THE ROLE OF
|
|
What does it mean to communicate? How do we acquire language capacity?
Why do some languages die? And just what does that mean -- is a language
"dead" when it has no more speakers? What if a body of literature is left
after no one speaks a particular language any longer? And what inspires
some people to work to revive a language that has ceased being
spoken? Questions like these have long fascinated me. It is not that I am
especially gifted in the learning of languages other than the one I
happened to acquire as a child, which was English. I have tried with a
number of other languages, and had only moderate success. Rather, it is
something about the communication process itself, about how words are
powerful and meanings can be elusive. About how when G-d spoke He created
a universe and Babel scattered humanity and now there are all these
hundreds of systems through which humanity expresses itself. And about how
now, somehow, the ways in which we express ourselves reflect who we are,
how we think, and just what aspects of the Divine get highlighted in us in
our particular corner of the world. Or something like that. It is hard to explain.
But I do know when it began: I was (to my mind) a typical fifth
grader attending the local public school in New York City's most isolated
neighborhood, Far Rockaway. One day, the Assistant Principal came to our
room and had with him a tall, thin, and obviously very shy girl who did
not look like any other member of our class. Her family had just
immigrated from Hong Kong and for some reason I have never fully
understood, my teacher sat her next to me. She did not speak a single word
of English, and goodness knows, I didn't know any
Cantonese! Years later, I had the opportunity to ask that teacher why she
had done that, and all she said was: "I knew you would find a way to
communicate with her." I came from a family where the issue of foreign language had (to
my mind) a strange place. My Mother had grown up speaking Yiddish and my
Dad was not Jewish. For reasons that were never quite clear to me they had
determined to raise us in the Jewish faith, but not in the Jewish
language. I always felt a bit cheated by their decision, thinking youthful
bilingualism was just about the best gift parents could give a kid.
Perhaps I learned that from watching the siblings in my new classmate's
family each go through their very personal experiences of language
acquisition over the months following their arrival in New
York. The youngest sister quickly and easily learned English, as the
eldest struggled. In an odd way they went through a role-reversal as the
eldest yielded some of her birthright authority to her need for a
translator. My friend was the middle sister, and they had a brother just
younger than her. He was extremely bright and very energetic: feisty, you
might say. His command of English soon exceeded even the youngest
daughter's, and he became the "little king" in the family. In this role,
he usually was the one who got to decide what TV programs they would
watch. One day, after he had asserted his new found authority, he turned
the TV to the animated show "Speed Racer," which had a catchy opening
theme song. He sang along. Some weeks later, when it was no longer a
debate but a given that when it was time for "Speed Racer," that it would
be turned on, all four children were singing the opening song! I was
amazed. Music was doing for all of these children what no other training
in English could accomplish: it was giving them a new, shared experience
in communication. Over the next few years I spend a lot of my free time with this
family. Then, they moved away. I visited them a few times, but it wasn't
too long before we fell out of each other's lives, as teen experiences
brought shifting priorities. Looking back, I sometimes regret having
allowed that to happen, as I would like to know what became of them.
Nonetheless, the impact they had upon my life has remained significant. I
went on to choose a High School where I could study Chinese, although it
was Mandarin, not Cantonese. That is when I began learning about the
diversity within a given language. I chose a college where I could major
in Asian Studies, and that is where I came to understand something which
had always puzzled me about my relationship with these kids -- that
although they had all learned to speak English pretty well by the time
they moved, I had often felt that I had not really understood them, nor
they me. I came, in my studies of other cultures of the world, to
recognize that what we say is often a reflection of how we think, and what
we think is deeply imbedded in our language. The impact these children had
on me is apparent in many other aspects of my life, but those are outside
the limits of this paper. However, I think it is not without exaggeration
that I can say the choice my teacher made on that day in my fifth grade
class has been a force in shaping my destiny as great as any other choice
made by or for me, and greater than most. I noticed another thing as a child in Far Rockaway: perhaps
because of its relative isolation, and that, combined with its legacy of
having been the summer vacation spot for so many tenement dwellers of my
Mother's generation, that by the time I was growing up there it had become
a haven for many Hasidic Jews. These were people quite different from me,
almost as different as my Chinese friends. But they shared something with
my Mother that I did not: they spoke Yiddish, and I was more than a bit
envious of them. It was at about this time that I asked her why she had
not taught her children her first language -- another of those questions
that I never got a really satisfying answer to, but that was how it was
and she was unwilling even then, to teach me. Her sister, however, worked
for an organization that my family has deep ties to; my grandfather having
been a founding member: The Workmen's Circle / Arbeter Ring, Inc. The Workmen's Circle is a Jewish
fraternal organization which provides educational and cultural
programming, is politically leftist, facilitates Jewish burial, owns
several cemeteries, and cares for the elderly in its nursing home. This is
where my aunt worked, at the "Jewish Home for the Aged." Yiddish was part
of her everyday existence, and when I asked her, she supplied me with a
little Yiddish primer, which I still own.¹ Thus, with no one right around
me to practice with; I began my first feeble attempts at studying the
language of my Mother's family. I have, as I said, never been especially
gifted in second language acquisition, so that first attempt was not
tremendously successful. Nevertheless, I have maintained a certain
fascination with Yiddish that is as strong now as
ever. It was also during this time that a third element of my curiosity
was emerging, but only many years later would I see its connection to
these other things, in respect to language. My Dad had passed away when I
was a small child and I knew little about him or his family, but one of
the things I did know was that he was, in part, American Indian: a
descendent of the Wyandotte of Sandusky, Ohio.² Being the precocious
adolescent that I was, I began searching out information about this
"tribe" at the public library. Here and there, in the index of general
works on American Indians, I'd find reference to a few lines, or sometimes
even a page or two, about these people who were often said to have become
extinct. I was mightily confused. How could they be extinct if I was here?
Then, one day the librarian saw me and handed me a book she said she had
bought especially with me in mind: First Among
the Hurons by Max Gros-Louis³. He was the
Chief of the remnant of our Nation that had migrated to the area north of
Quebec City when we were scattered from our original homeland north of
Toronto & south of the Georgian Bay, in 1649. Here he was, alive, and
leader of a small, but thriving community. That was the 1970's and things
about Indians were much in the news. Information was becoming more readily
available and perspectives on the Indian history of North America were
starting to change. In 1979 the Wyandotte of Oklahoma won a financial
settlement from the U.S. government, and that "terminated" community was
recognized as existing again. Here and there, over the course of many
years, I was piecing together bits of information about my Dad's ancestors
and the four (4) small, but extant, communities that had evolved from the
once formidable five-nation Wendat Confederacy.
