[Ads-l] Latent anti-Semitism [Was: Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?]

Fri Oct 7 15:21:41 UTC 2016

I had a different takeaway. Rather than interpreting *Yoda-like*, *mashup*,
and *-ish* as latent anti-Semitisms, I took those as attempts by the
article writer to make the subject matter (Yiddish) appeal to a millennial
audience. My hypothesis is that the article writer would bring that exact
same kind of flippant cleverness to bear on any topic he dilated on.

Tim

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Read excerpts from the forthcoming *Dictionary of Christianese
<http://www.dictionaryofchristianese.com/>*

On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 8:47 AM, Margaret Winters <mewinters at wayne.edu>
wrote:

> I agree with Joel's assesment of the quotes he cites.  I do the occasional
> lecture on Yiddish to Detroit area Jewish groups (I learned it as a child
> both at home and through second language study and have to some extent --
> not enough! -- kept it up).  One of the points I make (yes, to Jewish
> groups) is that it isn't cute, nostalgic, meant just for jokes, a debased
> dialect of something else, but is a living language of its own with a
> history, literature, culture of its own!
>
>
> sigh,
>
> Margaret
>
>
> ----------------------------
> MARGARET E WINTERS
> On Leave
> Office of the Provost
> Wayne State University
> Detroit, MI  48202
>
> mewinters at wayne.edu
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Joel
> Berson <berson at ATT.NET>
> Sent: Friday, October 7, 2016 8:44 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Latent anti-Semitism [Was: Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?]
>
> This of course is not a criticism of Neal.
>
> I find a latent and repellent anti-Semitism in the Atlas Obscura article,
> in it's characterizations of "the American Jewish Accent" --
>
> weird
>
> bizarre
>
> Ladino as a "mashup"  -- what is "standard" English but a mashup of other
> languages?
>
> The use of "-ish", in "Germanicish" and Yeshivish", as though these
> dialects are somehow substandard versions of German or of the speech of
> Jews educated in "the schools for the organized study of Jewish holy texts".
>
> The use of Yoda-like" has a similarly-disparaging undertone.
>
> The first sentence of the last paragraph seems to extend the disdain to
> all minorities, as though their speech of English too is substandard.
>
> Finally, the article concludes "It's messy and confusing and pulls
> elements from all over the world. But it’s pretty great for telling jokes."
> More slurs.  "Great for telling jokes"!  As if that's all it's good for.
> Is (stereotypical) Italian, or Irish, or Indian, or ... accent great for
> telling jokes, and not much else, such as being understood in one's
> community?
>
>
> Joel
>
>
>
>       From: Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
>  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>  Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2016 11:38 PM
>  Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?
>
> Relevant to this thread from 2012 (hat tip to LSA for sharing on Facebook):
>
> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-linguists-are-
> fascinated-by-the-american-jewish-accent
> [http://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/34854/image.jpg]<
> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-linguists-are-fascinated-by-
> the-american-jewish-accent>
>
> Why Linguists are Fascinated by the American Jewish Accent<http://www.
> atlasobscura.com/articles/why-linguists-are-fascinated-by-
> the-american-jewish-accent>
> www.atlasobscura.com
> Between 1880 and World War I, a wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants
> crashed on America’s shores. They spoke Yiddish, and then English, with a
> special tone, a ...
>
>
>
>
> On 11/17/2012 3:02 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:      American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:      Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
> >
> > I'm not sure what my original pattern was, though my parents (NYC born)
> had [a] in nearly all or all words in this set intervocalically.  I,
> however, have [O] in them all, despite living a good deal of my childhood
> in the NY/NJ suburbs.  I could have picked it up in Chicago, where I lived
> from 6-14.  However, my high school years were in Morristown, in Morris
> County, NJ, not far from the Oranges, and my birthplace was a stone's throw
> from Florida,NY (not the state)in Orange County, so there's plenty of words
