Re: mues

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

Lori Cahan-Simon wrote:

> Thanks for the clear explanation and the proverb.  Is the spelling you use
> below preferable to the one I quote from the book I read?

            Your book apparently had "mo-os chittim"; I used the standard (YIVO)
version for the two variant pronunciations, "moes-khitim" and "moes-khitn" (and
then managed to misspell the latter as "moes-khitin" in the proverb). Is my
spelling preferable?  Yes, if the goal is standardization and uniformity, which
most languages strive for.  Yiddish, especially in transliteration, has an
unfortunate tradition of anarchy in this respect.  Consider, for example, a
piece of sheet music from 1937:
on the front page we find "BEI MIR BISTU SHAIN"; on the first inside page, "BEI
MIR BISTU SHEIN"; at the beginning of the chorus (pp. 3-4), "bei mir bisti
shein"; and on the back page, "BEI MIR BIST TU SHEIN."  And then of course
there's the title of Victoria Secunda's biography of her father (the composer of
the song), _Bei Mir Bist Du Schön_, which one could easily mistake for German.
YIVO (and I) would prefer "Bay mir bistu sheyn" (or "...bisti..." to reflect the
pronunciation of theater Yiddish -- as in the rhyming lines from the same song:
"Bay mir bisti git / Bay mir hosti 'it'").

                Bob Rothstein

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+