Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ____________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 15.029 September 25, 2005 1) State of Yiddish (Jack Berger) 2) State of Yiddish (Zackary Sholem Berger) 3) State of Yiddish (Lucas Bruyn) 4) State of Yiddish (Larry Rosenberg) 5) Yiddish and the Past Conditional (Norman Buder) 6) Khayim Shvarts (Shloyme-Khayim Cohen) 7) grine bleter (Pavel Greenberg) 8) alt-yidish (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: September 22, 2005 Subject: Re: The State of Yiddish Khaver Gillig's causerie fails to move me. I return to the findings of Professors Gonshor and Shaffir, reinforced by my own experience. Haredim choose to cloister themselves in 'enclaves' and use the Yiddish language as one of the tools to isolate themselves from what they see as a hostile, and threatening outside secular world. For all the difference it makes, the Yiddish could be replaced with a customized pig-Latin, so long as it serves the purpose of isolating them from the outside world. The Haredim are not re-creating a "cultural matrix." They have a very rigorously controlled homogeneity, which is very unlike the seething, boiling world of I. L. Peretz, and his contemporaries, where traditional religion collided with Enlightenment, Zionism, socialism and atheism. None of this is tolerated within the Eruv of the currently Yiddish-speaking ultra-orthodox. Without that ferment, what he wants to happen cannot -- and will not -- happen. Jack Berger 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: September 22, 2005 Subject: Re: The state of Yiddish Thank you, Leizer Gillig. That was the most intelligent Mendele post ever. Might as well close the shop down now. Zackary Sholem Berger 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: September 25, 2005 Subject: Re: The state of Yiddish For those Mendelyaner who get a deja vue feeling following the present discussion about the state of Yiddish: Have a second look at http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/vol09/vol09006.txt and http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/vol09/vol09009.txt These reactions were written following the publication of Janet Hadda's article, "Yiddish in Contemporary American Culture" and Iosif Vaisman's response. The "is Yiddish dead or alive" question pops up regularly on the list, but 1999 was a paricularly good year. Lucas Bruyn 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: September 23, 2005 Subject: the future of Yiddish Very interesting, all this recent discusssion! A few crotchets, more or less at random: 1) Omen v 'omen to whoever praised the stories of Yonia Fayn. 2) People interested in possible synergies between Yiddishists and Hasidim might want to look at Brukhe Lang's thoughtful piece on the subject in the most recent issue of _Afn shvel_. 3) About such synergies - look, as has been stated, Yiddish is in fact a living language among Hasidim. So in one sense we don't have to worry about the future of Yiddish. What we have to worry about is whether the future of Yiddish will have any continuity with its great literary past, and with the Yiddishist community of the present. And my own view about that is pessimistic, partly on the basis of the aforementioned article. For one thing, while Yiddishists might seek such a result, might seek to ally with Hasidim in search of a common love for Yiddish, I'm not sure Hasidim would have any interest in such a result; what's in it, after all, for them? (A few years ago, a guy from the local Lubavitch center, named I think Hirsh Zarhki (I could be misremembering) walked half a block to the Arbeter-Ring in Brookline, near Boston, to give a Yiddish lecture on some aspects of Hasidism. Attendance was better than usual, and lots of people in the audience had real curiosity, and real knowledge, about the Hasidic world. But I'm not sure the speaker had a comparable curiosity about the Yiddishist world he'd ventured into. (I could be wrong, but he surely didn't manifest any that afternoon - except, of course, that he was there in the first place.) Moreover, at some point, aren't Yiddishists on their side going to hold back from a full synergy with Hasidism, simply because they - some of them, at any rate - are so uneasy about Hasidic practice and so full of dissent from Hasidic doctrine? Aldos guts, Larry Rosenwald 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: September 23, 2005 Subject: Yiddish and the Past Conditional I have a Yiddish grammar question. It is hard to believe that this question has not been answered long ago in a grammar