Re: YIVO Acronym

[Robert A. Rothstein <rar...>]

Eve Sicular wrote, in part, "Back in the 1920s, when they founded YIVO
in Vilna, calling anything scientific gave it a dignified tone, and of
course there were many social sciences being studied there."

True enough, but it's useful to remember that English has a particularly
narrow use of the term "science," which is normally restricted largely
to the natural sciences.  Yiddish _visnshaft_, German _Wissenschaft_,
Slavic _nauka_ etc. can all be applied to any scholarly discipline,
whether it belongs to the natural sciences, the social sciences or even
the "humanistic sciences."  So musicology, linguistics, literary
studies, etc. are all _visnshaftn_ in Yiddish.

          Bob Rothstein

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