From Ilan Pappe’s The Idea of Israel (p. 199):
In fact, the Mizrachi Jews had not only lost their Arabic or French; they also lost their ability to speak Hebrew in an accent that could capture the similarities among the Semitic languages, especially the closeness of Arabic to Hebrew. This loss is beautifully expressed in a poem by Sami Shalom Chetrit:
On the way to ‘Ayn Harod [a veteran Zionist settlement] [N.b.: I have emended the incorrect ’ in the text to the standard/academic ‘; note also that the other bracketed remarks in this blockquote are in the original text -LH]
l lost my trilled resh [the letter ‘r’ in Hebrew].
Afterwards I didn’t feel the loss of my guttural ‘ayn
And the breathy het [the letter ‘h’ in Hebrew)
I inherited from my father
Who himself picked it up
On his way to the Land.
The rest of the poem can be found here:
On the way to ‘Ayn Harod
I lost my ‘ayin
I didn’t really lose it –
Guess just swalled it.
Ruth Tsoffar explains the odd “swalled it” thus (in Life in Citations: Biblical Narratives and Contemporary Hebrew Culture): “We see the devastating effects of this whitewashing even in the structure of the poem: bala’ati (swallowed) becomes balati (swalled).” And the whole thing is in Hebrew here:
בַּדֶּרֶךְ לְעֵין חֲרוֹד
אָבְדָה לִי הָרֵי”שׁ.אַחַר כְּבָר לֹא חַשְׁתִּי
בְּאָבְדַּן הָעַיִ”ן
וְאֶת הַחֵי”ת הַחִכִּית
מֵאָבִי כָּךְ יָרַשְׁתִּי
שֶׁרְכָשָׁהּ בְּעַצְמוֹ בַּדֶּרֶךְ לְאַ”י.בַּדֶּרֶךְ לְעֵין חֲרוֹד
אָבְדָה לִי הָעַיִ”ן.
לֹא מַמָּשׁ אָבְדָה,
נִרְאָה כִּי בָּלַתִּי אוֹתָהּ.
Thanks, mab!
But why change the Hebrew construction when there is an English equivalent readily available? I think אָבְדָה לִי הָרֵי”שׁ would be better rendered (both in sense and in feeling) by “the resh was lost to me”, and אָבְדָה לִי הָעַיִ”ן by “the ‘ayin was lost to me” — there is a sense of despondency and lack of agency in the Hebrew that “I lost the resh” does not convey. The poet could have said “אבדתי את הָרֵי”שׁ”, but didn’t, after all. Beautiful poem, though. Thanks!
I agree, and you’re welcome!
a veteran Zionist settlement
Ein-Harod (Ashk. [ʔei̯n xaʀod], Seph. [ʕei̯n ħarod]) is one of the founding kibbutzim. As Tsoffar explains, the kibbutzim movement is strongly associated with Ashkenazim. Pappe’s phrasing is anti-Zionist boilerplate, which is fine in some contexts, but here it loses the relevant significance. BTW Tsoffar says that its lands were bought from Palestinian farmers, but that is not so: they were bought from under them, i.e. bought from the absentee landlords, and the tenant farmers were evicted.
That said, Chetrit never lived in Ein Harod (he was born and has lived in Ashdod.) He might have picked Ein Harod only because it contains the three consonants which most exemplify the difference between the two accents, not so much as a historical symbol. The whole poem, despite its serious message, is fun, in text and form, which neither Pappe nor Tsoffar get across.
This is my “Ashkenazi” rendering (apology to rozele), or anyway a guess at how it would be read. Word glosses are approximate, for easier reading.
בַּדֶּרֶךְ לְעֵין חֲרוֹד
badérex leʼéin xaród
on-the-way to-Ein Harod
On the way to Ein Harod
אָבְדָה לִי הָרֵי״שׁ
ʼavdá li haréiš
was.lost to.me the-resh
I lost the resh
resh means ‘head’ in Aramaic (רֹאשׁ roš in Hebrew; whence the shape of the letter in the old alphabet). That could be a learned joke—it explains the next two lines.
אַחַר כְּבָר לֹא חַשְׁתִּי
axár kvar lo xášti
after already not I.felt
Afterwards I didn’t feel
בְּאָבְדַּן הָעַיִ״ן
beʼovdán haʽáyin
conj-loss the-ʽayin
The loss of the the ʽayin
ʽayin is the letter in question (ʕ~ʔ), also ‘eye’ (see above), and also ‘spring (of water)’, as in the name of the kibbutz.