book or linguistics article. Those of you who teach Yiddish may have heard it from your beginning Yiddish students and may have a ready answer. Every beginner learns that the present tense of the Yiddish conditional is formed by using the auxiliary verb "voltn" plus the infinitive (e.g. "ikh volt nemen"), and that the past conditional is formed by using the same auxiliary plus the past participle (e.g. "ikh volt genumen"). My question is: Why does Yiddish seem to have a prejudice in favor of the past conditional, using it even in contexts where the present conditional would serve well and would seem to be more logical? Here are just a few examples where the context suggests that the speaker is speaking about the present, yet he/she uses the past conditional (in brackets I indicate what might strike a beginner as more logical): 1. Oyb es volt geven [zayn] in shtub a bisl bronfn, volt ikh genumen [nemen]. (Immanuel Olsvanger, Royte Pomerantsn, page 106) [A beginner might also expect: "Oyb es iz do in shtub a bisl bronfn, volt ikh nemen."] 2. Volt ikh geven [zayn] a rov, ken ikh nit keyn toyre; volt ikh geven [zayn] a soykher, hob ikh nit keyn skhoyre. (Yudl Mark, Gramatik fun der yidisher klal-shprakh, p. 290) 3. Ven s'volt nit geven [zayn] mayn nar, volt ikh oykh gelakht [lakhn]. (Ibid) 4. ....Ven men derzet mikh, a bakantn yidn, Mendele Moykher-Sforim, vi ikh for do in a baydl mit a por oksn, volt men zikh mistome tsunoyfgelofn [tsunoyfloyfn] kind un keyt, men volt gemakht [makhn] a vare.... (Mendele Moykher Sforim, Der Khilef, http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/PDF%20Stories/Der_khilef.pdf) 5. -- Tomer volt dos a mol gehat [hobn] an ek? -- misht zikh arayn di mame, lebn zol zi. (Sholem Aleykhem, Kidalto Vekidashto, http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/PDF%20Stories/Kidalto%20vekidashto.pdf) 6. In Bontshen tseveynt zikh dos harts....Er volt shoyn atsind di oygn geefnt [efenen], nor zey zenen farfintstert fun trern.... (Y. L. Perets, Bontshe Shvayg, http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/PDF%20Stories/Bontshe.pdf) I am puzzled by this preference for the past conditional even when the present conditional would seem to be more logical. Can anybody throw light on this phenomenon? Norman Buder 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: September 23, 2005 Subject: Khayim Shvarts Tayere Mendelistn: Ikh zukh muzik vos nitst di verter geshribn funem aktivist, mekhaber, un Yidishist Khayim Shvarts vos hot gevoynt in Los Angeles. A dank, Shloyme-Khayim Cohen 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: September 25, 2005 Subject: Re: grine bleter The Freedman Catalogue contains records about two versions: 1) shpil tsigayner, mir a lidl, "grine bleter" oyf dayn fidl... and 2) ikh zing, vayl ikh hob lib twu zingen... with track comment: Is beginning of song "Manger's" or added by "Oysher"? Another Freedman's source, apparently, is an article in the Forverts, April 16, 2003", but, unfortunately, I have no access to Forverts archives. Here is a list of records that refers to Moyshe Oysher as the "grine bleter" author. 1) Mimi Sloan Sings Moishe Oysher Melodies (Tikva Records T102) Side 2. Track No.4 Grine Bleter. (Author - M.Oysher) 2) Marry Soriano (Gal-Ron L-5791) Side 2. Track No.3 Grine bletter. (Folk - M.Oysher) Unbelievable, but comment in Yiddish refers to I.Manger - M.Oysher! 3) Many years ago I had a cassette named "Moyshe Oysher sings Moyshe Oysher". Pavel Greenberg 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: September 25, 2005 Subject: alt-yidish Mendelistn will find two particularly interesting articles in the September 23 issue of the Forverts. Both are to be found on line (http://yiddish.forward.com/) but the reader will have to hunt through the menu. The first is an interview with Shloyme Berger of the University of Amsterdam, "di tsukunft fun yidish iz in di hent fun der inteligents". The second, by Jerold C. Fraikes of the University of Southern California is "di forshung fun alt-yidish haynt tsu tog". A third article, unfortunately not archived, is "di eltere literatur", by Nokhem Shtif, originally published in 1919 and well worth reading today. The editors of the Forverts deserve our thanks for publishing such articles. And (finally!) for providing proper bibliographic details of books discussed. Noyekh Miller _____________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 15.029 Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. Instead, choose one of these two: b>Messages for posting on Mendele Personal and other messages to the shamosim