Not until the late 1990's, however, did I make personal connections in
these communities. When I did I discovered that efforts at reviving the
Wendat language, said to be the most well
documented of all American Indian languages,⁴ were underway, inspired, in fact, by the discovery of several wax
cylinder recordings of traditional songs and their conversion into
contemporary recording technologies. Music again! By this time the phenomenon of "World Music" was well
under way -- bringing Klezmer into the popular
culture, the sounds of Soweto into the tunes of Paul Simon, Reggae to
Hawai'i, reviews of contemporary music from Uzbekistan to National Public
Radio and now, the final production after many years of success, of Riverdance to the Onondaga Community College
Campus this Spring. I think of "Speed Racer" and smile...
What is the role of music in language learning? Or perhaps more to
the point, does music have a role in the revival of languages that are
said to be dying or have gone "extinct?" A recent search of scholarly
periodical literature proved to have limited success, be somewhat
frustrating, and of no clear opinion on the matter. A questionnaire I
prepared and sent to a few folks I thought might lend some insight was
also inconclusive. In undertaking this exploration I primarily focused
upon Yiddish, however, as my curiosity is expansive, I took note of
developments in other languages of interest to me. What follows are some
of my findings. Clearly, this could easily be the query for a thesis
inquiry, as much ground remains to be broken and case study would be a
wide open field. Based on little more than my own feelings about the
issue, I however, would venture to say that yes, music can and does play
an important role. If not in the actual process of language acquisition,
then in creating a climate where language revival is inspired and
cultivated. THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN LANGUAGE LEARNING In their extensive review of the literature: "The Intersection
Between Vocal Music and Language Arts
Instruction" O'Herron and Siebenaler conclude: To ensure student success in language arts, the importance of
teacher preparation and collaboration cannot be overstated. In-service
training for classroom teachers in vocal pedagogy and developmentally
appropriate music-modeling skills is essential to making kindergarten and
grade one language arts curricula effective. With the guidance and
mentoring of a music specialist, the classroom teacher can become aware of
keeping a steady beat, emphasis and fluency in poems and chants,
consistently articulated diction, and appropriate singing ranges and tone
quality for children. Regardless of level of training and performance
quality, the classroom teacher functions as the model for students in PA
[phonemic awareness] and fluency activities.5
Chrisantha
Fernando, et.al. state in their
article: "A Model of the Mechanisms of Language Extinction and
Revitalization Strategies to Save Endangered
Languages" Because our goal is to show the effects of language revitalization
efforts on a low-status endangered language, we have included three
different types of intervention measures in our model. The three
strategies are (1) increasing the perceived status of the low-status
language so that bilingual families will choose to teach the low-status
language to their children and children will be more motivated to use it;
(2) increasing the amount of the low-status language heard in society,
thus increasing exposure to the language and facilitating the learning of
the language as well as raising its status; and (3) formal language
teaching of the low-status language to children who would otherwise speak
only the high-status language.6 Of the second of these interventions they further
explain: Increasing the amount of the low-status language heard in society
targets the public sphere, that is, the higher domains. This type of
intervention can include radio and television broadcasts, newspapers and
other publications being printed in the low-status language, development
of specialized terminologies in fields such as technology or commerce for
that language, standardization, and orthography and literacy development.
7 With "radio and television broadcasts" included in this type of
intervention, it seems reasonable to assume music is included, although it
is not specifically mentioned. Further evidence that there is a role for music in the learning of
languages is this advertisement found in this 2004 Teaching Music
for the 4th volume of Tune Up to Literacy: the Song Way to Learning
Language: Volume 4 is now available in Al Balkin's
Tune Up to Literacy: The Song Way to Learning Language series
(2004, spiral-bound paperback with 2 CDs, 106 pp.). Created for students
in grades K-6, volume 4 contains more than 50 songs designed to teach
language concepts such as the alphabet, vowels, consonants, nouns, verbs,
and sentence structure. The songs highlight the value of reading, writing,
listening, talking, and creating and mix elements of jazz, pop, rock,
blues, gospel, Latin, Broadway, country and rap styles. The entire
four-volume Tune Up to Literacy package, which includes lead sheets
for songs, teacher guides, 2 CDs, and 3 audiocassettes, is available for
$125.00. Contact Now View Music, PO Box 22686, Hilton Head, SC 29925;
888414-8863; www.tuneuptoliteracy.com.
MAINTAINING, REVIVING AND TRANSFORMING
TRADITION In two articles by John DeMont the
connection between renewed interest in traditional music and the use of
the Gaelic language on the Cape Breton's west side are made very clear.
In
1993 he wrote: [T]he
fiddlers and dancers of Inverness County stand as living examples of a
style of music and dance that was lost centuries ago in the old
country....The
freedom and relative isolation of Cape Breton allowed the old-country
musical heritage to thrive until the mid-20th century....Eventually, the
20th century began to intrude. Chisholm and other traditionalists watched
in alarm as mass culture--particularly television and rock 'n' roll
music--began to drown out the sounds of Celtic music. After decades of
indifference, the turning point, according to many Cape Bretoners, was a 1973 television documentary called
The Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler, which focused on the legendary
fiddler and composer Dan R. MacDonald. The film acted as a call to arms:
join forces to nurture Cape Breton's unique culture, or risk losing it
altogether. Within a year, community elders had banded together to launch
the Glendale Festival, which brought together fiddlers from on and off the
island. The August festival, which gave many young people their first real
exposure to the music, continues to this day as the Cape Breton Fiddlers
Festival. The
same could be said of the language of [MacDonald’s] forebears, which is
making a surprising comeback. Just 150 years ago, Cape Breton's 30,000
Gaelic speakers outnumbered those found in the Hebrides Islands, off the
coast of Scotland. But most Cape Breton adults did not inherit "the
Gaelic'' from their aging parents. ”Those people
in their 40s to 60s were forbidden to speak the language," explains Margie
Beaton, a Mabou schoolteacher who has taught the
ancient language since 1975. "It was looked down upon and condemned as
something which would keep you back." Now,
that stigma is gone. And Beaton, who was born on the Hebredean Island of Eriskay
and spoke Gaelic as her first language, notices a resurgence of her mother
tongue. When the class she taught at the local high school was cancelled
in 1990 due to budgetary restrictions, she still found enough teenage
students to continue the Gaelic class after school hours. And language
courses are fully booked at St. Anne's Gaelic College in Baddeck. Another sign of the times: Am Braighe, a quarterly Mabou newspaper about Gaelic language and tradition,
began publishing earlier this year and is just one of a number of
enterprises hoping to capitalize on the Celtic craze. 9
And
in 1999: No
wonder, then, that alarm bells went off in the 1980s with the realization
that the 75,000 Cape Bretoners who claimed
Gaelic as their first language at the turn of the century had shrunk to
fewer than 1,000. It helps explain why a recent revival of interest in the
language is such a welcome harbinger for an island where roots and
tradition matter. "If the Gaelic goes, it is like a people dying,"
stresses Frances MacEachen, the managing editor
of Am Braigbe, the island's Gaelic
cultural newspaper, which she runs from her home on the outskirts of Mabou. "You are not just losing a language. You are
losing a piece of your memory."¹º This sentiment is shared by the late Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (whose rendition of “Somewhere Over the
Rainbow” was the theme song for the movie Finding Forrester
starring Sean Connery), regarding the heritage of Hawai'i which is the
only state with a unique native language and an equally unique native
musical tradition, when he wrote the following poem in the liner notes for
his album IZ: Facing Future. Facing Backwards I see the past Our Nation gained, our Nation lost Our sovereignty gone Our lands gone All traded for the promise of progress What would they say.... What can we say? Facing future I see hope Hope that we will survive Hope that we will prosper Hope that once again we will reap the blessing of this magical
land For without hope I cannot live Remember the past but do not dwell there Face the future where all our hopes stand ¹¹
The music on Facing Future is a of a variety of types,
including several songs in the Hawaiian language, the covers of “Somewhere
Over the Rainbow” and “Take Me Home Country Road”, and the story-song
about Hawai’i’s mythical hero, in “Maui Hawaiian Sup’pa Man.” I have no special expertise in Hawaiian
music, but I greatly moved by the sounds of the Islands both times I
visited in the early 1990’s. While there I was astonished to learn of the
unique amalgam of sounds being incorporated into traditional local forms.
