Re: Aliza Greenblatt / Thieves slang

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

> When we were discussing Der Rebe Elimeylekh someone brought up thieves slang,
> something like ganev-loshen, and I am interested in knowing how you know about
> this and where one learns such a thing and what other lexical items you might
> share with us.
 
There are different argots that appear among merchants, thieves,
musicians, etc, throughout Europe and Russia, with different languages
as the basic point of departure. They have different names (Rotwelsh,
thieves Latin, Gaunersprache, etc. In the 1920s linguists had already
pronounced some of these argots dead. Klezmer loshn and much of the
German based Ganef-loshn actually modulate Yiddish as its main language.
I have been trying to get students here in Europe interested in getting
a grant to go to New York to tape Jeremiah Hescheles, who was originally
recommended to me by Itzik Gottesman. Jeremiah comes from Gliniany
Poland and speaks fluent klezmer loshn. He wrote a monograph decades ago
detailing portions of the argot which we haven't been able to locate.
Although Robert Rothstein has written about it and there are various
older sources (I have a reprint of a German language Rotwelsh dictionary
that I use, which has an etymological history of every term- very well
done, including Yiddish), it would be wonderful if someone sat with Mr.
Hescheles for some weeks to pick his brain (love that term). He is a
living native speaker of klezmer-loshn, which was deemed dead already at
the end of last century. Josh


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