104-456: Børge Rosenbaum ( Yiddish : בורגע ראזענבוים ; 3 January 1909 – 23 December 2000), known professionally as Victor Borge ( / ˈ b ɔːr ɡ ə / BOR -gə ), was a Danish and American actor, comedian, and pianist who achieved great popularity in radio and television in both North America and Europe. His blend of music and comedy earned him the nicknames "The Clown Prince of Denmark," "The Unmelancholy Dane," and "The Great Dane." Victor Borge
208-587: A classical concert pianist, he started his now-famous stand-up act with the signature blend of piano music and jokes. He married the American Elsie Chilton in 1933, the same year he debuted with his revue acts. Borge started touring extensively in Europe, where he began telling anti- Nazi jokes. When the German armed forces occupied Denmark on 9 April 1940, during World War II , Borge was playing
312-545: A collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah . The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita 's Bovo-Bukh ( בָּבָֿא-בּוך ), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the title Bovo d'Antona ). Levita,
416-484: A combination of words that strictly belong to Korean and words that are loanwords from Chinese. Due to Chinese being pronounced with varying tones and Korean's removal of those tones, and because the modern Korean writing system, Hangeul, has a more finite number of phonemes than, for example, Latin-derived alphabets such as that of English, there are many homonyms with both the same spelling and pronunciation. For example There are heterographs, but far fewer, contrary to
520-501: A concert in neutral Sweden and decided to go to Finland. He traveled to America on the United States Army transport American Legion , the last neutral ship to make it out of Petsamo , Finland, and arrived 28 August 1940, with only $ 20 (about $ 435 today), with $ 3 going to the customs fee. Disguised as a sailor, Borge returned to Denmark once during the occupation to visit his dying mother. Even though Borge did not speak
624-556: A concert in Denmark. "It was just his time to go," Frederikke Borge said. "He's been missing my mother terribly." (His wife had died only three months earlier.) Barely a week earlier he had recorded what would be his final televised interview with Danish television, later aired on New Year's Eve. In a poetic coincidence, when asked where he would be spending his Christmas and New Year's, Borge responded "somewhere completely different". In accordance with Borge's wishes, his connection to both
728-580: A different tone can produce an entirely different word altogether. If tones are included, the number of unique syllables in Mandarin increases to at least 1,522. However, even with tones, Mandarin retains a very large amount of homophones. Yì , for example, has at least 125 homophones, and it is the pronunciation used for Chinese characters such as 义, 意, 易, 亿, 议, 一, and 已. There are even place names in China that have identical pronunciations, aside for
832-487: A few are triples like Most are couples like lehren (to teach) – leeren (to empty). Although Spanish has far fewer homophones than English, they are far from being non-existent. Some are homonyms, such as basta , which can either mean 'enough' or 'coarse', and some exist because of homophonous letters. For example, the letters b and v are pronounced exactly alike, so the words basta (coarse) and vasta (vast) are pronounced identically. Other homonyms are spelled
936-449: A harmonically similar pop or jazz tune, such as Cole Porter 's " Night and Day " or " Happy Birthday to You ". One of Borge's other famous routines was "Phonetic Punctuation," in which he read a passage from a book and added exaggerated sound effects to stand for most of the main punctuation marks, such as periods, commas, and exclamation marks. Another is his "Inflationary Language", in which he added one to every number or homophone of
1040-607: A larger amount of possible syllables so that words sounded more distinct from each other. Scholars also believe that Old Chinese had no phonemic tones, but tones emerged in Middle Chinese to replace sounds that were lost from Old Chinese. Since words in Old Chinese sounded more distinct from each other at this time, it explains why many words in Classical Chinese consisted of only one syllable. For example,
1144-492: A lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries. There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects . The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts. Uvular As in
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#17328007587221248-437: A number in the words he spoke. For example: "once upon a time" becomes "twice upon a time", "wonderful" becomes "twoderful", "forehead" becomes "fivehead", "anyone for tennis" becomes "anytwo five elevennis", "I ate a tenderloin with my fork, and so on and so forth" becomes "I nined an elevenderloin with my fivek, and so on and so fifth". Borge used physical and visual elements in his live and televised performances. He would play
1352-741: A piano was not there – Fffftttt! " After the routine, the spotlight would rest on Mulvey, and she would sing a serious number with Borge accompanying in the background. Borge appeared on Toast of the Town hosted by Ed Sullivan several times during 1948. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States the same year. He started the Comedy in Music show at John Golden Theatre in New York City on 2 October 1953. Comedy in Music became
