מענדעלע

Our effort to bring modern and readable copies of the Yiddish classics continues. We now have about a dozen stories on the Web, the English translations of which are found in Howe and Greenberg's _A Treasury of Yiddish Stories_. http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/onkyid.htm

We could of course continue at a faster rate if there were more people willing to transcribe (romanize) texts for conversion back into Yiddish--which seems a clumsy way of doing things though experience suggests otherwise. If you think you may be interested, please write nmiller@trincoll.edu or lprager@research.haifa.ac.il for further details.

Noyekh Miller Leonard Prager

A modern Yiddish version of Sholem Asch's "kidesh hashem" and "a shtiler

gortn" is now available at http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele/onkelos.htm.

An English translation of these stories, as with the others in Onkelos, is to be found in Howe and Greenberg's _A Treasury of Yiddish Stories_, Penguin.

Noyekh Miller Leonard Prager Mirl Schonhaut Hirshan Morrie Feller

"A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot"

It is from a speech Max Weinreich gave in honor of the 20th anniversary of YIVO, titled "Der Yivo un di problemen fun undzer tsayt" published in Yivo Bleter, bd. 25, num. 1 (Yanuar-Februar, 1945) p. 13. He is telling an anecdote about a course of lectures he was giving at YIVO in 1944 and:

"Eyn mol nokh a lektsye geyt er [a student] tsu tsu mir un fregt: 'Vos iz der khilek fun a dialekt biz a shprakh?' Ikh hob gemeynt, az es ruft zikh op in im der maskilisher bitul, un hob im gepruvt aroyffirn oyfn rikhtikn veg, nor er hot mikh ibergerisn: 'Dos veys ikh, ober ikh vel aykh gebn a besere definitsye: A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot".

Allen Maberry

Regarding Sholem Berger's inquiry about books in Yiddish on prosody (Mendele Vol 10.048) - I own a copy of Nokhm Stutchkof's "Yidisher Gramen-Leksikon" with the English title "Yiddish Rhyming Lexicon." It was published in 1931 and I was fortunate enough to find it at the Workmen's Circle book store in New York. Although it is essentially a Yiddish rhyming dictionary it does have an extensive 26 page Yiddish introduction wherein Stutchkof discusses metrical structure in relation to Yiddish verse.

Al Grand

Concerning Sholem Berger's query [10.048], see _The Field of Yiddish_ (1954), edited by Uriel Weinreich. It includes the following, possibly relevant, articles:

"Stress and Word Structure in Yiddish," by Uriel Weinreich; "On Free Rhythms in Yiddish Poetry," by Benjamin Hrushovski.

Mikhl Herzog

Two other articles in responce to Sholem Berger's question [10.048]:

Khaim Loytsker. Vort, ritm, gram. Sovetish heymland, 1964, 4 (iuli-oygust), 151-155.

Uriel Weinreich. On the cultural history of Yiddish rime. In: Essays on Jewish life and thought (J.L.Blau, Ed.). New York: Columbia University Press, 1959. pp. 423-442.

Iosif Vaisman

In reply to Peter Melman's query in _Mendele_ 10:049, Item 7, my first request is that he not use the confusing term "shtetl-ized yiddish."

Two standard sources on Bohemian Yiddish are listed in Uriel and Beatrice Weinreich's well known _Yiddish Language and Folklore_ bibliography (found in many Judaica libraries)

Beranek, F. [Yiddish in Czechoslovakia]. _Yivo-Bleter_ 9 (1936), 63-75.

Pavel Trost, "Yiddish in Bohemia and Moravia: The Vowel Question," _Field of Yiddish_, The Hague, 1965, 87-91.

Trost writes

: 'In Bohemia and Moravia Yiddish continued to be spoken after the legal opening of the ghettoes, in 1848. It is said to have still been spoken at the beginning of this century by a small number of old people in some country towns. The mass of Bohemian and Moravian Jews by this time spoke

only standard German or Czech; however, most of them still knew, and sometimes used, a great many "jargon" words and phrases.' [p. 87]

By "jargon" -- in quotation marks -- Trost either means 'Yiddish' in a neutral sense , the term _zhargon_ having been a common name for Yiddish

for many decades, or -- more likely -- is alluding to the pejorative attitude of many towards the language.

Leonard Prager

Hi

I'm wondering whether any Mendelyaner could help me locate the Yiddish text of the kaddish of Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. I'm interested in two things: first, in a high-minded way, I'd like to know where to find it,

bibliographically; second, more urgently, I'd love to have a copy by this Friday! So if anyone's feeling very generous, and has access to this text, and would be willing to type it into a message either to Mendele or to me (lrosenwald@wellesley.edu), I'd be most, most grateful.

A sheynem dank, Larry Rosenwald

I am looking for the text of the song that starts:

"her nur Gotinyu ikh wil mit dir epes reden Es zol mir unshtein der zkhis fin daynem zegen. Vus ikh bin geshtorben oif kidesh hashem bin ikh zefriden un far dem zkhis fin daine kinderlekh..."

My mother in law heard this song from her brother in Berlin, around 1932. Does anybody remember or know the origin and the complete song?

Many thanks for her

Sabine (Sabina) Cohn-Piltz