This first came to my attention in the songs of Bruddah Waltah Aipolani & Island Afternoon, a group now famous
for their contribution to what has come to be known as “Jahwaiian.” It was only after Finding Forrester
came out 2001 that I discovered Iz, but I am
inclined to think that a singer such as he could only have emerge in an
environment of musical transformation. In an article about the influence of contemporary African diaspora
music in Hawaii Ku’ualoha Ho’omanawanui explains: Reggae
music gained popularity in Hawai’i starting in the 1970s, which led to
Hawaiian musicians exploring and incorporating reggae’s instruments,
musical styles, and beats. As a result, Jawaiian
music created a contemporary form of danceable Hawaiian music that is
“noticeably disassociated from the Hawaiian hula”… From a Native
perspective, Jawaiian music is important because
it works against the colonization and stereotyping of music and musicians
in Hawaii by the mainland, white majority of the United States. Thus,
Jawaiian music resists haole (often understood as white) standard
musical conventions, such as the 32-bar form often associated with pop
music, and the use of rock-and-roll instruments. Instead, Jawaiian music often features “instruments associated
with reggae music such as keyboards, trumpets, and timpani drums, yet they
also feature Hawaiian instruments like the ‘ukulele.” In addition, lyrics
are often sung and written in the Hawaiian indigenous language, and
feature themes important to Hawaiian people such as the ocean, surfing,
and land rights.¹² Not unlike the Hawaiians, the Wendat
know the future is “where all our hopes stand.” And it is in light of that
hope that the Yawenda Project is now coming to
the close of its five-year, $1 million dollar (Canadian) grant funded by
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The goal of
the Yawenda (which translates as “vision”)
Project is to reconstruct the language so that it can become the Wendake community’s second
language. A collaboration of university specialists from Laval University,
Quebec University in Abitibi-Témiscamingue and
various linguists, the village of Wendake, the
First Nations Education Council, and the First Peoples’ Heritage and
Language Council. The goal of the grant has been to train teachers and
create curriculum for pre-school, elementary school and adult education
classes.... [Also involved is the] Linguistic
Committee, originally begun in 1995 and revitalized in 2006, the Committee
works on standardizing aspects of the written language. Its handful of
members has been trying to achieve a consensus on how to reconstruct the
language based on the expert knowledge of scholars who also have studied
the language. “Language is an integral part of culture; it is the essence
of culture,” said Linda Siouï, a member of the
Linguistic Committee and Yawenda’s organizer.
She has worked for many years on the cause, speaking out in her 1992
article “Is there a future for the Huron Language?” At that time she was
already asking the question “Is the revival of the language a possibility
or a utopia?” Seventeen years later, the Yawenda
Project is dedicated to making it possible.
¹³ At Wendake, Huron ceased to be spoken
toward the end of the 19th century, however, in Oklahoma, Wyandot
continued in use well into the 20th century. In 1999 the four extant
groups of Huron / Wyandotte / Wyandot from Wendake, Oklahoma, Kansas and Michigan gathered at
Ossosane in Ontario for the internment of
remains that had been removed in the mid-20th century by archeologists. At
that historic gathering they also reestablished the Wendat Confederacy which had been scattered for 350
years. “It was then that we began to realize the value of reclaiming our
language,” said Jan English, Chief of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas.14
As proof of these new connections and shared vision, Richard
Zane-Smith from Oklahoma was present at the September 2009 Yawenda Conference where he sang songs from the 1912
wax cylinders recorded by Marius Barbeau as well
as children’s songs in Wyandot recently written by
Zane-Smith.15 The work of Yawenda continues as they
plan a first ever Wendat and Wyandot Studies
Conference to be held at Wendake June 13 – 16,
2012. The
theme of the congress will be: “Wendat and
Wyandot Continuities.” The conference aims at bringing together
researchers and practitioners, from both native communities and academia,
who are interested in the Wendat and Wyandot(te) peoples from
Quebec, Oklahoma, Kansas, Michigan, and elsewhere. Special focus will be
given to expressions of these nations’ history, culture, language,
society, as well as the assertion of their rights. Presentations will
attempt to illustrate how continuity has been maintained between the Wendat and Wyandot of today and their ancestors,
without preventing the former from being fully integrated into the
contemporary world.16 Because the contemporary Wendat
Confederacy is now separated by both a national and a linguistic boundary,
with French being the primary language in Wendake and English used by all three (3) of the
geographically distinct communities in the United States, the idea of a
full blown revival of the Wendat language has
far reaching cultural and political implications. YIDDISH Unlike the Gaelic of Cape Breton, the Hawaiian of the 50th state,
or even the Huron-Wyandot of Wendake, Quebec and
Wyandotte, Oklahoma (or any of many other example I could have chosen to
explore: Israeli Hebrew and Amish German, for example) Yiddish has a
unique quality that none of these other languages possesses. It is a
language which was once spoken over much of the planet by literally
millions of people; it is not now and never has been confined by
geography. As early as the “sixteenth century the spread of Yiddish across
Europe was at its maximum, from Alsace and Italy in the southwest to
Holland in the northwest to Ukraine in the southeast and Belorussia in the
northeast.