1456-484: A press release by the Danish production company M&M Productions, both a television series and cinematic film about the life of Borge were foreseen to be filmed in 2018. Yiddish language Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit. ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit. ' Judeo-German ' )
1560-449: A second septet). The questionable octet is: Other than the common words raise , rays , and race this octet includes The inclusion of "race" in the octet above is questionable, since its pronunciation differs from the other words on the list (ending with /s/ instead of /z/). If proper names are included, then a possible nonet would be: The Portuguese language has one of the highest numbers of homophones and consequently homographs in
1664-420: A strange-sounding piano tune from sheet music, looking increasingly confused; turning the sheet upside down or sideways, he would then play the actual tune, flashing a joyful smile of accomplishment to the audience (he had, at first, been literally playing the tune upside down or sideways). When his energetic playing of another song would cause him to fall off the piano bench, he would open the seat lid, take out
1768-496: A vowel, and a nasal or retroflex consonant in respective order), there are only a little over 400 possible unique syllables that can be produced, compared to over 15,831 in the English language. Chinese has an entire genre of poems taking advantage of the large amount of homophones called one-syllable articles , or poems where every single word in the poem is pronounced as the same syllable if tones are disregarded. An example
1872-619: A word of English upon arrival, he quickly managed to adapt his jokes to the American audience, learning English by watching movies. He took the name of Victor Borge and, in 1941, he started on Rudy Vallee 's radio show. He was hired soon after by Bing Crosby for his Kraft Music Hall programme. Borge quickly rose to fame, winning Best New Radio Performer of the Year in 1942 and earning favorable reviews for his performances at New York City's Roxy Theater and Capitol Theatre in 1943. Soon after
1976-417: Is kikō ( hiragana : きこう ), which is the pronunciation of at least 22 words (some quite rare or specialized, others common; all these examples are two-character compounds), including: Even some native Japanese words are homophones. For example, kami ( かみ ) is the pronunciation of the words The former two words are disambiguated from the latter two by pitch accent. The Korean language contains
2080-644: Is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557. Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh , and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה Tseno Ureno and
2184-475: Is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews . It originated in 9th century Central Europe , and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic ) and to some extent Aramaic . Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages . Yiddish has traditionally been written using
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#17328007587222288-407: Is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning or in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example rose (flower) and rose (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, as in rain , reign , and rein . The term homophone sometimes applies to units longer or shorter than words, for example a phrase, letter, or groups of letters which are pronounced
2392-487: Is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer ). Hebrew Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic Other Jewish diaspora languages Jewish folklore Jewish poetry By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe. By
2496-477: Is mistakenly placed before -ся in the present tense of the third person, while in others, on the contrary, Ь before -ся is missing in the infinitive form. It is estimated that there are approximately 4,500 to 4,800 possible syllables in Vietnamese, depending on the dialect. The exact number is difficult to calculate because there are significant differences in pronunciation among the dialects. For example,
2600-447: Is printed in Hebrew script.) According to a study by the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH), more than 40 printed Yiddish newspapers and magazines were published worldwide in 2024, and the trend is rising. The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch , i. e. "Moses German" —declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and
2704-511: Is pronounced [haɡˈdɔmɜ] . The vowel phonemes of Standard Yiddish are: In addition, the sonorants /l/ and /n/ can function as syllable nuclei : [m] and [ŋ] appear as syllable nuclei as well, but only as allophones of /n/ , after bilabial consonants and dorsal consonants , respectively. The syllabic sonorants are always unstressed. Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in
2808-588: Is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymos and Yiddish Todres ). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages , Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German , and from these groups
2912-544: Is the Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den . Like all Chinese languages, Mandarin uses phonemic tones to distinguish homophonic syllables; Mandarin has five tones. A famous example, Although all these words consist of the same string of consonants and vowels, the only way to distinguish each of these words audibly is by listening to which tone the word has, and as shown above, saying a consonant-vowel string using
3016-498: Is uncertain). An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script , from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino ,