וְאֶת הַחֵי״ת הַחִכִּית
veʼet haxéit haxikít
and-acc the-héth the-palatal
and the palatal heth
Of course, technically [x] is velar, but this is poetry, not linguistics. He’s mocking the sound, as being so far away from the pharyngeal [ħ], but mainly he alliterates the last two words.
מֵאָבִי כָּךְ יָרַשְׁתִּי
meʼaví kax yarášti
from-my.father thus I.inherited
I inherited from my father
I think kax ‘thus’ was added just to scan better. The line rhymes with the third previous one.
שֶׁרְכָשָׁהּ בְּעַצְמוֹ בַּדֶּרֶךְ לְאַ״י.
šerexašá beʼatsmó badérex leʼay
that-he.acquired.it by.himself on.the-way to-Palestine
That he got by himself on the way to Palestine.
א״י
is an acronym for אֶרֶץ־יִשְׂרָאֵל erets yisraʼel lit. ‘Land of Israel’. That is the standard Hebrew name for mandatory Palestine (which in English is referred to as Palestine, and political hijinks ensue.) Vowels are usually inserted into acronyms to make them pronounceable as words, but never into this one. Chetrit did it to (near-)rhyme ʔay with ʕayin — or rather ʔayin. He’s being playful here.
בַּדֶּרֶךְ לְעֵין חֲרוֹד
badérex leʼéin xaród
on-the-way to-Ein Harod
On the way to Ein Harod
אָבְדָה לִי הָעַיִ״ן.
ʼavdá li haʽáyin
was.lost to.me the-ʽayin
I lost the ʽayin
לֹא מַמָּשׁ אָבְדָה,
lo mamáš avdá
not actually was.lost
It wasn’t really lost
נִרְאָה כִּי בָּלַתִּי אוֹתָהּ.
nirʼé ki baláti ʼotá
it.seems that I.swallowed it.acc
Seems that I swallowed it.
The joke here, as they say, is בָּלַעְתִּי balaʕti became baláʔti > baláːti > baláti. That is the standard pronunciation in “Ashkenazi” Hebrew, though in careful speech the vowel may still be long. Plus, a pharyngeal sound is swallowed, I suppose, when it becomes glottal.
I didn’t enjoy reading either Pappe or Tsoffar. For Pappe, everything must lead to his own political message. It’s a shame, because Chetrit has his own well-considered ideas about Israeli society, Palestinian society, and the role of Mizrahim in both. Then Tsoffar buries the joy of the poem in academese, and adds invented meanings. In particular, her reading of ʔein ħarod as ‘naught’ or such (makes no sense here) plus ‘loss and defeat’ (huh? ħarod means no such thing. It’s not even a word. The root ħrd means ‘fear, worry’.)
Eduardo: I see your point, but I feel that ‘despondency’ is a bit strong. Also, this construction is more common in literary language, fitting with the vocabulary and the syntax of the rest of the poem. Also it is shorter: ʼavdá li has three syllables, ʼibád(e)ti ʼet is 4 or 5 syllables, which would require reworking the whole poem with a different metre.
Correction: Chetrit was born in Morocco, and emigrated to Israel when he was 3.
Another correction, after an interview with the charming Chetrit, here (in Hebrew). He did go to Ein Harod as a youth, and he discusses how he was excited to be there, but later realized that as he was enjoying that privileged place, he was not of it. He does, BTW, still use the trilled alveolar [r], not the dorsal one.
After a few years in France, you start to think of “Chetrit” as a name as obviously Jewish as “Greenberg”… The surname is also borne by a notable linguist writing on Moroccan Jewish languages, Joseph Chetrit.
Ironically, there seems to be a strong case that the Tiberian reading of Hebrew originally had a uvular r rather than a trill, matching the Arabic of modern Mosul.
Thanks for that very helpful analysis, Y!
Ein-Harod (Ashk. [ʔei̯n xaʀod], Seph. [ʕei̯n ħarod]) is one of the founding kibbutzim.
…which had in 1952 split on ideological grounds into Ein Harod (Ihud) and Ein Harod (Meuhad). Apparently the ideological split had since been mended, but the settlements remain distinct to this day.