It became one of the most extensive contiguous linguistic empires in the
history of Europe. Ashkenaz lost its strict
geographic definition as signifying a territory of German speaking lands
and came to designate the culture of the Jews who had originated from
there.”17 “In 1906 South Africa placed
Yiddish on the list of languages that immigrants could use to fulfill
literacy requirements. America did likewise in 1917.18
Even today, with its (seemingly) dwindling numbers of vernacular
speakers, it is still widely used as a spoken language in many places of
the world: from Calgary to New York to Buenos Aries and wherever there are
populations of Ashkenaz who arrived either
before or after the mid-2019century Holocaust. And in some of
those places, the numbers of native, first language speakers are growing.
By and large, however, those numbers are within communities that are by
their own choice, self-isolating. It is in this fashion that Yiddish is
similar to the other languages already examined in this paper. In the
early 21st century the majority of first language, literate Yiddish users
are Jewish and belong to any one of a variety of Orthodox, Chassidic
or Haredim communities.18 That Yiddish is not the Yiddish I am
focusing upon in this study. Rather, it is what I have seen written about
in a number of sources as "post-vernacular Yiddish,"20 that I
am interested in. As defined by most of these authors it is that
descendent of the Yiddish of early twentieth century fluent speakers,
outside of Eastern Europe, who wished to assimilate in their new
homelands, and who sent their children to majority language schools. While
Yiddish may have been the language most used in the home, most of these
children did not achieve literacy in Yiddish. As they grew and had
children of their own, the majority language became the language used in
the home. My family is a perfect example. In his through and very wonderful examination of “Yiddish on the
Internet,” 21Tsvi
Sadan summarizes Shandler's main features of
post-vernacular Yiddish in the following seven
points: Ø
Existence of “many who profess a profound, genuine attachment to
Yiddish who also admit that they don’t really know the language” and
“don’t see their lack of fluency as interfering with their devotion” (p.
4). Ø
Privileging of the secondary level of signification of Yiddish
(“the symbolic value invested in the language apart from the semantic
value of any given utterance in it”) over its primary level (“its
instrumental value as a vehicle for communicating information, opinions,
feelings, ideas”) (p. 4). Ø
“[T]he very fact that something is said (or written or sung) in
Yiddish is at least as meaningful as the meaning of the words being
uttered – if not more so.” (p. 22). Ø
Motivated use of Yiddish by
desire/increasing use of Yiddish as an elective act (p.
24). Ø
“[D]istinctively performative nature” of language use/“heightened
awareness of using Yiddish as a language of conversation, both on the part
of the speakers who have made a deliberate, if impromptu, choice to
exchange greetings in the language - and on the part of observers, who
find the exchange something to take note of and evaluate” (p.
127). Ø
“Yiddish is embedded rather than uttered.” (p.
141). Ø
“Yiddish speech has been professionalized, aestheticized, academized, and ritualized.” (p.
153) To return to the question of the role of music in all of this, let
us look for a moment at David Krakauer,
clarinetist for the Klezmatics. Said to be "one
of the most popular and creative klezmer bands
in the United States," founded in 1986, they [the Klezmatics] have "introduced people to the joy of
Yiddish music while helping spearhead a revival of interest and support
for klezmer among the contemporary Jewish
community. Rather than following a pure, preservationist tact, their
eclectic and avant-garde style has helped maintain the vitality of the
music by taking it in entirely new and often unexpected
directions."22 Krakauer trained as both a classical and jazz musician and is also a
renowned performer of klezmer music. But this
was not self-evident, despite his own Jewish
roots. When his forebears left Eastern Europe for New York, they wanted to
leave the Yiddish language and culture behind and assimilate as much as
possible into the local community. For Krakauer, tracing his roots has been
a long journey, which finally led him to klezmer
music. "Really, the aesthetic sense of why I embraced klezmer music had nothing to do with nostalgia,"
explained Krakauer. "It was more out of a sense
of my own cultural pride and being curious about it, because it had been
thrown away by my family. So there was this thing that I knew was part of
myself."23
Today, there are two (2) organizations in the United States which
stand above all others in their contributions to maintaining the longevity
of the Yiddish language: the YIVO Institute24 and the Yiddish
Book Center.25 In what might be called a “marriage” of these
two organizations, Dr. Adrienne Cooper, world-renowned
Yiddish singer and educator, was interviewed on December 28, 2010 at KlezKamp, located in the Catskill Mountains of New
York, by Pauline Katz for the Wexler Oral History Project of the Yiddish
Book Center. And what a blessing to lovers of Yiddish that she was,
because not long after, Dr. Cooper suddenly and unexpectedly passed away.
In this 68 minute video recording26 much ground is covered, of
note for this paper are her comments on the formation of KlezKamp almost 30 years ago. As Assistant
Director of YIVO’s Max Weinreich Center for
Advanced Jewish Studies she directed the YIVO Institute Intensive Summer Yiddish Program, an annual six-week
program comprised of three hours of language learning each morning and
Yiddish cultural activities each afternoon, five days a week. Dr. Cooper
observed that many people couldn’t devote so much time to learning a
language and wondered if the structure could be changed to emphasize
cultural immersion, with a smaller language component. In 1985, along with
Henry Sapoznik, she co-founded KlezKamp, an annual, week-long immersion in Klezmer music and Yiddish culture. In the interview
she says that that KlezKamp emerged from a
desire to make Yiddish accessible to a larger and more diverse group of
people. She goes on to recall one summer at KlezKamp when she taught Yiddish songs to Lorin Sklamberg and Alisha
Suigals, early members of the Klezmatics. In Dr. Cooper’s opinion KlezKamp was a place where “chains of relationships
were formed” that “opened up another world.” Perhaps then, it is no coincidence that one family Dr. Cooper knew
both through YIVO and KlezKamp, and whom I have
also been fortunate to become acquainted with, are the Schaechters.
