Browsing by Subject "Yiddish folksongs"

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    An analysis of loanwords in selected isiXhosa texts
    (2023) Futuse,Liziwe; Dowling, Tessa
    Loanwords are well researched in many of the world's languages, but there is a dearth of research into their occurrence and significance in isiXhosa. Previous research on isiXhosa borrowed words concentrates on contemporary speech, but this study focuses on written texts, drawing on sources from the 1800s to the present time. The words in this corpus are analysed in terms of their domains (including religion, politics, and lifestyle) in order to establish what prompted the borrowing. The preoccupations, political tensions, practicalities, motivations of prestige and novelties involved in isiXhosa contact with missionaries and settlers dominate the corpus domains, and this allows for an argument that places historical events as a key motivator for lexical innovation. It is clear from the corpus that while Afrikaans was the source language for many of the early borrowings, these were soon overtaken by English loanwords, while words from other indigenous languages hardly feature. This finding could support the argument that South Africa's Bantu languages were originally one language, and thus shared a common lexicon. In line with research findings on loanwords in other languages, I established that nouns made up the majority of borrowed words. This study provides the first extensive treatment of phonological equivalences in loanwords between the language pairs of Afrikaans and isiXhosa and English and isiXhosa. The changing phonetics of loanwords, as represented in the different orthographic representations, suggests subtle changes in their isiXhosa pronunciation: early writers assiduously adapted the borrowed words to the phonology of isiXhosa, which is evident in how they are spelled, while contemporary writers increasingly spell the borrowed words as written in the source language. It is instructive that the paucity of loanwords in the domain of nature would suggest that there is nothing in their natural universe that isiXhosa-speakers had not already discovered, identified and named long before they made contact with missionaries and settlers. Finally, the fact that today's isiXhosa-speakers might be borrowing more words from English does not mean that the language is getting weaker, but rather that its speakers are expanding their linguistic repertoires to encompass subtle differences in meaning
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    Jewish folksong: an ethnomusicological study of categories of Yiddish folksongs within the context of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, from the nineteenth century up to World War II, including partisan songs, and songs of the Holocaust and resistance
    (1988) Singer, Sara Fay; Hansen, Deirdre Doris
    This study sets out to provide a cultural analysis of 56 Yiddish folksongs which are representative of some of the bestknown folksong styles among Ashkenazi Jews. Actual research was carried out over two years, mainly in Cape Town, with short visits abroad to the United Kingdom, and to Israel. The research procedure is based on Gerhard Kubik's 'integrated-study' approach. Accordingly, I approached my subject from several perspectives: historical, sociological, musicological, literary, and linguistic - and researched it on an emic basis. The research material was obtained from a number of sources - from oral information, literature, song collections and sound recordings, and from personal observation. The aim of this study is: (i) to identify intrinsic structural and stylistic features within Yiddish folksongs; (ii) to investigate significant traits concerning their performance practice in their original social contexts, and in presently 'controlled' contexts. The study design is as follows: there are two main parts, Part I and Part II. Part I comprises three chapters: ( i) Chapter 1 is an Introduction giving a historical and socio-cultural overview of Ashkenazi folksong, and the work of pioneer folksong investigators; Chapter 2 surveys historical and political factors which have been largely responsible for the great diversity of Jewish musical traditions, and delineates the various Jewish communities living in geographically defined areas today. The need for comparative studies spanning these different communities is stressed; Chapter 3 is concerned with the history of the Yiddish language, its emergence and development as a spoken language (with dialects), and as a literary language with a standardized orthography; (ii) Part II comprises two chapters: Chapter 1 explains the reasons for my adoption of certain research. procedures, and pays particular attention to the socio-cultural background and content of the songs, and their arrangement according to genre. Each song is handled as a distinct item, and transcriptions and texts of all the songs appear at, or near the end of, each genre description. Recorded performances of 27 of the 56 songs appear on a cassette tape which accompanies this study; their texts and music appear on yellow pages, to make for easy location. Chapter 2 concentrates on the purely musicological aspects of the songs. Particular attention is drawn to the way in which songs of 1 shtetl' (village/ small town) origin have been transformed to accommodate the necessities of their mass distribution. A Summary concludes this study, in which attention is also drawn to the 1 recreative 1 aspects of Yiddish folksongs, which persist despite the impact of the huge Jewish folklore industry, and the mass media. A plea is made for a synchronic 'context sensitive' approach to the study of CURRENT performances of Yiddish music, in different performance environments, along the lines advanced by ethnomusicologist Regula Burckhardt Qureshi (1987). This study contains a Preface, and a Glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terminology, a Bibliography and a Discography