Re: yiddish language decline? (& more on Weinreichs/books, etc.)

[SICULAR <SICULAR...>]

p.s.  What did I.B. Singer say?  I think the English translation was 
something like,

"Yiddish has been dying for a hundred years.  May it die for a hundred more." 
 (Or was it "a thousand"?)

Also - for those who don't know, Bine Weinreich's co-author of SAY IT IN 
YIDDISH was her husband Uriel, a great pioneer of Yiddish studies at Columbia 
and a student of the great linguist Roman Jakobson [sp?] among others, who 
died tragically young in the 1960s. Among other projects, he wrote the most 
widely-used Yiddish first-year textbook, COLLEGE YIDDISH.  First published in 
1949, this includes language lessons with many everyday sorts of exercises 
and readings as well as consciously poignant ones, such as on the Warsaw 
Ghetto uprising.  

I think it's facile to paint the Dover travel book publication as simply 
tragic or absurd.  Many currents in 1958 may have existed to make the effort 
seem like "khaloymes" both in the sense of 'dream/vision' as well as 
'nonsense.'  But in any case, the Weinreichs were not simply out of touch.

p.p.s.  Uriel's grandfather (?) was Tsemakh Szabad, a prominent supporter/ 
?founder of the original European YIVO in Lithuania.  He was also a renowned 
public health physician.

- Eve Sicular

drummer/bandleader
Metropolitan Klezmer & Isle of Klezbos
151 First Avenue #145
NYC  10003  USA
tel: 212-475-4544
fax: 212-677-6304
sicular (at) aol(dot)com
www.metropolitanklezmer.com

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