Subject: [OT]Yiddish (was RE: [lojban] Re: i want my brain cells back!)

From: Edward Cherlin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 13:49:53 -0800

John Cowan [mailto:[email-masked]] wrote
on Wednesday, November 21, 2001 6:00 AM
> And Rosta wrote:
>
> > I had no idea Yiddish was still spoken. Do you speak Yiddish?

Yiddish is called, in Yiddish, mame-loshn, mother's language, and Hebrew is
tate-loshn, father's language. However, some Hebrew speakers don't want to
know about Yiddish because they think of it as a low-class language, and
some Yiddish speakers refuse to speak Hebrew because it is too holy for
everyday use. They reserve Hebrew for prayer and study.

Then there are the Sephardic Jews. Their language is Judezmo, aka Ladino,
but many of them speak Yiddish too. And the Ethiopian Jews, and the Jews
from Muslim countries, and so on.

Also:

"Un mir zaynen ale brider, oy, oy, ale brider,
Un mir singen sheyne lider, oy, oy, oy."

Check out Klezmer Conservatory Band, Klezmatics, Brave Old World, San
Francisco Klezmer Experience, Davka, Chava Alberstein, Andy Statman, and
Itzhak Perlman's Fiddler's House CDs. Among others. And also Sephardic and
Mizrahi (Arabic-language Jewish) music.
>
> SIL estimates about 3 million speakers worldwide as of 1991.

Mostly in Israel and in Brooklyn, NY, but really anywhere that you find
Jews.
In the 1960's there was a Kosher restaurant in Tokyo that advertised,
"Yiddish hanashimasu." and "Aqui se habla Yiddish."

I told the barman to ask the proprietor, Anne Dinken, if they could serve a
two cents plain, and she bellowed from the back, "Tell 'im to go back to the
Bronx!" after which we had a very friendly discussion.

I'm helping Al Grand with his Yiddish translations of Gilbert and Sullivan.
He wrote them out in the Latin alphabet, and I'm putting them into "Idish
oyses", that is, Yiddish written in the Hebrew alphabet. See Isaac Asimov's
review at http://www.ibiblio.org/yiddish/DYG/asimov.htm. (Asimov grew up
speaking Yiddish in New York.) He ends, "Enjoy! Of course, you have to
understand Yiddish -- but doesn't everyone?"

> --
> Not to perambulate || John Cowan <[email-masked]>
> the corridors || http://www.reutershealth.com
> during the hours of repose || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> in the boots of ascension. \\ Sign in Austrian ski-resort hotel

"Is that 'R' as in London, or 'L' as in Roma?" Book title