TIL that Ein Harod is the site of the medieval battle of Ain Jalut. (The kibbutz name relates to a Biblical battle said to have also occurred on the same site, but apparently modern researchers dispute the identification.)
Worse yet: all the Hebrew I’ve heard (so mostly Israeli politicians in the news) has a uvular [χ] instead. The high frequency of [χ] is the easiest way to determine that what I’m hearing is Hebrew!
What is that case? The only argument I’ve seen, which doesn’t mean much, is that /r/ almost completely lacked a long counterpart – but both uvular trills and uvular fricatives can be lengthened as easily as any others.
…which had in 1952 split on ideological grounds into Ein Harod (Ihud) and Ein Harod (Meuhad).
I see now that Tsoffar mentions this split, though he dates it to 1953 and mixes up the parties involved. He also mentions the Palestinian village of “Eyn Jalud” [sic] but not the medieval battle, probably because it is irrelevant to his story.
What is that case?
Tiberian /r/ patterns with the uvulars in its effects changing neighbouring vowels to /a/.
That’s certainly compatible with a full-blown [ʁ], but apical [r] has had similar effects elsewhere. From Germanic alone: /ɛr/ > /ɑr/ in English (star, heart, hart and tons more), [ɪr] > [er] in Proto-Germanic, [ɑɪ̯r] > [ɛːr] in OHG, [ɪr] > [ɛr] in Gothic, complete merger of [er] into [ɛr] in at least parts of Bavarian…
Ilan Pappe
I looked him up in Wikipedia and was confused to find that he’s “Pappé” there, vs. “Pappe” in the book’s cover, colophon, and bibliography. The name is German and pronounced in two syllables with the stress on the second syllable, if I understand correctly. I’m guessing the diacritic on é may have appeared in Anglophone writing in order to signal the pronunciation, but I couldn’t find out whether that was ever his decision, or his preference; surely his publisher spelled it the way he wanted on the cover?
(Google Pronunciation is garbage, as usual: they pronounce it like the word “pap”, including a headshot and tagline “Israeli historian” to leave absolutely no doubt whose name they’re supposedly pronouncing, and of course ranking their own crappy product above all other results.)
The non-gemination thing is significant in the context of Tiberian Hebrew: the only other non-geminating consonants are pharyngeals and glottals, i.e. all the consonants with the furthest back places of articulation, so if r doesn’t geminate it was presumably also pretty far back. (Arabic, in contrast, allows gemination of all consonants including pharyngeals and glottals.)
In the post:
Y said:
On a superficial reading I took the brackets to be languagehat’s, but Y’s comment clued me in that they’re Pappe’s, and the Google Books link allowed for easy double-checking. If I’d been more attentive, I might have remembered that languagehat generally marks his own brackets and “sic”s with “-LH” when he quotes. Still, it might be helpful here to explain up front, “brackets in original”.
the odd “swalled it”
Who translated that into English? Chetrit himself?
For anyone else (like me) who never heard of him before: the Ch in Chetrit must be a French-based spelling, since it’s pronounced /ʃ/.
All I can say is that Pappe, with first-syllable stress, is “cardboard” in German. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a name – there’s a place called Pappenheim.
Clearly, then, it was the sound found in modern Danish – I’ve called it a valiant attempt at a pharyngeal trill.
all the Hebrew I’ve heard (so mostly Israeli politicians in the news) has a uvular [χ] instead.
Mine is definitely [x]. That said, the IPA doesn’t provide a separate symbol for backer [x], nor is the distinction part of textbook phonetic descriptions, and people sometimes describe it as a [χ].
Pappé is /pape/ פָּפֶּה. I thought there was an accent but neglected to check.
Ruth Tsoffar is ‘she’ (per her website).
uvular r rather than a trill, matching the Arabic of modern Mosul
Interesting! I had no idea.
The case for Tiberian uvular r also comes from fairly detailed contemporary phonetic descriptions. Khan (pp. 223–) is the state of the art statement. His summary is that Resh is a “(i) voiced advanced uvular trill [ʀ̟] or advanced uvular frictionless continuant [ʁ̟] and (ii) pharyngealized apico-alveolar trill [rˁ]”, the latter occurring in some specific environments including other apicals, presumably through assimilation.
That said, the textual evidence, including the niqqud, represents an older reading tradition than the Tiberian, not necessarily with the same phonology. Meloni argues for an earlier apical r.
Who translated that into English? Chetrit himself?
