsikster geboyrntog. PLACE: New York : PUBLISHER: Jewish Music Alliance, YEAR: 1955 PUB TYPE: Book FORMAT: 30 p.

TITLE: Yubiley zshurnal tsum 75-stn geboyrntog fun Y.B. Beylin un program fun der Shalom Alekhem fayerung fun Idishn Muzik Farband Shabes ovnt, Februar 21, 1959 in Honter Koledzsh, Nyu York. PLACE: Nyu York : PUBLISHER: Idisher Muzik Farband, YEAR: 1959 PUB TYPE: Book FORMAT: 37 p. : port. ; 24 cm. NOTES: In Yiddish, with one essay in English.

AUTHOR: Bailin, Israel Ber, 1883-1961. TITLE: Alts in eyn lebn : oytobiografye / PLACE: Nyu York : PUBLISHER: Y.B. Beylin Bukh Komitet, YEAR: 1970 PUB TYPE: Book FORMAT: 329 p. : facsims., ports. ; 22 cm.

Iosif Vaisman

eliyahu juni: found your description of your purim in boro park fascinating -thanks!

re /zun-shtraaml/, your idea that it was a disambiguation is interesting -but couldn't /zun/ also mean 'son'?

there's one additional point that may be relevant, even to a disambiguation story: for some reason,_some_ vowels seem to vary while others don't. what i mean is: central yiddish speakers who typically say /zin/, /kimen/, /git/ etc may _sometimes_ say /zun/, /kumen/, /gut/ -- so at least they've heard it both ways and _can_disambiguate or at least vary an item when they choose to. other vowels seem _not_ to vary like this for them -- e.g. /dus/, /vus/, /tukhes/... are much less likely to be said (and therefore heard) as /dos/, /vos/, /tokhes/... fishman even notes this somewhere -- don't have the reference at hand -- but has no explanation. as for /shtraaml/, i don't remember what fishman says about the ay/aa variation but i can tell you it was a shock to me when i got yivo-ized that words with /aa/ could be pronounced any other way! my great insight came when i realized that my tante braandl had the same name that my textbook was writing /brayne/. :) i'd never heard it with /ay/ -- and had never heard /maanse/, /maarev/, /shaale/, /laadn/, /shtraaml/ etc with /ay/ either.

ellen prince

_zun-shtraaml_ and some questions for Eliyohu Juni:

I like Eliyohu Juni's explanation [5.274] for the anomalous _zun_ 'sun' in _zun-shtraaml_ in an area where one would expect _zin_, _except_ that:

To my knowledge, there is only a small area on the Polish-Lithuanian border and, perhaps on the Belorussian-Ukrainian border as well, where _zin_ 'sun' and _zin_ 'son' are actually homonymous. The two words are _always_ homonymous in the Lithuanian-Belorussian area--both are _zun_--but _not_, as a rule, elsewhere, where the _i_ vowel occurs. In Poland-Galicia, the two are distinguished by quantity, in the Ukraine, perhaps by a qualitative feature. In both cases,

di zin ("short" _i_) 'the sun', is clearly distinguished from _der ziin_ ("long" _i:_) 'the son' or, for that matter _dii ziin_ 'the sons'. Eliyohu's explanation would fail in theses cases.

I'm a bit uncertain though about the prevailing situation at some locations in what for many of us may be a mysterious Transcarpathian--Transylvanian--Hungarian area. Are the words for 'sun', 'son', and 'sons' homonymous there? Does the word _zin_ 'sense', 'mind' also occur? E.g., _se hot nisht keyn zin_, or _er hot es in zin(en)_? Is it synonymous with the others?

At these same locations, does _gut_ occur with _u_ or with _i_? What of _shmutsik_, if it occurs at all? Is it with _u_ or with _i_? _blum_ or _bliim_? _shtru(n)dl_ (sic!) or _shtrii(n)dl_?

If you're still with me, note that at some Volhynian locations in the Belorussian-Ukrainian border area, where all four of these _zin_ words ARE homonymous (all are, phonetically, either _zin_ or _ziin_) there is yet a fifth word that may enter the merger: _er iz blind, er ken nit ZIN_.

Nice, no?

Mikhl Herzog

hello again, eliyahu. i have no figures on movement from german-speaking lands to central-yiddish-speaking lands in recent times and i'm sure you're right that it was minimal -- but it certainly occurred! my great-grandparents moved from carpato-rus to hamburg, where my grandfather was born -- and my grandfather moved back to carpato-rus, where my father was born. and no one in my father's family thought this was unusual. (this is not the grandfather that grew up with chickens and goats in poland -- that was my mother's father. this was my father's side, the literate side of the family. :-) )

one other possibility. what was the official language of interaction with the outside world in lite? i have a pile of documents (leases, deeds, etc) relating to my father's family's store and house in carpato-rus from the late 19th and early 20th century and most are in german, with a few in hungarian. did german have this role in lite as well? german was also the lingua franca in my father's family's INSIDE world -- my aunt and uncle's wedding announcement in the early 1930s was in german since that was the only language they were sure everyone on both sides could read, my aunt's family being hungarian speakers who did not speak yiddish. would german have served in this way in lite?

as for the german-style spelling, that is still how my father's brother writes -- but i can't believe that that would have resulted in the use of basic vocabulary items in the spoken language like _gestern_ or _monat_.

ellen prince

The version of the expression above was jarring to my ears. My father, who arrived in this country in 1910 from Galizie would often say "Az me git, nemt men". The addition of the "men" seems to give the phrase needed balance. Comments?

Pinyeh Weichsel