Posts tagged with “yiddish”
A little while ago my friend posted on the internet a little extemperaneous rant about the state of the Green industry. After another commented that he could easily hear that rant read in our friend’s voice I suggested that everybody should record themselves reciting it. It wasn’t too long till our international comrades started contributing foreign-language translations, and so it was suggested that I record a Yiddish version. So I did my own translation and recorded it.
The original:
You know, if this job has taught me anything it’s that the green movement is a bunch of meaningless, self-congratulatory bullshit; a way for over-educated yuppies to make money off of one another while getting to pat one another on the back for having a social conscience. For every good idea that’s going to effect positive change, there are 30 assholes who have added a leaf to their business cards and want to sell you environmentally-friendly convention materials like handbills and banners and loads of other bullshit so you can attend these insufferably smug, self-satisfied GO GREEN conventions where you will try to sell your own marginally less-wasteful products to other people who have spent oodles of money on promotional materials, as well. If this is what environmentalism looks like, our planet is effed in the a.
My translation*, in Latin letters for easier following along:
Her, oyb ot di arbet hot mikh epes gelernt, iz es az di “grine” baveygung iz a hayfl onzinendike, zikh-baykhl-patshndike bobkes; s’iz an oyfen far iberdertsoygene Yopinikes zikh tsu makhn di grobe koze, un beys-mayse konen zey zikh oykh eyner dem tsveytn a knipl ton in bekl farn yandes. Far yedn a gutn gedank vos ker baytn di velt tsum gutn, faran draysik paskudnyakes vos hobn tsugegebn a grin bletl tsu zeyere vizit-kartlekh un viln dem oylem-goylem farkoyfn natur-frayndlekhe konferents-materyaln, azoy vi bletlekh un fones un nokh a sakh shmokhtelyakes kedey az me zol kenen bayvoynen di nit-tsu-fartrogn zikh-tsufridene, zikh-tseshaynendike GEY GRIN tsuzamenforn, vu me vet pruvn tsu farkoyfn eygene oyf a hor veyniker oysbrengerishe skhoyre mentshn vos hobn aleyn gants oysgepatert zeyer gelt oyf pirsemvarg. Oyb der environmentalizm zet beems azoy oys, iz undzer planet ongemakht in tokhes arayn.
* With invaluable editing provided by my lerer, Yankl-Perets
And they say that Yiddish literature is dead.
My Yiddisher Tongue
I would like to mention that I’ve just come across, more or less indirectly—an insomniac google through any new mentions of ‘Yiddish’ on the blogs, followed by a conversation (protracted due to technical difficulties, and abbreviated due to the medium of Twitter) with the author—a brief but pleasant radio program on the BBC about Yiddish, called My Yiddisher Mother Tongue. The man who’s done the program is a comedian and actor (I remember him from Alan Partridge, now that the IMDB mentions it), and also an apparently fluent graduate of Dovid Katz’s in Oxford, so we will for the minute assume that the strange macaronic spelling of the title was not his idea.
In any case, the program is a good and even-handed look at the state and history of Yiddish, including some interviews with Professor Katz, who always sets the record straight, and even a brief talk with the 65th US Secretary of State, General Colin Powell (!).
Di Geviksn-Velt in Yiddish, oyf English, umzist.
There was not nearly as much hubbub as I though there should be when, just a little while ago, The YIVO Institute For Jewish Research (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut, for the true believers), released for free, immaculate download the entirety of Mordkhe Schaechter’s awe-inspiring work, Di Geviksn-Velt In Yidish or, in somewhat less monumental English, Plant Names in Yiddish. The somewhat-uninspiring English title belies the amazing nature of the work.
To an encyclopedia junkie like myself it’s amazing: you can imagine the book as starting off by demolishing the sketchy, vaguely-held notion that Yiddish is impoverished in its terms for flora and fauna, because it is a ghetto language. But it quickly moves on from that point to demonstrate the astounding breadth and depth of Schaechter’s scholarship. In addition to many scholarly pages on the overall nature of Yiddish plant terminology, he simply goes on to catalogue the name of every single plant you could think of, in Yiddish. The simplicity of this undertaking is amazing. It can be expressed in one sentence; but the fact that a single sentence can stand in front of such comprehensive, unassuming scholarship renders them both that more impressive. That YIVO has seen fit to digitize and put online, for free perusal and download, the entirety of the work is, at least for me, just the last wholly unexpected joy and surprise.
As a reference work it’s indispensable. But as a simple joy—as an impossibly rich and dense body to dive into at immediately satisying random—it is even dearer. At a random page turn I can tell you that the Yiddish name for Artillery Clearweed, Pilea microphylla, is הארמאטניק.. Harmatnik, that is, ‘cannoneer’—I have never heard of Artillery Clearweed but apparently its offensive associations are not unique to English. Sweetflag, the genus Acorus, goes by the name שאװער, or shaver. Its obvious false-friendship with the English verb aside, I am not nearly well enough versed in any of Yiddish’s many substrates to tell you offhand where the name shaver comes from. But I think it’s funny: indeed, far from being some wasteland of natural terminology, where the urban, mercantile Yid is happy to lump all ferns with ferns, trees with trees, birds with birds, and so on, stemming from a general lack of engagement with nature, Yiddish natural terminology is a happy and well-churned melange of influences, Polish, Hebrew, German, Russian, French, Ukrainian and original coinages, where the language’s syncretic, cosmopolitan nature joyously shines through.
It is rare that such a wide body of lexicography is combined with such keen linguistic analysis, and rarer still that such work is made freely available to all. I urge you to read this book, online or to download it.
