I suppose you should. Though it does read like the beginnings of a
descent into dementia.
At 11:03 AM 11/12/2008, you wrote:
>>A recent essay of his in the NYRB, On the Glories of Yiddish, was
>>barely coherent. It's at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22020.
>
>Should I read this, Mark?
>
>I've been putting off doing so, despite its being available, as I'm
>convinced I'll yet once more trip up over being unable to
>distinguish patois from creole.
>
>Bad enough trying to disentangle 16thC inflected Romany from Anglo-Rom.
>
>{The Winchester Confessions of 1615 are jaw-dropping. Have you seen
>them? Kicks a hole in every single accepted theory of the relation
>of early English Romany to cant.
>
>Dunno what Debord's widow would make of it, but. I think _The
>Princes of Jargon_ was written before the Winchester Confessions surfaced.
>
>[There seems to be zilch overlap between terms derived from
>inflectional Romany as reflected in the Winchester Confessions, and
>contemporary <16thC> English cant. Which on the face of it is
>deeply counter-intuitive.]
>
>Mind you, I like it, as it sits well with my theory that
>Anglo-Romany was a trade-language which coexisted with inflectional Romany.
>
>Meep!!! }
>
>R.
>
>>Here's something that comes across loud and clear: whether or not
>>he's paraphrasing the book under review when he says that "Yiddish
>>and Middle Rhenish German are utterly distinct languages," he
>>apparently thinks it's so. This is palpably ridiculous--the grammar
>>and most of the vocabulary are identical, and it's possible to
>>navigate Germany using Yiddish carefully, avoiding Hebrew and
>>Slavic words. I watched my mother do this years ago.
>>
>>Mark
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