As part of my research for this project I have prepared a brief
questionnaire. Although I sent it to several people and organizations, I
only received responses from the two individuals I had originally
considered asking at the time I made my proposal, and that is satisfactory
to me. One of those respondents is Binyumen
Schaechter, a professional musician whose mother
was also a musician and whose father was a linguist. In fact, his father’s
role at the YIVO Institute has left so lasting an impression that the
Mordkhe Schaechter
Commemoration
is an annual event. I
first became acquainted with Binyumen while
organizing a series of public performance events in 2005. I was the
director of the Fulton (NY) Public Library and with funding provided by
the New York State Council on the Arts,
produced a series entitled “Freedom Song.” Rayna, Binyumen’s then 13
year old daughter, accompanied by her father, did solo music performances
in Yiddish at the Vayner Branch Library in
Fulton and the Safe Haven Museum and Educational Center in Oswego. Since
then she has gone on to perform in Australia, Montreal, and Paris, as well
as a return visit to Central New York at Syracuse’s annual Jewish Musical
and Cultural Festival. The
other respondent to my questionnaire is, Rukhelle Veevik, a Yiddish
language instructor with whom I studied while living in New York's Capital
Region, 10 - 12 years ago. I know less about her or her family, although I
recall her mentioning her parents were from Eastern Europe, Hungary, if I
remember correctly. She was born in Israel and considers Hebrew her first
language. Beyond my relationship with her in her Yiddish class, then held
at a Temple in Albany, I know she has been active with the Schenectady, NY
Jewish Community Center and their ongoing Yiddish cultural programming.
Neither
respondent is Orthodox, although both have deep ties to the Jewish faith.
Both of them are deeply engaged in the continuation of Jewish culture and
the Yiddish language. In their responses a strong difference of opinion on
the role of music in language revitalization is
expressed. Binyumen
writes: ”I’ve encountered, for example, quite a few singers who've said
that they can sing in Yiddish, and when they demonstrated it, it was
fairly a mangled, barely recognizable [version] of the language I know and
love.” On the other hand, Rukhelle says: “I
think music is an important tool to learn a language as it enhances its
retention and it’s a fun to use and often the melody helps to remember the
vocabulary. The nostalgia which some people have for Yiddish is many times
reflected through the music which often leads people to pursue further
learning of the language.” Perhaps
Rukhelle has more tolerance for a postvernacular form of Yiddish, but I do find Binyumen’s opinion a bit – what shall I say – odd…
especially coming from a classically trained musician. My thoughts go to a
beautiful performance I once heard by a young woman who was studying at
Julliard. She was home for a school break and gave a solo performance of
Ave Maria in her family’s local
church. Her clear soprano voice rang out, each word well enunciated and
her timing impeccable. The sound of her voice filled the church, rising
layer upon layer, filling the vaulted space, like rising smoke. I would
venture to say she had not studied Latin. Or on an even more basic level:
what of the many classrooms of American kindergarteners, most having their
first exposure to a language other than English in the lively French tune
where they learn to question if “Brother John” is sleeping?
As
for myself, in the course of this study I have come to two conclusions:
First, that postvernacular may be all that can
realistically be expected in the 21st century for languages
like Yiddish, Wendat, Hawaiian, and Gaelic. If
so, that seems better to me than the alternative – the death of these
minority languages. And second, while music, by itself, may not be the key
to language arts education, it has a role it can play. In situations where
minority language revival or reinvigoration is concerned, music can be
both a magnet to attract attention and a tool in aiding learning and
retention. It is therefore my opinion that music’s influence in this
context is not to be underestimated. CONCLUSION There
is so much about Yiddish (and other languages discussed herein) that is
fascinating and worthy of examination, but is beyond the confines of this
study. For that reason my Bibliography
extends beyond cited works and print materials, so that readers may
continue their own explorations. I
especially recommend works by Dovid Katz,
Jeffrey Shandler, Bernard Katz, and Tsvi Sadan (if only for his
extensive list of resources on the Internet). For those interested in
Yiddish language learning, courses are offered in New York City by the
Workmen's Circle and online by the Florida International University.
Yiddish theater continues in an unbroken tradition at the Folksbiene, films can be seen regularly at the
Schenectady Jewish Community Center near Albany, NY. There are a number of
online Yiddish radio stations and for a calendar of live Yiddish music
events, consult klezmershack.com. Rayna Schaechter can be seen as a child, singing with other
youngsters, in Pripetshik Sings
Yiddish and in the recent DVD release Di Shekhter-tekhter, with her younger sister, Temma. The largest collection of books in Yiddish for
sale in the United States has been collected by the Yiddish Book Center in
Springfield, MA. And finally, the work of the YIVO Institute, the only
still operating pre-Holocaust organization in the world devoted to the
Yiddish language and Ashkenazi culture, is rich, varied, and available to
anyone who wishes it over the Internet, or through visits to their library
in New York City, or by attending events they sponsor – from a brief
lecture to KlezKamp to the several weeks long
Summer Yiddish Intensive. Those interested in Wendat can join a Yahoo! based discussion group, and
for Hawaiian and Gaelic, I am certain readers can also find ways to expand
their language skills via the Internet and elsewise – such a comprehensive
list of resources goes far beyond the proposed purposes of this
document. QUESTIONAIRRE
WITH RESPONSES Rebekah
Tanner
Instructor: Arnaud F. Lambert Spring
2012 Honors Contract Project
Anthropology 155-001: Language & Culture Onondaga
Community College
Syracuse, New York
Music
in Contemporary Language Revival This
project will explore the role of music in contemporary language revival.
In particular it will focus upon Yiddish and Klezmer. However other genres related to the Jewish
languages, as well as comparisons to other languages such as Gaelic and
Celtic music; Hawaiian and the islands' unique contemporary musical forms
including the Reggae style known as "Jahwaiian";
and a number of musical styles within the Native American communities of
North and South American may be explored to highlight certain points. This
author hopes to interview several Yiddishists
for their perspectives on this topic. As much as is possible, scholarly
journals will be referenced,
but because the Internet will undoubtedly be a major source of information
for this research, the final
document will be presented both as a research paper and as a Web site,
made available in early May,
2012 on the author's Web site at http: foxgull.com. If
you are interested in participating in a brief questionnaire please
complete the following questions and return your responses by e-mail to
r.tanner@clasnet.sunyocc.edu by March 9, 2012. Thank you in advance for
your generosity and time. Your
name: Binyumen Schaechter Occupation:
Composer/Conductor/Pianist 1)
What do you consider to be your primary language?
Yiddish 2)
If a language other than English is your primary language, was this the
language spoken to you by
your primary caregiver when you were ages birth -
5 years?
Yes. 3)
Do you consider yourself fluent in any other languages? If so,
which?
English. 4)
By fluent do you mean you can: a) Speak
and be understood by other speakers of the language?
Yes. b) Easily
understand other speakers of the language?
