Re: stand apart

"Reinhold (Rey) Aman" <aman@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

Murray Arnow writes:
Rey wrote:
Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
Reinhold (Rey) Aman writes:
Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

[...]

for those in mourning or observing yarzheit),

Real Yiddish (transliterated): yortsayt.

That's the way it's pronounced, but it's usually spelled
"yarzheit" in English.

Sorry, I don't think so. The only correct YIVO spelling is
_yortsayt_. Any other popular and common spelling, such as yours,
is the illiterate German-English-Yiddish mishmash I've been
lambasting for decades.

Sure, but it's also standard English.

If "Yahrzeit" is the standard English word, how come the
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary spells it the German way,
"jahrzeit"? (I haven't checked other dictionaries.)

It does? The on-line 11th Collegiate doesn't have it either way. The
on-line 10th Collegiate says that there's an entry in the on-line
Unabridged for either spelling.

The OED dates it (correctly spelled) to 1852, which I believe is a
bit before YIVO standardized their transliteration.

I hesitated correcting your _yarzheit_ because I knew it would just
lead to an endless "yes, but" back-and-forth. This is my final
contribution to this topic. We're just talking past each other.

At what time YIVO standardized the transliteration of _yortsayt_ is
irrelevant. There are three languages involved: English, Yiddish,
and Yinglish. I presented the Yiddish spelling _yortsayt_ and the
butchered spellings of _Yahrzeit_ by English-speaking Jews; you
consider _Yahrzeit_ standard English; I consider it Yinglish, à la
_schmatteh_ and _shiksah_.

Unlike those words, though, the word "yahrzeit" has appeared in
"official" print in English for many decades: on synagogue notices, on
funeral parlor calendars, on packaged candles.

I must agree with Evan. "Yahrzeit" is the common spelling.

Nota bene: Evan spelled it _yarzheit_, which pressed one of my
_Knöpfe_.

Yup. Evan was wrong.

Every Yahrzeit notice I've seen since childhood used this
spelling.

I doubt that. You have been paying attention to the spelling of
_Yahrzeit_ for the past sixty-odd years? Sure. You've never seen
_Jahrzeit_, the Rosten-Yiddish _Yortzeit_ or worse? Sure. I have
been observing the various misspellings of this word for at least 30
years.

I've certainly never noticed it spelled with a "J" or an "o".

Whether you like it or not, Rey, it is the correct spelling.

The spelling of _Yahrzeit_ in *English* texts is the standard,
common, and preferred one;

I thought we were discussing English.

I have lambasted the mutations & mutilations of this word and shown
examples from Leo Rosten and Rabbi Jacobs (snipped and ignored by
you and Evan).

As you've noted, people spell loan words lots of different ways.
"Yortsayt" would be taken as a "pronunciation spelling" by most, I'd
guess.

This word is spelled _Jahrzeit_ by Jews in Germany, Austria and
Switzerland,

It's not completely clear to me that "yahrzeit" came into English from
the Yiddish-speaking Jewish community rather than the German-speaking
Jewish community. The two coexisted (not always all that amicably)
for quite some time in the US.

and _jarcait_ by Jews in Poland, using the orthography of their
German and Polish languages, respectively. It's only the
*English-speaking* Jews & goyim who don't know how to spell it,
because they mix up the orthographies of English (-tsite), German
(-zeit) and Yiddish (-tsayt), all pronounced alike.

They picked one. That's how things go. The fact that my
grandfather's name is spelled "Kirschenbaum" on the ship he came over
on (sailing out of Danzig) and "Kirszenbaum" on the ship he didn't
come over on doesn't negate the fact that once it was established as
"Kirshenbaum", that was the correct way to spell it.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The mystery of government is not how
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |Washington works, but how to make it
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |stop.
| P.J. O'Rourke
kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx
(650)857-7572

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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