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

Fri Oct 7 19:36:01 UTC 2016

And is not incompatible with certain kinds of what Joel calls latent anti-Semitism.

----------------------------
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 Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Friday, October 7, 2016 11:53 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Latent anti-Semitism [Was: Provenance of /Or/ > [ar] / __@ ?]

>  that exact same kind of flippant cleverness to bear on any topic he
dilated on.

Because it's virtually the norm in pop journalism for any topic but racism,
death, and disease.

I mean, you gotta keep 'em interested, right?

JL

On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 11:41 AM, Tim Stewart <timoteostewart1977 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Here are the titles of D-n N------z's most recent 30 articles on Atlas
> Obscura:
>
> Do Not Eat, Touch, Or Even Inhale the Air Around the Manchineel Tree
> Everything You Know About Mole Sauce Is A Lie
> How Dirt Houses Became Beloved By The Tiny House Movement
> How To Drink Vodka Like a Russian
> I Asked Leading Entomologists: 'What’s The Smartest Bug In The World?'
> In A City Of Murals, The Simplest One Stands Out
> Inside Ali Sadr Cave.
> Is There a Place in America Where People Speak Without Accents?
> Let Them Eat Corn! The New Rules of Passover
> Meet Waterbod, the David Attenborough Of Instagram
> Philadelphia's Trinity Houses are the Original Tiny Houses
> Private Eyes Tell Us About Digging Through People's Trash
> The Boiling River
> The Center of the Universe, Tulsa OK
> The Delightful Perversity of Québec's Catholic Swears
> The dugouts in July 2010, before they were destroyed
> The Enduring Mystery Of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun
> The Fascinating Local Color from Illegal NBA Playoff Streams
> The Story Behind the Incredible Obstacle Course Video That Went Viral
> The Strange World of Japanese Hangover Cures
> There's Only One State Where You Can Marry Without God as a Witness
> We are sinners all.
> What Do You Call the Corner Store?
> What It's Like to Run a Fan Site For the Arguably Worst Team in NBA History
> What's Going On with the Way Canadians Say ‘About'?
> Why Do We Even Have Toes?
> Why It's So Hard to Find, Let Alone Save, the World's Cutest Porpoise
> Why Linguists are Fascinated by the American Jewish Accent
> Why Northerners Think All Southerners Have One Accent
> Yu's take on Hong Kong's high rises.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - -
> Read excerpts from the forthcoming *Dictionary of Christianese
> <http://www.dictionaryofchristianese.com/>*
Dictionary of Christianese<http://www.dictionaryofchristianese.com/>
www.dictionaryofchristianese.com
The Dictionary of Christianese explains Christianese (i.e., church slang) so that anybody can understand it.

>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 10:21 AM, Tim Stewart <timoteostewart1977 at gmail.com
> >
> wrote:
>
> > 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
> >
> > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> > - - - - - - - - - - - -
> > Read excerpts from the forthcoming *Dictionary of Christianese
> > <http://www.dictionaryofchristianese.com/>*
Dictionary of Christianese<http://www.dictionaryofchristianese.com/>
www.dictionaryofchristianese.com
The Dictionary of Christianese explains Christianese (i.e., church slang) so that anybody can understand it.

> >
> >
> > 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-fasci
> >> nated-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<http://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/>
> >> www.americandialect.org<http://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 ...
> >>
> >>
> >> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >> American Dialect Society<http://www.americandialect.org/>
> >> www.americandialect.org<http://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 ...
> >>
> >>
> >> >
> >>
> >> --
> >> 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
> >>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >> American Dialect Society<http://www.americandialect.org/>
> >> www.americandialect.org<http://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 ...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >> American Dialect Society<http://www.americandialect.org/>
> >> www.americandialect.org<http://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 ...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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