Yes. c) Read a
newspaper or popular novel in the language?
Yes.
[Please respond yes / no to #4 a-c for each language listed in
#2]
and feel free to add any additional comments you feel would be
helpful. 5)
What is the country of your birth?
USA 6)
In what decade were you born?
1960s 7)
How long have you lived in the United States (if born
elsewhere)?
N/A 8)
Have you lived anywhere else (in addition to the country of your birth and
the U.S.),
and for how long?
N/A 9)
Was music an important aspect of your home or school life as a
child?
Yes. 10
-- If yes, what type of music (for example lullabies, singing with family
members, listening to radio or recordings, taking music lessons,
etc.)?
Classical
piano lessons with my mom from age 3, with another piano teacher from age
6 (at the then Hebrew Arts School for Music and Dance), Classical
composing from age 6 (with my mom transcribing/ taking dictation the first
few years) and with a composition teacher from age eleven. Also sang Yiddish songs and
listened to Yiddish and Classical records at home, sang Yiddish and a few
Hebrew songs in our afterschool Yiddish school (till I was 7 or 8, when
the classes discontinued), and in our Yiddish Socialist summer camp, Camp
Hemshekh.
Played trombone in school bands from 7th-10h grades, took private
saxophone lessons from 9th-12th grades and then also played it in school
jazz band, was pianist in school jazz band in 12th grade (age 15-16). Studied organ for one year when I
was 18 or 19, and viola for one year around the same
time. 11)
Do you still listen to or participate in musical activities (study,
perform, record) in your
primary language?
Yes. 12)
In any other language?
Yes. 13)
Do you participate in any other types of activities (view movies/ videos,
see plays, teach, etc.) in
any of these languages?
Both. And
finally: Please take a few moments to jot down any thoughts you have on
the role of music in language learning, retention or revival. These can be
informal thoughts, written in bulleted form or more cohesively written in
a few brief paragraphs. Any input is much appreciated and any format that
you are comfortable with communicating these ideas will be of great
benefit to my project. I
only see it as being of assistance if the learner has a
teacher/tutor/guide who is fluent in the language
being taught / learned and is assiduous in correcting mispronunciations
and grammatical errors. I've encountered, for example, quite a few singers
who've said that they can sing in Yiddish, and when they demonstrated it,
it was fairly a mangled, barely recognizable of the language I know and
love. I personally would not venture to speak or sing in a non-native
language unless I have learned from or consulted with someone, be it in
school or privately, who has really known that which they taught me, and
was not lax in correcting me. Please
indicate if you are willing to be named / quoted or would prefer the use
of non-identifying generalized statements to be used in this project.
Thanks again for your time and participation. Quoting
ok ______fine______
Prefer anonymous __________________ Your
name: RUKHELLEH Occupation:
Teacher and office manager 1)
What do you consider to be your primary language?
Hebrew 2)
If a language other than English is your primary language, was this the
language spoken to you by
your primary caregiver when you were ages birth -
5 years?
My parents spoke mostly Yiddish to me and a broken Hebrew :
) 3)
Do you consider yourself fluent in any other languages? If so,
which?
Yiddish, English 4)
By fluent do you mean you can: a) Speak
and be understood by other speakers of the language?
b) Easily
understand other speakers of the language? c) Read a
newspaper or popular novel in the language?
[Please respond yes / no to #4 a-c for each language listed in
#2]
and feel free to add any additional comments you feel
would be helpful.
Mostly yes 5)
What is the country of your birth?
Israel 6)
In what decade were you born?
1950's 7)
How long have you lived in the United States (if born
elsewhere)?
More than 25 years 8)
Have you lived anywhere else (in addition to the country of your birth and
the U.S.),
and for how long?
No 9)
Was music an important aspect of your home or school life as a
child?
Normal 10)
If yes, what type of music (for example lullabies, singing with family
members,
listening to radio or recordings, taking music lessons,
etc.)? It
was not so important but my parents loved music sing and just enjoy it. I
have some piano lessons but didn't pursue it beyond high
school. 11)
Do you still listen to or participate in musical activities (study,
perform, record) in your primary language?
No 12)
In any other language?
No 13)
Do you participate in any other types of activities (view movies/ videos,
see plays, teach, etc.) in
any of these languages?
Yes And
finally: Please take a few moments to jot down any thoughts you have on
the role of music in language learning, retention or revival. These can be
informal thoughts, written in bulleted form or more cohesively written in
a few brief paragraphs. Any input is much appreciated and any format that
you are comfortable with communicating these ideas will be of great
benefit to my project. I
think music is an important tool to learn a language as it enhances its
retention and it’s a fun to use and often the melody helps to remember the
vocabulary. The nostalgia which some people have for Yiddish is many times
reflected through the music which often leads people to pursue further
learning of the language. Please
indicate if you are willing to be named / quoted or would prefer the use
of non-identifying generalized statements to be used in this project.
Thanks again for your time and participation. Quoting
ok ____ok ____________
Prefer anonymous ___________________ NOTES 1. J. Mlotek, Yiddish Kinder / Jewish
Children. Educational Department of the Workmen’s Circle, NY: 1959. It is
interesting to note that this is a monolingual primer; the only English
included in this volume is in the glossary. At the time my aunt, Miriam
Mahler, gave it to me I already knew the Hebrew alphabet and she assumed
I’d figure the rest out, myself. 2. The Wyandotte of Sandusky, Ohio were one of the remnant Bands
of the Huron Confederacy that survived and scattered in 1649 following the
devastating impacts of European infectious diseases and warfare with the
Iroquois of New York. The pre-contact formalism of Native warfare
intensified to a level of uncommon brutality (on all sides) as a result of
the competition for resources and influence in North America that resulted
from contact with the Europeans. Ancestrally, culturally and
linguistically connected to the prehistoric Laurentians whose territory stretched from the mouth
of the St. Lawrence west as far as Toronto, north to Midland and back
again across Lake Simcoe. By the time the Jesuits
were active in New France; four confederated groups radiated from the
region of Barrie, Ontario and were called “Huron” by the French. Later
known as “Wyandotte” and “Wyandot” within the United States, their own
name for themselves was and remains “Wendat”
which translates as “island dwellers,” a reference to the belief that the
world is an island, resting on the back of a turtle. See works by Barbara
Alice Mann, Georges Siouï and Bruce Trigger for
additional historical and cultural information on the Wendat. 3. Max Gros-Louis, First Among the
Hurons. Montreal, Harvest House, 1974. 4. Beginning with Jacques Cartier's 1534 explorations of the St.