3120-567: The Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. The 19th century Prussian-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz , for example, wrote that "the language of the Jews [in Poland] ... degenerat[ed] into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit." A Maskil (one who takes part in
3224-660: The Haskalah ) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages. – Osip Aronovich Rabinovich , in an article titled "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air, We Must Speak Its Language" in
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3328-600: The Hebrew alphabet . Prior to World War II , there were 11–13 million speakers. Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However,
3432-632: The High Holy Days ) and בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ , 'synagogue' (read in Yiddish as beis hakneses ) – had been included. The niqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation. Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in
3536-586: The Middle High German diphthong ei and long vowel î to /aɪ/ , Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German /ɔʏ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong öu and the long vowel iu , which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterparts ei and î , respectively. Lastly, the Standard German /aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong ou and
3640-536: The Odessan journal Рассвет (dawn), 1861. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew , Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement ). Notable Yiddish writers of
3744-821: The Order of the Falcon (Iceland). In 1986, he was a recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in recognition of his contributions to the improvement of American society. Victor Borge Hall, located in Scandinavia House in New York City, was named in Borge's honor in 2000, as was Victor Borges Plads ("Victor Borge Square") in Copenhagen in 2002. In 2009, a statue celebrating Borge's centennial
3848-627: The Russian language is associated in some cases with the phenomenon of devoicing of consonants at the end of words and before another consonant sound, in other cases with the reduction of vowels in an unstressed position. Examples include: поро г — п о ро к — п а рок, лу г — лу к , пло д — пло т , ту ш — ту шь , падё ж — падё шь , ба л — ба лл , ко сн ый — ко стн ый, пр е дать — пр и дать, к о мпания — к а мпания, к о сатка — к а сатка, прив и дение — прив е дение, ко т — ко д , пру т — пру д , т и трация — т е трация, компл и мент — компл е мент. Also,
3952-484: The Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian , Polish , and Ukrainian ), but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration ; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation , so that, for example, זאָגט /zɔɡt/ ('says') is pronounced [zɔkt] and הקדמה /hakˈdɔmɜ/ ('foreword')
4056-753: The Standard Mandarin word 狮子( shīzi , meaning "lion") was simply 狮 ( shī ) in Classical Chinese, and the Standard Mandarin word 教育 ( jiàoyù, "education") was simply 教 ( jiào ) in Classical Chinese. Since many Chinese words became homophonic over the centuries, it became difficult to distinguish words when listening to documents written in Classical Chinese being read aloud. One-syllable articles like those mentioned above are evidence for this. For this reason, many one-syllable words from Classical Chinese became two-syllable words, like
4160-565: The high medieval period , their area of settlement, centered on the Rhineland ( Mainz ) and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer ), came to be known as Ashkenaz , originally a term used of Scythia , and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In the medieval Hebrew of Rashi (d. 1105), Ashkenaz becomes a term for Germany, and אשכּנזי Ashkenazi for the Jews settling in this area. Ashkenaz bordered on
4264-431: The תחנות Tkhines . One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln , whose memoirs are still in print. The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש loshn-koydesh , and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish
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4368-655: The 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO . In Vilnius , there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish. Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that
4472-487: The 1960s, Leonid Hambro , was also a well-known concert pianist. In 1968, classical pianist Şahan Arzruni joined him as his straight man, performing together on one piano a version of Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody , considered a musical-comedic classic. Borge performed a version of the routine with Rowlf the Dog on Season 4 of The Muppet Show . He also enjoyed interacting with the audience. Seeing an interested person in
4576-658: The 1980s, an attempt was made to promote a distinctive term for same-sounding multiple words or phrases, by referring to them as "oronyms", but the term oronym was already well established in linguistics as an onomastic designation for a class of toponymic features (names of mountains, hills, etc.), the alternative use of the same term was not well accepted in scholarly literature. There are online lists of multinyms. In English, concerning groups of homophones (excluding proper nouns), there are approximately 88 triplets, 24 quadruplets, 2 quintuplets, 1 sextet, 1 septet, and 1 questionable octet (possibly
4680-592: The Ashkenazi community took shape. Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the Rhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into