> there in the classthat would come up all the time.  My memory may be
> playing tricks on me but my impression was that local Morristonians had [O]
> like me, but the incomers from NY
> > and farther toward the Hudson had [a] (in my day, distributing very much
> like rhoticity).  Monroe, NY was also in the [a] area.  But if Philadelphia
> also has [a], shouldn't all New Jersey have it too?  Am I projecting my
> Illinois pronunciation on others?
> >
> > What I remember, too, is Morristonians using [O] and contrasting it
> strongly with southern NJ's Moorestown [mu:rztaUn], which was always being
> confused with our place.  We'd never use [O] in the latter.
> >
> > Throughout, NORTH =FORCE for all areas that I've lived in in this
> country.
> >
> > By the way, what's the Eastern New England pattern for <orV>, [a] or
> [É’]?  The last one would equal NORTH in many places there, with NORTH and
> FORCE being different.  Would Boston and Providence be different?
> >
> > Paul Johnston
> > On Nov 17, 2012, at 12:49 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> >> Sender:      American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:      "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> >> Subject:      Re: Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
> >>
> >> At 11/17/2012 01:36 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>> On Nov 16, 2012, at 6:24 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I'm sure this has been analyzed somewhere at some point, but I
> >>> don't know where.
> >>>> What is the dialect that has /O/ lowering to [a] in a stressed
> >>> vowel preceding
> >>>> /r/ and an unstressed vowel? In other words, the dialect that
> pronounces
> >>>> "forest" as "farrest," "Florida" as "Flarrida", "Oregon" as "Ahregun,"
> >>>> "horrible" etc. as "harrible" etc., "authority" as "autharity",
> >>> but still has
> >>>> [O] in "fort", "lore," etc.? What is this realization called?
> >>>>
> >>> It's what I grew up with in NYC,
> >> Me too.
> >>
> >>> although I've shifted over to [O] most of the time for these; I
> >>> suspect I go back and forth (on "Florida", "orange", "forest") even
> >>> though I think of myself as an open-o employer for these (the first
> >>> group, that is; I've never varied on [O] for "fort" or "lore").  I
> >>> think of "AH-rinj" as the locus classicus, but as I recall it was
> >>> getting mocked for my [a] in "corridor" as a freshman in Rochester
> >>> that led to my abandoning my native vowels in this frame.  I'm sure
> >>> I never say "flarrist", but I probably did before the fall of 1961.
> >> Except my vacillations and shifts are different from
> >> Larry's.  (Perhaps because he stayed close, in New Haven, while I
> >> moved further (farther?), to Boston.)  For example, I'm sure I seldom
> >> say "florist" but mostly "flarrist".  But I say "floral", not "flarral".
> >>
> >> Joel
> >>
> >>> LH
> >>>
> >>>> I've been vaguely aware of it for many years, but have begun to
> >>> notice it more,
> >>>> especially among certain NPR speakers. I even heard one guy on
> >>> Planet Money talk
> >>>> about a "flarrist" (florist), which is right in line with the phonetic
> >>>> environment I described, but was still a new pronunciation to me.
> >>>>
> >>>> Neal
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> American Dialect Society<http://www.americandialect.org/>
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> American Dialect Society<http://www.americandialect.org/>
> www.americandialect.org
> The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is dedicated to the study
> of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or
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> >
>
> --
> Dr. Neal Whitman
> Lecturer, ESL Composition
> School of Teaching and Learning
> College of Education and Human Ecology
> Arps Hall
> 1945 North High Street
> whitman.11 at osu.edu
> (614) 260-1622
>
>
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> American Dialect Society<http://www.americandialect.org/>
> www.americandialect.org
> The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is dedicated to the study
> of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or
> dialects of other ...
>
>
>
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> American Dialect Society<http://www.americandialect.org/>
> www.americandialect.org
> The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is dedicated to the study
> of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or
> dialects of other ...
>
>
>
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