-stein names: -stine, or -steen?

[Dennis Baron]

Nu, so how does all of this steen/stine/stain (as in the Berenstain
bears) explain the  leveen - levine variants?

When I was growing up one of my best friend's parents, who had come
from England, had early on in their marriage changed their name from
Stein to Steane not to reflect an original pronunciation but to have
a less Jewish-sounding name in the unwelcoming environment of the UK
(it was a literal case of "think British, speak Yiddish" --
acknowledging, as E. H. Gombrich put it, that whatever you do, you'll
always be a foreigner).

Back in Indianapolis, in a reverse of this process, a kind of early
roots trip, my stepfather when he was in college, and to the
consternation of his parents and sisters, changed his name from
Brown, which he dismissed as something an Ellis Island immigration
agent had foisted on his ignorant father, to what he felt was the
original eastern european Baron, complete with exaggerated uvular /r/.

And even my father, strongly anticolonial in his native pre-
independence India, and like all "orientals" not permitted to become
a citizen when he moved to the US, from a young age anglicized his
first and middle names from the original Hindi because, well, that's
what rich, educated expat Indians did in the 1920s.

I think Mel Brooks alludes to this particular name game best in his
movie "Young Frankenstein," when Gene Wilder has to correct the
pronunciation of his name repeatedly: "That's /fron kun steeeeen/ "
Igor is also EYE-gore in the movie, if I remember correctly, and of
course Igor reads "abnormal," the label on the brain jar in the lab,
as the name  "A. B. (or Abie) Normal" when he's sent to find a brain
to implant in the monster.

So far as I can tell, it's all a case of "walk this way."

Dennis


On Jan 12, 2006, at 11:10 AM, Amy West wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
> Subject:      Re: -stein names: -stine, or -steen?
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> My class in MHG was many, many years ago, and I wasn't a German major
> but a Medieval Studies student with German as my major area...
>
> The MHG word for "stone" is "stein" and as Fritz says the "standard"
> dialect treatment of the diphthong is approximated by English -ai- or
> -ay-. However, there were *lots* of dialects back then.
>
> I recall discussion in class of the Swiss German dialect, and while
> the NHG treatment of the diphthong now emphasizes the -i-, I believe
> Swiss German emphasizes the -e-, and I believe that those students
> who were familiar with SG were told they could use that as a basis
> for their MHG pronunciations.
>
> Yiddish has MHG as an ancestor, so the -ee- variant of -stein names
> may have its stem there. However, as Fritz says, it's a good question
> whether this is really an effect of Anglicization/Americanization.
>
> I know zippo Yiddish.
>
> I was once chewed out on the phone by a small-time classical radio
> announcer for opting for the -steen pronunciation of Bernstein: she
> proceeded to lecture me on the rules of German pronunciation. I used
> some very good German once I hung up the phone.
>
> ---Amy West
>
>> Date:    Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:36:50 -0800
>> From:    FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US>
>> Subject: Re: -stein names: -stine, or -steen?
>>
>> This interchange has mystified me for years.  (BTW, Rodgers and
>> Hammer__?  I've heard both pronunciations).
>> The German word for 'stone' was not 'stin' (I think you want a long
>> vowel), but 'stein', most likely pronounced something like English
>> 'stain.'  Maybe Yiddish developed from a German dialect that
>> smoothed the diphthong.  But the diphthong was original in Germanic.
>> Middle High German /ei/ remains in Yiddish, but spelled <ey>, so, we
>> should expect 'shtine.' I don't know much about the history of
>> Yiddish and nothing about its dialects, but I'd be curious to know
>> whether '-steen' is found in European Yiddish or only American
>> Yiddish.  Maybe '-steen' is some sort of American development, based
>> on spelling pronunciation.  I think I may have come across
>> mispronunciations of German names before.
>> Fritz Juengling