I was wondering too. He studied and taught in American universities, so he could have, but an anthology of his poems, in English, (selection here) was translated by others.
(Comment eaten.)
(Comment regurgitated.)
And, speaking of odd, is it “Guess just swalled it” (as quoted at the linked AuthorsDen page) or “Guess I just swalled it” (as quoted by Tsoffar)? Fortunately, the original appearance in Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing, ed. Ammiel Alcalay, is on the Internet Archive, and it’s “guess I just swalled it” there — with lowercase “guess”.
There are other translators credited in the book for other poems, but I don’t see a credit for this one; presumably Alcalay was the translator, as AuthorsDen says.
Tsoffar’s quotation also introduces other changes in spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and italicization from Alcalay’s book: e.g., she has Ein Harod where Alcalay has ʻAyn Harod; she capitalizes “way” two out of three times. And Pappe’s quotation left out the blank space between the second and third lines that divides the poem into three segments, not two. All no doubt by accident, but I think it’s unfortunate to have all these accidents in a poem that’s this short, and is *about* the erosion of details. (Insert obvious postmodernist chin-stroking about the instability of all language and the tentativeness of all translation)
Admittedly this is all superficial compared to Y’s exegesis on the original’s rhyme, near-rhyme, alliterations, and possible joke on resh/’head’, which the translator didn’t try to reproduce.
So the translator introduced “guttural” — an understandable choice for Anglophone audiences who might not know the letter. Obligatory “very guttural language the Hebrew.”
an anthology of his poems, in English
Published by Červená Barva Press (Somerville, Mass.), which means ‘red color’ in Czech, and it turns out barva is “from Middle High German varwe. Compare modern German Farbe, Dutch verf, Polish barwa, Polish farba.” Obvious once you know it, but the b- threw me.
I missed another reference: The Way to Ein Harod, a 1984 novel by Amos Oz, maybe the most famous Israeli novelist of his time, but who leaves me cold. The novel is a dystopia about a military takeover, the rebels end up in an enclave around Ein Harod, and finally there’s a time machine [!]. A 1990 movie based on the book starred, among others, Alessandra Mussolini [!!]
I found some recordings of Chetrit reading some of his poems (but not this one). Interestingly, he speaks with an Ashkenazi pronunciation (except for the r’s and perhaps some vowels), but uses the Moroccan with some or all of the poems.
I’m not sure why Alcalay or whoever writes ʻAyn. Ein =ʕei̯n is the correct Hebrew construct case of ʕayin ‘spring of’. ʻAyn would be the correct form in Arabic, I think, but the poem doesn’t talk about Arabic.
In Language Hat’s quote of Pappe quoting the poem, two of the lines appear as
On comparison to the page at Google Books, it appears that Language Hat has silently corrected Pappe’s ’ to the standard/academic ‘, which the translator used.* Was that on purpose? Aren’t silent emendations against your oath?
Pappe also misquotes the translator’s “my guttural ‘ayin” as “my guttural ’ayn”; the translator didn’t spell the name of the letter identically to the placename.
In many contexts this wouldn’t be a big deal, but in a discussion specifically about the history of this letter/sound and the loss of its distinction from aleph, it makes me wonder if Pappe really knows what he’s talking about. Is that unfair?
*I used right and left single quotes there; there are codepoints that are supposed to look like them that are letters, not punctuation, but I’m not sure if I’ll get them right myself, let alone if the browser will.
Was that on purpose? Aren’t silent emendations against your oath?
Yes, it was, and I had a slight qualm, but I decided that the positive of not misleading people about the sound outweighed the negative of not reproducing the source with perfect accuracy. Also, I’m retired, so technically speaking the oath is no longer enforceable — I do not have to fear the ceremony where my fellow editors beat me senseless with a copy of Webster’s Third and break my red pencil.
i’ve mostly seen pappé spelled/transliterated with aigu.
and, knowing his work, i’d certainly expect chetrit* to use an arabic-mode transliteration for עֵין rather than the conventional one from ivrit, especially in a piece that refers to ivrit’s erasure of mizrahi/sefardi ayin. he and alcalay re both interested in, and culturally/politically committed to, taking seriously the arab part of the arab jewish presence in israeli literature, both in works written in arabic and those in ivrit (as well as those in other languages). both would also be very aware that the name “ein harod” marks the zionist erasure of “‘ayn Jālūd”, the historical name of the spring in the valley of meggido / marj ibn amir, using a deeply dubious 19thC attribution of a biblical placename to lay claim to a site important to colonial military and resource-control strategies. to shout out another diasporist israeli jewish artist: choreographer hadar ahuvia’s wonderful “The Dances Are For Us” is partly rooted in that specific history; her family was part of establishing either ein harod or one of the other earliest kibbutzim in marj ibn amir.