4784-499: The Chinese language is that in non-rap songs, tones are disregarded in favor of maintaining melody in the song. While in most cases, the lack of phonemic tones in music does not cause confusion among native speakers, there are instances where puns may arise. Subtitles in Chinese characters are usually displayed on music videos and in songs sung on movies and TV shows to disambiguate the song's lyrics. The presence of homophones in
4888-555: The Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels. Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o 11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish quality (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and
4992-600: The United States and Denmark was marked by having part of his ashes interred at Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich, with a replica of the iconic Danish statue The Little Mermaid sitting on a large rock at the grave site, and the other part in Western Jewish Cemetery ( Mosaisk Vestre Begravelsesplads ), in Copenhagen . Borge received an honorary degree from Trinity College Connecticut in 1997. Over
5096-534: The age of 83 in September 2000. Borge had five children (who occasionally performed with him): Ronald Borge and Janet Crowle (adopted) with Elsie Chilton, and Sanna Feirstein, Victor Bernhard (Vebe) Jr., and Frederikke (Rikke) Borge with Sarabel. On 23 December 2000, Borge died in Greenwich, Connecticut , at the age of 91, after 75 years of entertaining. He died peacefully in his sleep a day after returning from
5200-598: The area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews , who ranged into southern France . Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations. Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been Aramaic ,
5304-913: The autobiography Smilet er den korteste afstand ("The Smile is the Shortest Distance") with Niels-Jørgen Kaiser. In 1979 Borge founded the American Piano Awards (then called the Beethoven Foundation) with Julius Bloom and Anthony P. Habig. American Piano Awards now produces two major biennial piano competitions: the Classical Fellowship Awards and the Jazz Fellowship Awards. He married his first wife, Elsie Chilton, in 1933. After divorcing Elsie, he married Sarabel Sanna Scraper in 1953, and they stayed married until her death at
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#17328007587225408-599: The award, he was offered film roles with stars such as Frank Sinatra (in Higher and Higher ). While hosting The Victor Borge Show on NBC beginning in 1946, he developed many of his trademarks, including repeatedly announcing his intent to play a piece but getting "distracted" by something or other, making comments about the audience, or discussing the usefulness of Chopin 's " Minute Waltz " as an egg timer. He would also start out with some well-known classical piece like Beethoven 's " Moonlight Sonata " and suddenly move into
5512-426: The difference in tone. For example, there are two neighboring provinces with nearly identical names, Shanxi (山西) and Shaanxi (陕西) Province. The only difference in pronunciation between the two names are the tone in the first syllable (Shanxi is pronounced Shānxī whereas Shaanxi is pronounced Shǎnxī ) . As most languages exclude the tone diacritics when transcribing Chinese place names into their own languages,
5616-435: The distinction (a minimal pair ) are homophonous in the accent with the merger. Some examples from English are: Wordplay is particularly common in English because the multiplicity of linguistic influences offers considerable complication in spelling and meaning and pronunciation compared with other languages. Malapropisms , which often create a similar comic effect, are usually near-homophones. See also Eggcorn . During
5720-556: The earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written פּאַריז און װיענע Pariz un Viene ( Paris and Vienna ). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט Vidvilt (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as Kinig Artus Hof , an adaptation of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Grafenberg . Another significant writer
5824-532: The end of the high medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Worms machzor (a Hebrew prayer book). This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר , makhazor (prayerbook for
5928-445: The extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas . The term "Yiddish"
6032-403: The front row, he would ask them, "Do you like good music?" or "Do you care for piano music?" After an affirmative answer, Borge would take a piece of sheet music from his piano and say, "Here is some", and hand it over. After the audience's laughter died down, he would say, "That'll be $ 1.95" (or whatever the current price might be). He would then ask whether the audience member could read music; if
6136-505: The graphemes and digraphs "d", "gi", and "r" are all pronounced /z/ in the Hanoi dialect, so the words dao (knife), giao (delivery), and rao (advertise) are all pronounced /zaw˧/. In Saigon dialect, however, the graphemes and digraphs "d", "gi", and "v" are all pronounced /j/, so the words dao (knife), giao (delivery), and vao (enter) are all pronounced /jaw˧/. Pairs of words that are homophones in one dialect may not be homophones in
6240-478: The infinitive and the present (or simple future) tense of the third person of the same verb are often pronounced the same way (in writing they differ in the presence or absence of the letter Ь (soft sign) before the postfix -ся): (надо) решиться — (он) решится, (хочу) строиться — (дом) строится, (металл может) гнуться — (деревья) гнутся, (должен) вернуться — (они) вернутся. This often leads to incorrect spelling of reflexive verbs ending with -ться/-тся: in some cases, Ь
