mentalblog.com comments:
es tut vei zen an yidish kind mit der redsox kasket... go yankees!
Hirsheltzig, since you seem to be at peace with TA, should you not consider renaming your blog?
sorry for latin letters - technical reasons.
Hersheltzig wrote: iz dos an unzere ingel?
I believe the proper expression to be:
“iz dos unzere an ingel?”
Or is that Hungarian Yiddish? Yiddishisten to the rescue!
berl, stop! I don't mind the advertisement!
berl wrote: "Or is that Hungarian Yiddish? Yiddishisten to the rescue!" Tzemach, call Boruch Gorin ASAP!
faruq - i think we can probably solve this one "in house".
BTW, B. Gorin will be in NY from June 26-July 6. You can ask him then, Berl.
"איז דאס אן אונזערער אינגל? אויב יע טוט מער וויי זעהן ווי ער ליגט אין די ענינים"
How and why we in Chabad have allowed the world to affect us deserves an in-depth article, if not it's own blog.
that's it. boruch, you are an official "ass".
But we knew that all along, didn't we? ;)
some of us did. but controlled themselves from expressing it. ad shebau maim ad nofesh.
Berl this is for you:
"...But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child.
"Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.
"But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold."
Tzemach, ban them all and go smell your flowers with the NLR!!!
tzig, you missed my question.
you put 'an' before 'unzerer'.
i suggested that it was supposed to go after, not before (and not in both places):
“iz dos unzerer an ingel?”
btw, the "reish" denotes gender.
i would rather if you asked boruch gorin...
anyone in a mood of a weird post-modern read?
scroll all the way up and enjoy!
on the other hand, the disection of fine points of jewish grammar could qualify H-zig's posts as substantive and save him from the execution of Tzemach's verdict.
well, apparently it did not help...
Berl standing up in defense of the Yankees... Now that's news!
CE, Yankees are a yiddishe team, they play for New York (yir ahser yad Yisroel tekifa boi). Red Sox, on the other hand, is the ultimate goyisher team. :)
Yiddish team is LA/Brooklyn Dogers
The Doggers are meshummodim! :)
Upon further reflection, I think it should really be as follows:
? איז דאס אונדזער אן אינגל
I do not think the word אונדזער has any other forms (it seems that אונדזערע and אונדזערער are both illegal usages). Schneur or other Yiddishisten - to the rescue!
I understand the Anti-Sox sentiment (although as a New Englander I am slightly offended to hear them disparaged by people with NE connections).
I also remember that as a bochur I had an affinity for all things Boston, and our host TA once told me:
"Boston is osios Bo-SaTaN.
But, I agree with Tzemach - The Dodgers seem to be the Yiddishe team.
(SK being the only Baseball connection to anything positive from a Yiddishe perspective)
I once heard from Moshe Sklar, that when he came to learn in Lubavitch they made fun of him because he was a Yankee fan.
And he said "It's not because they were against baseball, it's just that they were all Dodger fans."
Also, there was a certain Chosid that when the Rebbe would greet him, the Rebbe would ask him, 'Nu, un vos macht di Dodgers?" (I don't mean that the Rebbe was a Dodger fan - but that the chossid was.)
Berl, at what point does a usage of a Yiddish word become accepted enough to be "legalized"?
(ex.: זעהן-זען, איהם-עם etc)
770 bochur,
First, I have to make it abundantly clear that I am not a grammarian of the Yiddish language and never have purported to be. That is why I am careful to phrase my musings on Yiddish usage in form of questions to the imaginary "yiddishisten".
With that disclaimer out of the way, let me say this:
1. It seems to me that the examples you site pertain more to the realm of spelling, for which, strictly speaking, there are no real (as in "old and established") rules. To the best of my limited knowledge on this subject, all Yiddish spelling rules are very recent conventions. (Earlier, on this very blog, we had a discussion on the old phonetic spelling of Yiddish). To me, the examples you site are merely different spellings of the same words that reflect different pronunciations of those words in different dialects. That should be always be "legal", regardless of what the spelling conventions and dictionaries say.
2. Now to the "meat" of you question. You ask: "at what point does a usage of a Yiddish word become accepted enough to be "legalized"?"
Given that Yiddish is a זשארגאן it would seem that כשמו כן הוא - it should have no "rules" at all. So if Yiddish speakers use a particular word – it should automatically be "legal". However, there is a serious wrinkle to that approach. In year 2005 we are not dealing with very many real native Yiddish speakers. Even the dwellers of "Williamsburg rat holes" - that do speak Yiddish to each other in their daily lives – speak a crude, simplified version, one that ignores gender subtleties and is void of rich old idiomatic expressions. With the young folk that speak Yiddish in CH – it is even worse. To anyone, that spent time listening to real old-world Yiddish speakers, it should be very clear that, at best, we are talking about a crude slang that is based on Yiddish. That being the case, it would seem to me that gender, case and conjugation mistakes commonly made by contemporary Yiddish speakers should not be viewed as acceptable "usage of the word".
That was too long. Needs clarity. The answer depends on what the goal is.
If the goal is to be linguistically correct, then whatever the contemporary speakers do is, by definition, legitimate. If however, the goal is to preserve the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe - then it is not.
[If the goal is to be an ivri - to be "different" then the subtleties of old Yiddish should not matter. But I know for a fact that R’ Gish speaks a beautiful old Yiddish and is somewhat fanatical about it. Go figure.]
But I know for a fact that R’ Gish speaks a beautiful old Yiddish and is somewhat fanatical about it.
That, in a nutshell, is what I am trying to figure out; in this instance, what I challenged you to come up with an answer to. To what point does one go at the expense of the other; and why.
To what point does one go at the expense of the other; and why?
You lost me, please clarify. Which "one"? Which "other"? What is the contradiction between the two?
The point that Yiddish is just for the sake of counterculture vs. wanting to speak Yiddish "authentically". The fact that Yiddish is a זשארגאן and therefore has no rules vs. the feeling (which I fully share, though I don't know why) that there is an authentic Yiddish that all these so-called Yiddish speakers should take the trouble to learn.
770 bochur,
יש בכלל מאתים מנה
sorry everybody but the truth is the truth yankees stink
Tzemach Atlas - What a photographer you are! That picture of Mendy is priceless. Mrs. Sheiner and I would also like to know how we can make - or get- copies of those wonderful photos of R. Sheiner and YSG. Great work! Do you have pictures of the Rebbe that you yourself took?
a non-political voice, no I don't have my pictures of the Rebbe but I can email you the photos and you can print them out or save them.
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