Talk:Arbeter Fraynd

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Creating this page[edit]

I have moved the material in Arbeiter Fraynd to here, with a redirect, as 'Arbeiter Fraynd' uses two completely different Yiddish transliteration systems side by side. See Yiddish orthography. I am about to add some material to the article explaining this. In case I am not clear enough and the material gets deleted along the way, for the record: the title of the periodical is written in a 'dayshtmerish' Yiddish - i.e. Germanized Yiddish in Hebrew letters. Correct standard Yiddish would be Arbeter Fraynd I think. Romanizing the title, it is important to reflect the Germanized pronounciation of the original, but also important to romanize according to standard rules, e.g. YIVO or Harkavy. I have used the more common YIVO.

That unsigned thing was me, when I moved the page from Arbeiter Fraynd to Arbayter Fraynd. It has since been moved to Arbeter Fraynd, reflecting correct standard Yiddish. However, the newspaper was not written in correct standard Yiddish - it was written in daytmerish Yiddish ("New High Germanisms" is, I think the correct term), reflecting the prejudices of the Yiddish left of the time - i.e. it was called Arbayter not Arbeter Fraynd. Thus it is anachronistic to correct their spelling, imposing our political correctness on them. If you want a scholarly precendent for my approach here, I suggest Leonard Prager's (1990), . He transcribed texts as they are written, even when this departs from standard Yiddish orthography, because the spelling itself is part of the historical data: an example of the ways in which identities were constructed within the text. I won't just move it back without a discussion, but strongly think it should be. BobFromBrockley 12:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[]
Just checked google, and noticed that Arbeter Fraynd gets 80 odd hits, Arbayter 330 odd hits, inlcuding Tamiment Library Catalogue, Shtetl at ibiblio, etc BobFromBrockley 12:54, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[]


I'm sorry, but it has nothing to do neither with "political correctness", nor with the "spelling" or "prejudices of the left" (what "prejudices", by the way?). The YIVO romanization had become today the de facto standard of Yiddish transcription. Regardless of the daytshmerish spelling, the name of the newspaper had been always pronounced "Arbeter Fraynd" or, in the central (Polish) dialect, "Arbeyter Frand". IMHO, transcription, unline transliteration, should always be based on more or less phonetic principles.

The YIVO spelling, as well as the Soviet phonetic spelling, was created exactly by the Yiddish left - almost all prominent Yiddish linguists at that time were either communists, or Bundists, or anarchists, or members of some other socialist or Marxist groups. However, the "Arbeter Fraynd" had been established long before any standartized Yiddish grammar was written, therefore it could not follow any standards, which did not exist at that time. All Yiddish books and all newspapers at that time, whether they were right, left, religious, Zionist etc., were published using the same inconsistent daytshmerish spelling (in the same page of a newspaper you could find the same word spelled in three different ways).

I am almost sure, that in the last issues the name used to be spelled "ארבעטער פריינד". If it's true, the older spelling is indeed anachronistic. I'l try to check it out today. But, again, the question of the original Yiddish spelling has nothing to do with the Roman transliteraion, which should be standartized and phonetic, as it is the case with all other languages. Laplandian 16:54, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[]


If you are right that the paper was spelled "ארבעטער פריינד" then I completely back down. (I've got a few photocopies somewhere, but have no idea where.) I might also be persuaded if I could be convinced that it was pronounced like that - but this would be hard to evidence.

I should also make it clear that I am totally in favour of YIVO romanisation - I can be quite fundamentalist about it at times! There was a difference, though, between the cultural politics of the Yiddish-speaking social democrats in London during the paper's heyday and the sorts of leftists who were involved in YIVO etc. The former were very Germanophile and associated learning and high culture with New High German. You get this clearly when you look at Yiddish socialist and anarchist newspapers that came out in London at that time - and lose it when you render their Germanisms as standard Yiddish.

I just noticed I didn't type in my Prager reference above. It's Yiddish Culture in Britain: A Guide, Verlag Peter Lang. BobFromBrockley 17:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[]


Unlike some liberals and social democrats, the anarchists, at least in Eastern Europe, were usually more aligned with Folkists, Territorialists and other groups, who favored more natural folk Yiddish.

The differences between more "daytshmerist" and more "purist" authors were usually limited to vocabulary and some minor morphological nuances (i.e. fragn vs. frages). The daytshmerish spelling did not reflect the speech at all! Yiddish dialectology is well researched; there are lots of audio records, made in the beginning of the 20 century by professional linguists and folklorists (i.e. An-ski, Prilutzky). Such dissonance between artificially imposed spelling and actual pronunciation is a common phenonomen, i.e. in Melanesian creoles. In the last 300 years or so, the Yiddish phonetics almost did not change.

I am a Yiddish speaker and I had spoken with many older people about this. I know for sure, that they never bothered to change their native pronunciation due to ideological reasons (except for the standard literary Yiddish, which has been adapted by some, mostly Lithuanian, Jews). For me it's quite obvious, but if you need concrete linguistic evidence, I can look up and provide you with some sources. Laplandian 19:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[]


I checked it up: in the first issue of July 15, 1889, the name was spelled אַרְבֵּייטֶער פְרַיינְד , "Arbeyter Fraynd", which reflects the natural Galician or eastern Polish dialects; in 1906, under Rocker's editorship, it used to be spelled אַרְבֵייטֶער פְרייֵנְד - neither daytshmerish nor natural in any spoken dialect; in the Paris version it was spelled ארבעטער פריינד. While the language of some early articles was horribly unnatural (if you trust the spelling, it does not even sound like Yiddish at all!), none of the versions of the title is actually daytshmerish! Laplandian 06:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[]


Thanks for putting in the work Laplandian. The Polish/Galician thing makes sense, as I believe London Yiddish was much more Polish/Galician inflected than New York Yiddish (hence different bagel pronunciations in the two cities). I'm ashamed I didn't know there was a Paris edition of the AF.

On your points above, I agree that in general the anarchists were more aligned to the Folkists than the social democrats were. However, I am not sure that this was true of the London AF crew before WWI. My feeling is that Rocker was more sensitive to cultural politics than a lot of his comrades - and he, of course, was not a native Yiddish speaker. BobFromBrockley 10:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[]

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