6344-515: The influence of homophones can be seen everywhere, from CCTV evening sketch programmes, folk art performances and popular folk life. In recent years, receiving the influence of Internet pop culture, young people have invented more new and popular homophones. Homophones even play a major role in daily life throughout China, including Spring Festival traditions, which gifts to give (and not give), political criticism, texting, and many other aspects of people's lives. Another complication that arises within
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#17328007587226448-431: The language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata , and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base. The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in
6552-590: The late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant , which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains
6656-738: The late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim ; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem , whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער ( Tevye der milkhiker , " Tevye the Dairyman") inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof ; and Isaac Leib Peretz . In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish
6760-411: The latter of which varies between /ˈɡe:stə/ and /ˈɡɛstə/ and by a pair like Stiel (handle, stalk) – Stil (style), the latter of which varies between /ʃtiːl/ and /stiːl/. Besides websites that offer extensive lists of German homophones, there are others which provide numerous sentences with various types of homophones. In the German language homophones occur in more than 200 instances. Of these,
6864-522: The limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing from German , Polish and Russian . Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic , from Hebrew , from Aramaic and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, it contributed to English – American . [sic] Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It
6968-518: The long vowel û , but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as /ɔɪ/ , the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut , such as in forming plurals: The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties,
7072-963: The longest running one-man show in the history of theater with 849 performances when it closed on 21 January 1956, a feat which placed it in the Guinness Book of World Records . Continuing his success with tours and shows, Borge played with and conducted orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra , the New York Philharmonic and London Philharmonic . He appeared with the Cleveland Opera Company in Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1979 and at London's Royal Opera House Covent Garden in Bizet's Carmen in 1986. Always modest, he felt honored when he
7176-419: The member said yes, he would ask a higher price. If he got no response from the audience after a joke, he would often add "… when this ovation has died down, of course." The delayed punchline to handing the person the sheet music would come when he would reach the end of a number and begin playing the penultimate notes over and over, with a puzzled look. He would then go back to the person in the audience, retrieve
7280-429: The mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language. Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had
7384-586: The most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today. Modern Yiddish has two major forms : Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by
7488-478: The most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms." The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to
7592-461: The number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim ", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of
7696-443: The number of homophones varies accordingly. Regional variation is especially common in words that exhibit the long vowels ä and e . According to the well-known dictionary Duden , these vowels should be distinguished as /ɛ:/ and /e:/, but this is not always the case, so that words like Ähre (ear of corn) and Ehre (honor) may or may not be homophones. Individual variation is shown by a pair like Gäste (guests) – Geste (gesture),
7800-490: The only way to visually distinguish the two names is to write Shaanxi in Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization . Otherwise, nearly all other spellings of placenames in mainland China are spelled using Hanyu Pinyin romanization. Many scholars believe that the Chinese language did not always have such a large number of homophones and that the phonological structure of Chinese syllables was once more complex, which allowed for
7904-608: The orchestra's history. Victor Borge received numerous awards and honors during the course of his career. Borge received Kennedy Center Honors in 1999. He was decorated with badges of chivalric orders by the five Nordic countries, receiving the Order of the Dannebrog (Denmark), Order of Vasa (Sweden), in 1973 the Knight First Class of the Order of St. Olav (Norway), Order of the White Rose of Finland , and
