The Denver Jewish news., 1921-09-28
The Humours of Yiddish
BY Israel Zangwill.
Copyrighted s21 BY Jewish Cores
pondence Bureau.

Or. Gotthard Deutsch. of Cincinnati
| who makes specially of omniScienct
in Jewish history. says of me in his lat
est book. Jew and Gentle: To hin
international vocabulary is indebted foI
the invention of the term 'Yiddish.' II
is the best name for a dialect which il
its previous form of Judeo- German is
| awkward, and under the name of jar
gon. unjust" Far he ii from me TO con
| tradict Savant who is usually in the
right. But if l invented the term il
was inadvertently. Presumably, it was
in children of the Ghetto" published
in 1892. AT any rate. the term was
adopted by Alexander Harkavy of New
York, whose Dictionary of the Yid-
dish Language is dated 1S0S. and il
may be said to have been finally fixed
when, in 1890, Leo Wciner. instructing
IN the Slavic languages ut Harvard Uni
versity. published his excellent His
tory of Iiddish Literature in the Nine
teenth Century; though | note that NJ
A'''S' D'N''i VI tllt 'HNtiSily VI
Paris. who has supplemented Weiners
work by still more comprehensive
study in French, entities his monu-
mental volume. "Histoire de Ia Lite
rature Judeo-Allemande.'
The actual word e Yiddish" has,
however, been adopted into French
by NJ. Pierre Mile in his translation
of Children of the Ghetto" On look
ing up the standard Dictionary of
The English Language" published by
Funk and Wagnall. of New YORK, as
early as 1903, / found. TO my sur
prise. the word "Yiddish" included,
tho ii is inaccurately explained as n
corrupt form of Hebrew, II polyglot
jargon used for the int.rcommunica-
ton by Jews from different nations
Our recent ''OXford Dictionary
more accurate. for il defines it as "A
mixture of Hebrew and other Ian
guages used by or to the Jews
To the study of this comparative
is. of course-despite its Hebrew let
tering mediaeval German. with only
200 of Hebrew and 1870 of Salvic,
etc. Dr. Emmanuel OlSvanger. of Cape
Town. has now made n valuable CON
tribution under a title conceived in
the true Hcbraic spirit-"Raisins and
Almonds" RosinkiSS Nit Mandlen(
Unfortunately he has written in Ger
man. so that the makers of English
dictionaries will not he much enlight-
encd. This is pity. for DIR. Olsvan-
ger has put together one of the most
interesting and amusing books IN any
lnnguage. and the members of the
Swiss Commission for Jewish Folk
Lore. under whose auspices ii j. pub
lished, are sincerely to be congratulate
cd on their enterprise. 1t was in
Switzerland. in fact, that all these
anecdotes, folk songs. riddles and pro
verbs We're originally gathered. For
Switzerland is u stage on the road 10
America. as well aS II place of study
and business for Russian and Galician
Jews. The students and business men
special facilities for collecting from
their transient visitors the stories and
sayings which make the book Il rich
feast of humor, as well as II valuable
and the Jewish soul in the Judcngas-
sen of Eastern Europe. 1t is comedy
aud the joy of Jewish life which are
the domincnt notes of this collection.
and therefore it is the more tragic
that the bulk of it should have been
taken down from the mouth of Jewish
refugees from Jerusalem ON their
flight to America.
DIR. Olsvangcr, who has written out
all the stories in the Roman alphabet.
according TO Il careful phonetic syS-
rem, has provided elaborate eNplana-
tory notes, an historical and gram
matical introduction. and Il full vocab-
Ulary of words differing considerably
( rom the old German groundwork OF
this dialect 1t is difficult to choose
from such a rich bag of almonds and
raisins. One can only dip ones ham!
in at random. certain of finding some
thing toothsomc 1t was in this BOOK.
10 tell Il secret. that | found the anec-
Iote applied in my last speech to Sir
Herbert Samuel and his hnndlins OF
.he Arab-Jewish question in Palestine
the anecdotc of the Rabbi who says
hat both The litigants are right and
when reminded 10y his wife that this
,annot he, replies equally. You are
light" | can cordially recommend
,thcr speakers to dip as | did.
The only fault | have to find with |
he compilatOn-or is this perhaps a |