| re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film | |
| Posted by: | JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 02:51 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - showtunetrivia 02:30 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Just out of curiosity, why would you assume Tevye et al would be speaking Yiddish? I would assume they'd be speaking Russian or perhaps Ukranian, depending on where their village is supposed to be located. And I have no idea if either of those languages utilizes the subjunctive. | |
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| re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film | |
| Posted by: | showtunetrivia 03:35 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - JereNYC 02:51 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Actually, it's probably a push between Russian and Yiddish. By the end of the 19th century, Russian was supplanting Yiddish (the main language for Ashkenazi Jews in Europe since the middle ages) in many Jewish communities. But I've always had the feeling Anatevka was smaller and even more isolated than other shtetls. My husband's relatives were from that part of the world, got here when Tevye did, and they spoke Yiddish. Laura | |
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| re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film | |
| Posted by: | LegitOnce 11:53 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - showtunetrivia 03:35 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| My two Russian mavens have replied "Yiddish." Most likely a tradesman like Tevye, who had to deal with all sorts of people, would speak passable Russian and Ukranian as well, and perhaps some Polish. | |
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| re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 03:53 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - showtunetrivia 03:35 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| My father's mother also spoke Yiddish. Perhaps at one time she could speak Russian, but Yiddish was her primary language. She never learned more than a small amount of English. She died in 1973. I don't know exactly when she came here. My father was born in 1925. His older sister was probably born in 1922. They were both born here so it was before that. But I know very little about their history. And now no one is around to ask. I wonder what records might exist if I tried to find them. | |
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| re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film | |
| Posted by: | showtunetrivia 04:42 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - AlanScott 03:53 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Online genealogical searches are incredibly easy. The Mormons' FamilySearch.org is free, if somewhat clunky to use. Ancestry.com is the biggest; to get anything really interesting you have to join, but you can make family trees for free, and they have (or they used to have) a free trial. State resources are free, as are sone of the US censuses. Liberty-Elis Island Foundation has a free passenger search, too. By way of keeping this on topic, I wonder how much the ban on Yiddish theatre (enacted after the czar's assassination in 1883) contributed to the decline of the language at the end of the century. Laura | |
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| re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 04:53 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - showtunetrivia 04:42 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Thanks so much. I must do that. | |
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| "Shtetl Days" | |
| Posted by: | showtunetrivia 08:32 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - AlanScott 04:53 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Apologies if this is off topic, but it does deal with the discussion of language in Imperial Russia and does involve actors, albeit fictional ones. Some Chatterati may know my husband, Harry Turtledove, writes science fiction, including a lot in the subgenre of alternate history. A few years ago, he wrote a short story set in a world where the Nazis won the war. Decades later, they're recreated a shtetl as a kind of "living museum," complete with performers playing the long-gone Jews, just like folks play Elizabethan Englishmen at Renaissance fairs today. But what happens when they start to get too deep in their roles? Laura | |
| Link | "Shtetl Days" at tor.com |
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| Correct link | |
| Posted by: | showtunetrivia 08:39 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | "Shtetl Days" - showtunetrivia 08:32 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Sorry! | |
| Link | "Shtetl Days" at tor.com |
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| re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 03:05 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - JereNYC 02:51 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I would have tended to assume Yiddish for all the Jewish characters, except when they're talking to the Russian-speaking characters, because Sholom-Aleichem wrote in Yiddish. But now that you've brought it up, it's a good question. I don't know. | |
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| re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film | |
| Posted by: | MikeR 03:02 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Deadline reviews Into the Woods film - JereNYC 02:51 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Not that it's really that important, but Russian verbs have indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods (and there are six noun cases, just to keep things interesting). | |
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