8008-623: The other. For example, the words sắc (sharp) and xắc (dice) are both pronounced /săk˧˥/ in Hanoi dialect, but pronounced /ʂăk˧˥/ and /săk˧˥/ in Saigon dialect respectively. Pseudo-homophones are pseudowords that are phonetically identical to a word. For example, groan/grone and crane/crain are pseudo-homophone pairs, whereas plane/plain is a homophone pair since both letter strings are recognised words. Both types of pairs are used in lexical decision tasks to investigate word recognition . Homophones, specifically heterographs, where one spelling
8112-665: The reader (as in crossword puzzles ) or to suggest multiple meanings. The last usage is common in poetry and creative literature . An example of this is seen in Dylan Thomas 's radio play Under Milk Wood : "The shops in mourning" where mourning can be heard as mourning or morning . Another vivid example is Thomas Hood 's use of birth and berth as well as told and toll'd (tolled) in his poem "Faithless Sally Brown": In some accents , various sounds have merged in that they are no longer distinctive, and thus words that differ only by those sounds in an accent that maintains
8216-665: The region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance. In Max Weinreich 's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic , or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia (later known in Yiddish as Loter ) extending over parts of Germany and France. There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in
8320-555: The same as a counterpart. Any unit with this property is said to be homophonous ( / h ə ˈ m ɒ f ən ə s / ). Homophones that are spelled the same are both homographs and homonyms . For example, the word read , in "He is well read " and in "Yesterday, I read that book". Homophones that are spelled differently are also called heterographs , e.g. to , too , and two . "Homophone" derives from Greek homo- (ὁμο‑), "same", and phōnḗ (φωνή), "voice, utterance". Homophones are often used to create puns and to deceive
8424-882: The same, but mean different things in different genders. For example, the masculine noun el capital means 'capital' as in 'money', but the feminine noun la capital means 'capital city'. There are many homophones in Japanese, due to the use of Sino-Japanese vocabulary , where borrowed words and morphemes from Chinese are widely used in Japanese, but many sound differences, such as the original words' tones , are lost. These are to some extent disambiguated via Japanese pitch accent (i.e. 日本 vs. 二本 , both pronounced nihon , but with different pitches), or from context, but many of these words are primarily or almost exclusively used in writing, where they are easily distinguished as they are written with different kanji ; others are used for puns, which are frequent in Japanese. An extreme example
8528-415: The second refers to quantity or diphthongization (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25). Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German ; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with
8632-400: The sheet music, tear off a piece of it, stick it on the piano, and play the last couple of notes from it. Making fun of modern theater, he would sometimes begin a performance by asking if there were any children in the audience. There always were, of course. He would sternly order them out, then say, "We do have some children in here; that means I can't do the second half in the nude. I'll wear
8736-472: The tendency in English. For example, Using hanja ( 한자 ; 漢字 ), which are Chinese characters , such words are written differently. As in other languages, Korean homonyms can be used to make puns. The context in which the word is used indicates which meaning is intended by the speaker or writer. Due to phonological constraints in Mandarin syllables (as Mandarin only allows for an initial consonant,
8840-432: The tie (pause). The long one (pause). The very long one, yes." In his stage shows in later years, he would include a segment with opera singer Marylyn Mulvey. She would try to sing an aria, and he would react and interrupt, with such antics as falling off the bench in "surprise" when she hit a high note. He would also remind her repeatedly not to rest her hand on the piano, telling her that if she got used to it, "and one day
8944-407: The two ends of an automotive seat belt, and buckle himself onto the bench, "for safety". Conducting an orchestra, he might stop and order a violinist who had played a sour note to get off the stage, then resume the performance and have the other members of the section move up to fill the empty seat while they were still playing: from off stage would come the sound of a gunshot. His musical sidekick in
9048-636: The two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East. The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in The Forward argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on
9152-583: The vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia . The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek -speakers, and this
9256-745: The vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged and so the phonemic distinction has remained. There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddish deaffricates the Middle High German voiceless labiodental affricate /pf/ to /f/ initially (as in פֿונט funt , but this pronunciation is also quasi-standard throughout northern and central Germany); /pf/ surfaces as an unshifted /p/ medially or finally (as in עפּל /ɛpl/ and קאָפּ /kɔp/ ). Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not Northern Standard German. Homophone A homophone ( / ˈ h ɒ m ə f oʊ n , ˈ h oʊ m ə -/ )
9360-415: The words mentioned in the previous paragraph. Even with the existence of two- or two-syllable words, however, there are even multisyllabic homophones. And there are also a lot of harmonic words. The cultural phenomenon brought about by such linguistic characteristics is that from ancient times to the present day, people have been keen to play games and jokes with homophonic and harmonic words. In modern life,
