מענדעלע

Ir vert ale farbetn:

Haskore nokhn sharyber Eli Shechtman Donershtik, dem 28tn Marz, 1:30 PM, in Arbeter Ring Center, 45 E 33rd St, NYC

Itche Goldberg - redt vegn E.Shechtamen David Rogow - A blat-Shechtman Yankl Stillman - "Baym Shkye-Aker" Eva Gilboa - Shechtman, Mayn Zeyde Forzitser - Yosl Mlotek

Shoshana Balaban-Wolkowicz

Shleyme,

I think that your speculation at the end [5.284] is right.

The sof at the end of the word is, of course, the standard spelling in Hebrew. Thus the Ashkenazic Hebrew model that went into Yiddish was surely _bes_ or _beys_. ( In Sephardic Hebrew and thus in Modern Israeli Hebrew it is _bet_.) The pronunciation [bejz] mmust have arisen through assimilation of the final fricative to the voicing of the following initial voiced [g], a phenomenon that is attested for at least some varieties of Yiddish. (Indeed, I have heard it in the Yiddish-accented English of some people who voie the final voiceless consonant of an English word before a following voiced consonant. It might happen in something like "washboard." Through a kind of back formation, then, Yddish speakers may have lexicalized the name of the second letter as [bejz] as a result of frequent repetition of the alphabet, perhaps in teaching children.

That is, I would guess that speakers got so used to this recitation that they put it into their mental lexical store as _beyz_, but knowing the spelling of it and the "standard" pronunciation of it in their Ashkenazic Hebrew, they might vacillate between the two pronunciations.

Uriel Weinreich, whom I knew well, was certainly well versed not only in his native Yiddish but also in Ashkenazic Hebrew.

Mikhl Herzog may have a better explanation of Uriel's inconsistent spelling in addition to a better explanation of the phenomenon.

Arn Abramson

The discrepancy in U. Weinreich's names for 'beyz', which Shleyme Axelrod has brought to general attention, touches on one of the puzzles of voicing consonantism among the names of the Yiddish letters. Alongside 'beyz' where the Hebrew spelling would lead us to expect 'beys', we also find (not surprisingly) 'veyz'. There is also 'daled', where Hebrew spelling points to 'dales', or at least 'dalet' and 'tof'(& 'sof'), rather than the 'tov' which spelling indicates. These peculiarities are pretty widespread in Northeastern and Southeastern Yiddish. The form 'reyz' (which in the standard spelling would be reyzh) is also found in Northeastern Yiddish.

Meyer-Leyb Wolf

Mark Shechner asked [5.287] if _Fishke the Lame_ has ever been translated into English before the forthcoming translation in the "Library of Yiddish Classics", to be published by Schocken Books this Summer. This is indeed the case. The translation by Gerald Stillman was published in 1960 by Thomas Yoseloff, New York and reprinted in _Selected Works of Mendele Moykher-Sforim_, Ed. Marvin Zuckerman, Gerald Stillman, Marion Herbst (Malibu, Calif.: Joseph Simon/Pangloss Press, 1991).

For secondary material on Abramovitsh's literary Yiddish, you could consult Dan Miron's _A Traveler Disguised_ which has just been reprinted by Syracuse University Press, and Ken Frieden's _Classic Yiddish Fiction_ (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1995). Both books contain the information you are looking for and much more.

In addition, they have extensive bibliographies for further reading (Frieden's book has a listing of all English translations of works by Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem and Peretz). I believe Miron and Frieden are the editors of the new translation; because of their knowledge of Mendele's work, one would presume that they have chosen a translation which does Mendele's style justice.

Marion Aptroot

Mark Shechner asked [5.287] about a booklet written by Nicholas De Lange. A plausible option:

AUTHOR: De Lange, N. R. M. (Nicholas Robert Michael), 1944TITLE: Reflections of a translator IMPRINT: Cincinnati : Judaic Studies Program, University of Cincinnati, 1993 FORMAT: 24 p. ; 23 cm. SERIES: The Sixteenth Annual Rabbi Louis Feinberg memorial lecture [The closest to Buffalo owners are Cornell and Touro College libraries].

Mendele's Fishke Der Krumer was published in English at least once: Fishke the lame, London : S.Paul, 1928, 224p. [In NY a copy is owned by Queens Coll Lib].

One of the works on language in Fishke is Sol Feinman's thesis "Mendele's Fishke der krumer in Yiddish and in Hebrew", 1977, 135p., [available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich.]

Iosif Vaisman