Lawrence River and the small Vocabulary of Stadaconan, most recently reprinted by Evolution
Publishing in 1999; continuing with the work of the French Jesuit
missionaries of the seventeenth century available in Reuben G. Thwaites: The Jesuit Relations and Allied
Documents, 1959 and coming into the twentieth century with the work of
Charles Marius Barbeau: "Huron-Wyandot
Traditional Narratives in Translation and Native Texts" published in the
National Museum of Canada Bulletin in 1960. In 2007 Edwin Mellen Press published John Steckley's A Huron-English / English-Huron
Dictionary, the "first comprehensive dictionary of the Huron or Wendat language written in over 250 years" (p.1).
Readers are referred to Steckley's "References
Cited" (p. 391-392) for a comprehensive list of published and unpublished
works on this topic. 5. Patricia O’Herron and Dennis Siebenaler, “The Intersection Between Vocal Music and Language Arts Instruction: A
Review of the Literature.” Update: Applications of Research in Music
Education:
Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring-Summer 2007), p. 9 (of 13). Document URL 6.
Chrisantha Fernando, et.al, “A Model of the Mechanisms of Language
Extinction and Revitalization Strategies to Save Endangered
Languages.”
Human
Biology:
Vol. 82, No. 1 (February 2010), pp. 53-54. 7.
ibid., p. 54 8.
Advertisement for “Tune Up to Literacy: the Song Way to Learning Language” in
Teaching Music: Vol. 12, No. 3 (December,
2004), p. 75. 9.
John DeMont, “The Gaelic Revival.” Maclean's: Vol. 106, Issue 49 (December 6,
1993), n.p. 10.
John DeMont, “Bringing Back ‘The Gaelic.'”
Maclean's: Vol. 112, Issue 37 (September
13, 1999), n.p. 11.
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, IZ:
Facing Future,
Honolulu, Hawai’i: Big Boy Record Company, distributed by Mountain Apple
Co., 1993. 12.
Ku’ualoha Ho’omanawanui, Ku’ualoha.
“From Ocean to O-shen: Reggae, Rap, and Hip Hop
in Hawai’i.” Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The
African Diaspora in Indian Country, edited by Tiya Miles and Sharon Patricia Holland. Durham,
SC: Duke University Press, 2006, Excerpts from pp. 276-278. 276-278, as
written about on: http://breakingprecedent.wetpaint.com/page/Jawaiian+Music 13.
Marie White, “The Yawenda Project: Can the Huron-Wendat language be revived in Wendake?” Windspeaker: January 2010, p. 26.
14.
ibid. 15.
Richard Zane-Smith. Gift to the author: an unpublished manuscript and
homemade recordings of music from the 1912 Barbeau wax cylinders, original contemporary, prayer,
dance and children's songs with translations, transliterations and
pronunciation guide, 2006. 16.
Programme préliminaire
/ Preliminary Program: Wendat and Wyandot
Studies Conference: http://www.ciera.ulaval.ca/PDF/Programme-prel-wendat.pdf 17.
Bernard Katz, “Yiddish Civilization: The Story of Yiddish and the People
Who Spoke It.” Jewish Affairs: Rosh Hashanah 2010, p.
21. 18.
ibid., p. 23. 19.
“An astonishing survey [reported upon in: Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of
Yiddish, Basic Books, 2004, p. 375 - 375] conducted in the mid-1990s
into the future of American Jewry found the following: that whereas 100
Chassidim and Haredim will have produced 2578
Jews by the fourth generation, the same number of Neo-orthodox Jews will
have produced 346, Conservative Jews 24, Reform Jews 13 and secular Jews
five. It is difficult to estimate the number of Yiddish speakers in the
world today, but a figure of around one million is probable." As quoted by
Bernard Katz in “Yiddish Civilization: The Story of Yiddish and the People
Who Spoke It.” Jewish Affairs: Rosh Hashanah 2010, p. 24.
20.
Jeffrey Shandler, Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular
Language & Culture,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. 21.
Tsvi Sadan, “Yiddish
on the Internet” (Jewish Languages in the Age of the
Internet).
Language & Communication: Volume 31, Issue 2 (May, 2001), pp.
99-101. 22.
From the liner notes on the CD A Jewish
Odyssey: Putumayo World Music, 2000. 23.
Monika Hebbinghaus, Review: “Radical Jewish
Culture Movement Helped Musicians Uncover Identity: DW / Culture
(Germany), April 20, 2011. 24.
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is now located at the Center for Jewish
History, 15 West 16 Street, New York, NY. It was founded
in Vilna, Poland, in 1925 by key European intellectuals, including Albert Einstein and
Sigmund Freud, to record the history and pioneer in the critical study of
the language, literature and culture of the Jews of Eastern Europe,
Germany and Russia. From its inception, YIVO was deeply concerned that the
language and culture of East European Jewry were undergoing radical change
in a rapidly modernizing world. YIVO's founders were tireless in
collecting the documents and archival records of Jewish communities across
Eastern Europe, years before anyone could have predicted the devastation
that would befall them. In 1940, YIVO moved its permanent headquarters to
New York City, becoming the only pre-Holocaust institution to transfer its
mission to the United States from Europe. Today the Institute’s
educational
and public outreach programs concentrate on all aspects of this 1000-year
history and its continuing influence in America. YIVO’s archival
collections and library constitute the single greatest resource for such
study in the world, including approximately 24 million letters,
manuscripts, photographs, films, sound recordings, art works, and
artifacts; as well as the largest collection of Yiddish-language materials
in the world. http://www.yivoinstitute,org 25.
Bernard Katz writes of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts
on p. 25 of “Yiddish Civilization: The Story of Yiddish and the People Who
Spoke It” in this way: “There has been a massive resurgence of interest in
Yiddish, particularly in academic circles. In 1980, Aaron Lansky embarked
on a campaign to save the world’s Yiddish books, and over one and a half
million of these have been collected by himself and his colleagues to
date. The National Yiddish Book Centre, which he founded, has a customer
list which includes 4,000 individuals and more than 5,000 national and
university libraries in 26 countries. It would seem that the Jewish
immigrants were much more avid Yiddish readers than was previously
thought.” In a short documentary by Sam Ball: A Bridge of Books,
Aaron Lansky recounts the story of the Book Center's founding. As a
23-year-old graduate student, Lansky stumbled upon an alarming fact:
thousands of priceless Yiddish books – books that had survived Hitler and
Stalin – were being discarded and destroyed. As an older generation passed
on, their Jewish volumes were often thrown in the trash by children and
grandchildren unable to read the language. An entire literature was on the
verge of extinction. Originally, scholars estimated there were 70,000
Yiddish books extant and recoverable. The Center saved that number in six
months. Lansky’s achievement has been hailed as the "the greatest cultural
rescue effort in Jewish history." The Book Center has helped establish
Yiddish collections at more than 600 great libraries, including Harvard,
Yale, Library of Congress, the British Library, Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, and national libraries in countries as distant as Australia,
China and Japan. In 1998, the Center's Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish
Library made high-quality reprints available on demand. The Center then
placed the full texts of 11,000 Yiddish titles online their Digital
Yiddish Library, where they are easily downloaded, free of charge.
