Re: ... khakhomim performing Jewish words

[Leopold N Friedman <apikoyros...>]

Getting back to the topic of Jewish music, 
Isn't the point of "afile  kulonu khakhomim"
(a prominent phrase from the text of the pesakh 
seder,  which I didn't loosely translate as "even if 
we are all 'smart guys'... ") that we all could stand 
to learn something even if we go over the same old 
material again? --a positive mitsva for Jews and a 
good practice for musicians/performers. 

Re my not-so-sacred text (skippable unless you're
incorrigibly curious about Yiddish/Hebrew transcription):
I don't think the 'va' (or  've' in Yiddish) connective belongs 
in my sentence, and I don't see a reason to double the 'l' in 
"kulonu," but you're right about the consistent transcription 
of that kometz vowel based on the language tradition that 
the text is being cited in. I got befuddled when I started 
thinking about being inclusive. 

For best accuracy,  we'd have to use the Jewish alphabetical 
characters rather than Latin alphabet transcriptions. 
In that case, the vowels discussed here would be implicit
in the Jewish oysyes rather than spelled out as in the Latin 
transcription and the problems with their transcription 
would "go away."  Incidentally, the plural of the Yiddish and 
Hebrew word spelled khes-khof-mem-yud-(final)mem is 
usually transcribed (e.g., in the EJ [Encyclopedia Judaica])
either in Yiddish as khakhomim or in Hebrew as hakhamim 
(using a dot under an h for the khet). I've never liked 'khet' 
transcribed as 'ch' in such words as "chanukah" because in 
English "ch" becomes"tsh", in French it becomes "sh", etc. 
Even the Spanish 'j' would be better but still not be Jewish 
and international enough.  

Resume:
All this fuss may be irrelevant to performers of instrumental 
music and Jewish mimes (where other vocabularies prevail),
but anyone looking at transliterated Jewish lyrics or other texts, 
especially older ones, can see the potential problems both of 
understanding and expressing the meaning of the words clearly 
and of transcribing and pronouncing them reasonably correctly.
Accurate transcriptions of Yiddish and Hebrew texts have to 
be the first defenses against the sloppiness and liberties I've 
heard in "professional" live performances and recordings when
the performers took the Jewish aspects of their material too 
much for granted or didn't know enough to ask the right 
questions. 

Yeah, I know it's early, but we need a little pesakh 
right this very minute. Dance (and sing) on, Miriam!
Lee

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 00:38:48 +0100 (W. Europe Standard Time) "I.
Oppenheim" <i(dot)oppenheim (at) xs4all(dot)nl> writes:
> On Wed, 9 Jan 2002 apikoyros (at) juno(dot)com wrote:
> 
> > afilu kulanu khakhomim, we can always stand to have already 
> well-known Jewish information repeated so that we can ensure that it 
> is still widely well known.
> > Lee
> 
> Well, if you really want to get everything correct,
> it should either be:
> va'afilu kullOnu chakhomim *or* it should be:
> va'afilu kullanu chakhAmim.
> 
> But not something in between.
> 
> Just my two cents :-)
> Irwin Oppenheim
> 
> 
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