9464-608: The work of Weinreich and his challengers alike." Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as " Judeo-Sorbian " (a proposed West Slavic language ) that had been relexified by High German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Yiddish orthography developed towards
9568-586: The world (for a total of 600,000). The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז ( loshn-ashknaz , "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש ( taytsh ), a variant of tiutsch , the contemporary name for Middle High German . Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון ( mame-loshn , lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש ( loshn koydesh , "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become
9672-665: The world. Homophonic words include: "Jogo" - I throw, "Jogo" - I play, "Jogo" - Match (Sports), and "Jogo" - Game (This last one is controversial, with dialects like Paulistano considering it non-homophonic, while dialects like Caipira consider it only homophonic, noting that these are two Brazilian dialects.) For example, "Cinto" is a homophone for 9 other words, totalizing 10.(Oxford Languages) Although they are homophones, most of them are also homographs. There are many homophones in present-day standard German. As in other languages, however, there exists regional and/or individual variation in certain groups of words or in single words, so that
9776-538: The years, he was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Butler University in 1970, Dana College in 1976 and the University of Connecticut in 1983. In addition, he was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Luther College in 1985. When the Royal Danish Orchestra celebrated its 550th anniversary in 1998, Borge was appointed an honorary member — at that time one of only ten in
9880-461: The −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series. In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs . All varieties of Yiddish lack the German front rounded vowels /œ, øː/ and /ʏ, yː/ , having merged them with /ɛ, e:/ and /ɪ, i:/ , respectively. Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged
9984-520: Was ווײַבערטײַטש ( vaybertaytsh , 'women's taytsh ' , shown in the heading and fourth column in the Shemot Devarim ), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט mesheyt or מאַשקעט mashket —the construction
10088-520: Was a guest star during the fourth season of The Muppet Show . Victor Borge continued to tour until his last days, performing up to 60 times per year when he was 90 years old. His microphone of choice since circa 1982 was the Shure SM59. Borge made several appearances on the TV show What's My Line? , both as a celebrity panelist and as a contestant with the occupation "poultry farmer". (The latter
10192-404: Was born Børge Rosenbaum on 3 January 1909 in Copenhagen, Denmark , into an Ashkenazi Jewish family. His parents, Bernhard and Frederikke (née Lichtinger) Rosenbaum, were both musicians: his father a violist in the Royal Danish Orchestra , and his mother a pianist. Borge began piano lessons at the age of two, and it was soon apparent that he was a prodigy. He gave his first piano recital when he
10296-550: Was eight years old, and in 1918 was awarded a full scholarship at the Royal Danish Academy of Music , studying under Olivo Krause . Later on, he was taught by Victor Schiøler , Liszt 's student Frederic Lamond , and Busoni 's pupil Egon Petri . Borge played his first major concert in 1926 at the Danish Odd Fellow Palæet ( The Odd Fellow's Lodge building ) concert hall. After a few years as
10400-470: Was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of the official languages of the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic . Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland ) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to
10504-401: Was erected on the square. Asteroid (5634) Victorborge is named in his honor. From 23 January to 9 May 2009, the life of Borge was celebrated by The American-Scandinavian Foundation with Victor Borge: A Centennial Celebration. On 14 March 2009, a television special about his life, 100 Years of Music and Laughter , aired on PBS . On 7 February 2017, it was reported that, according to
10608-494: Was invited to conduct the Royal Danish Orchestra at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1992. His later television appearances included his "Phonetic Punctuation" routine on The Electric Company in a filmed sketch. He would also use this sketch on The Electric Company ' s subsequent LP record, during its "Punctuation" song. In addition, he appeared several times on Sesame Street , and he
10712-525: Was not a comedy routine: as a business venture, Borge raised and popularized Rock Cornish game hens , starting in the 1950s.) Borge helped start several trust funds, including the Thanks to Scandinavia Fund, which was started in dedication to those who helped the Jews escape the German persecution during the war. Aside from his musical work, Borge wrote three books: My Favorite Intermissions and My Favorite Comedies in Music (both with Robert Sherman ), and
10816-503: Was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer , its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power. – Paul Johnson , A History of the Jews (1988) Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to
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