Yiddish, once the most endangered of literatures, is now one of the safest
and most accessible. http://yiddishbookcenter.org 26.
Wexler Oral History Project of the Yiddish Book
Center: Full interview of Dr. Adrienne Cooper by Paula Katz: http://archive.org/details/AdrienneCooper28dec2010YiddishBookCenter_821 Clip
with Cooper discussing her encounter with members of the Klezmatics: http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/video/teaching-klezmatics BIBLIOGRAPHY Balkin, Al. Tune Up to Literacy (The Song Way to Learning
Language Series, Vol. 4) Hilton Head, SC: Contact Now View Music, 2004. http://www.tuneuptoliteracy.com Barbeau,
Marius. “Huron-Wyandot Traditional Narratives: In Translation and Native
Texts.” Bulletin 165, (Anthropological Series No.
47), National Museum of Canada, 1969. Calendar
of Yiddish Music Events: http://www.klezmershack.com/calendar/ Carlson, Scott. “Florida International
University Uses Internet to Teach Yiddish.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Vol. 47, No.
48, (August 10, 2001). http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA146912760&v=2.1&u=onondaga&it=r&p=PPFA&sw=w Cartier, Jacques. A Vocabulary of Stadaconan: From the First and Second Relations of
Jacques Cartier: Including a word-list from Holchelaga. Reprint of the 1924 edition edited by
Henry P. Biggar. (American
Language Reprints, Vol. 11). Southampton, PA: Evolution Publishing,
1999. DeMont,
John. “The Gaelic Revival.”
Maclean's, December 6, 1993, Vol. 106, Issue 49. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16,
2012). ___________.
“Bringing Back ‘The Gaelic.'”
Maclean's, September 13, 1999, Vol. 112, Issue 37. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16,
2012). Di
Shekhter-tekhter
on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ShekhterTekhter?feature=watch Dora
Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture, Online
Yiddish Lessons (in conjunction with Florida International University): http://www.yiddishculture.org/basiclesson/index.html Fernando,
Chrisantha, Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi, and
Richard A. Goldstein.
“A Model of
the Mechanisms of Language Extinction and Revitalization Strategies to
Save Endangered Languages.” Human Biology, February 2010, Vol. 82, No. 1, pp.
47–75. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16,
2012). Folksbiene
Theater: http://www.folksbiene.org/yung.html Gros-Louis, Max. First Among the Hurons. Montreal: Harvest House,
1974 Hebbinghaus,
Monika. “Radical Jewish Culture Movement Helped Musicians Uncover
Identity: DW / Culture (Germany), April 20, 2011, n. p. http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15005319,00.html Kamakawiwo'ole, Israel, IZ:
Facing Future
(CD). Honolulu, Hawai’i: Big Boy Record Company, distributed by Mountain
Apple Co., 1993. Kaston,
Nomi. “Jewish Languages, Jewish Song.” Canadian Folk Music,
December 1993, Vol. 27 Issue 4, p19-23. Academic
Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16,
2012). Katz,
Bernard. “Yiddish Civilization: The Story of Yiddish and the People Who
Spoke It.” Jewish Affairs (South Africa): Rosh Hashanah, 2010, p.20
– 26. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16,
2012). Katz,
Dovid. Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of
Yiddish. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Kelman,
Ari Y. “Acoustic Culture of Yiddish.” Shofar:
An
Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies:
2006: Vol. 25, No. 1, p.127-151.
Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 16,
2012). KlezKamp:
http://www.livingtraditions.org/docs/index_kk.htm Labelle,
Rene Sioui. Finding our talk (Episode 10) Huron-Wendat : A Silent
Language. Montreal,
Quebec: Mushkeg Media Inc., 2001.
(VHS) Laval
University: http://www2.ulaval.ca/accueil.html Miles,
Tiya and Sharon Patricia, Editors, Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The
African Diaspora in Indian Country. Ho’omanawanui, Ku’ualoha.
“From Ocean to O-shen: Reggae, Rap, and Hip Hop
in Hawai’i.” Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006, pp.
273-308. Mann, Barbara Alice, with a foreword by Paula Gunn Allen.
Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas (American
Indian Studies, Vol. 4). New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Mlotek, J. Yiddish Kinder / Jewish Children. New York:
Educational Department of the Workmen’s Circle, NY,
1959. O’Herron, Patricia and Dennis Siebenaler, “The
Intersection Between Vocal Music and Language
Arts Instruction: A Review of the Literature.” Update: Applications of
Research in Music Education, Spring-Summer
2002, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 16+. Document URL Putumayo
Presents: A Jewish Odyssey
(CD). Putumayo World Music, 2000. http://www.putumayo.com Robert
& Dortothy Ludwig Jewish Community Center,
Schenectady, NY: http://www.schenectadyjcc.org/ Sadan,
Tsvi. “Yiddish on the Internet” (Issue Title:
Jewish Languages in the Age of the Internet). Language &
Communication: May, 2011, Volume 31, Issue 2, pp. 99-101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2010.08.002 Schaechter, Binyumen, Josh Waletzky and the Pripetshik Singers. Pripetshik Sings Yiddish! = Pripetshiḳ Zingṭ! Teaneck, NJ : Ergo Media Inc. / Jewish Television Network, 2004. (DVD)Shandler,
Jeffrey.
Adventures in Yiddishland:
Postvernacular
Language & Culture.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. This
is Yiddish: The Face of Yiddish in New York City: http://thisisyiddish.com/yiddishist.html Thwaites,
Reuben G. The
Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents.
New York Pageant Book Co., 1959. Wendat
Language Group on Yahoo!: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Wendat_Language/
Workmen’s
Circle / Arbeter
Ring, Inc.:
http://www.circle.org Yiddish
Radio Project: http://www.yiddishradioproject.org/ YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research: http://www.yivoinstitute.org/ Yugntruf
/ Youth for Yiddish:
http://yugntruf.org/about-us/contact-us/?lang=en E-mail: foxgull@foxgull.com THE FOXFILES © 1996-2012, Rebekah Tanner |
