kulonu aint kullanu ... and so say some of us

[apikoyros <apikoyros...>]

Irwin,
In your rendering of 'kulonu' as "ku(l)lonu,"
you seem to be thinking that I was writing Hebrew
(an unwarranted assumption). I thought my text gave the proper signals that I 
was discussing and using Yiddish rather than (even Ashkenazi) Hebrew, where the 
single 'l' (representing the transcription of the lamed sound) would probably 
also still not be incorrect. 

Yiddish (and maybe even modern Hebrew) don't know from no dagesh, although 
educated Yiddish speakers (who would be likely to have had Hebrew education as 
well) might. The discriminating vowel in this case, kometz='o' rather than 'a' 
as in Sefardi Hebrew, says that the word is either Ashkenazi Hebrew or Yiddish 
or both. There's not much difference between those language designations, 
especially where they concern "liturgical"  phrases. That's another good topic 
of discussion for some other time and place. (One could argue that the mere 
acknowledgement of the existence of the dagesh is a fine distinction between an 
Ashkenazi Hebrew word and a Yiddish one.)

I suspect even most Hebrew text transcribers would have reserved the dagesh for 
those 'begedkefet' instances where they make a (more) noticeable difference, 
and would certainly not have brought it up in common discourse. The relevance 
to this list of a Yiddish or Hebrew transcription is how it should be correctly 
transcribed in order to be spoken or sung, not its etymology or its deep 
structures.
zay gezunt(not the same as Sei gesund)  
Lee 

---------- "I. Oppenheim" <i(dot)oppenheim (at) xs4all(dot)nl> writes:

From: "I. Oppenheim" <i(dot)oppenheim (at) xs4all(dot)nl>
To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Subject: re: kul(l)onu
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 16:11:43 +0100 (W. Europe Standard Time)

The proper transcription of Hebrew in Roman script is indeed quite
difficult. Before you know, a transcription ends up looking like some
sort of Russian.

I've always had mixed feelings regarding such scientific transcription
methods. People who know the language being transcribed don't need a
precise transcription--- they will be able to make up what was meant
anyway. But people who don't know the language won't be able to make any
sense of such a detailed transcription.

> and I don't see a reason to double the 'l' in "kulonu,"

Well, the lamed of kullonu has a dagesh (a small point) in it.
This sign indicated that the letter in question,
really is an abbreviation of a double letter...

The Hebrew script tries to be as efficient as possible.
Therefore not only the vowels get dropped,
double letters are frequently discarded as well in writing.

Regards,
Irwin Oppenheim






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