(apology to rozele)
no need! the semantic situation is very different in israel – where, to my best understanding, “ashkenazi” is a sprawling racialized category contrasting with an even more internally-varied “mizrahi” (or, earlier, “sefardi”), and generally connoting the dominant strain of hebraist culture, rather than (as in the u.s.) a cultural/lineage one whose main (if, as i keep yelling at windmills, inaccurate) referrent is yiddishkayt.
.
* or alcalay, whose translation i’d guess chetrit saw before publication – they were both involved in IVRI-NASAWI at that time, if memory serves, though i think not yet colleagues at Queens College [nyc].
where my fellow editors beat me senseless with a copy of Webster’s Third
A beefy bunch, aren’t they?
Well, individually they tend to be reedy, but if enough of them gather together (a collocation of editors) and all grasp the massive book, they can wield it collectively with surprising force.
ktschwarz: The quotation marks, ‘ and ’ (U+2018, U+2019) work in a pinch, and are present in some standard keyboards, but they are marked as punctuation marks, which means, among other things, that if you double click on a word it’ll stop at them, not considering them to be regular letters. ʽ or ʻ and ʼ (U+02BD, U+02BB, U+02BC) work better, but you might need to set up a custom keyboard to use them, or use some tedious entry method. Likewise for the standard Semiticist ʿ and ʾ (U+02BF, U+02BE).
I’m retired
But weren’t you already retired on September 8, 2023 (“if you change something, you have to note it”)? You could have the positive without the negative by adding a footnote. I’m only carping because I’ve grown accustomed to your high standards for noting any errors (spelling, fact, or whatever) in your quoted sources, and how much they matter. If the source makes a mistake, I for one appreciate being told.
Oh, very well, I’ve added my own bracketed explanation especially for you.
With the power of <small>! Thanks very much.
Of late I have taken, based on conversations with my daughter, to using the spelling “smol” in all my talks. Thus far, nobody has commented on it.
Pappé opens the comment on the het with a bracket and closes it with a parenthesis, as faithfully reproduced by LH (at great spiritual cost, I presume).
The quotation marks … are marked as punctuation marks … if you double click on a word it’ll stop at them
That’s true for many applications, though Notepad doesn’t. Another question is what happens with searching (esp. searching for whole words) and search engines. But I didn’t trust browsers in general with the “spacing modifier letters” range, although that may have been unfounded. And since languagehat used quotation marks in the post, I figured commenters were licensed to do the same.
For me copy-pasting is the easy way to get characters that I’m only dropping a few of into a few comments.
@Y: Is שֶׁרְכָשָׁהּ “that-he.acquired.it” a Biblical construction? Wouldn’t it rather be שרכש אותה in modern Hebrew?
@Alex K.: marking the object on the verb has always been around, from BH onward, but these days it’s used only in literary and formal circumstances.
As Y explained (brilliantly) the poet lost on his way to Eretz Israel, which is also Ein Harod in this poem, his head (resh/rosh) and his eye (ayin), but what did he loose by loosing heth? Various sources explain that heth comes from a word for courtyard (his fathers? left in Morocco?) and now is close in sound to a word for thread (of life and oneself?). Probably poet didn’t mean any of these, but hobgoblin of my mind searches for explanation.
D.O., I don’t think heth is supposed to evoke anything—not its homophone חֵטְא ‘sin’, nor חוּט xut ‘thread’. The puns are opportunistic, not planned. He had exactly these three letters to work with, and two of them suggested a connection.
Eretz Israel is where his father lost his heth, as I understand the poem, and Ein Harod is where he himself lost the ʼayin and the resh; or at least in the poem he did. I don’t know if he regained his apical r later, or if he never actually lost it.
on his way to Eretz Israel, which is also Ein Harod
a thing i forgot to say in my last: another also: the valley ein harod is in is has a number of names, but is most frequently referred to in a slantwise way: it’s the “megeddon” in “armageddon”. so “the way to ein harod” is also an eschatological path – an immanentization, even.
They are different places. Armageddon is Tel Megiddo, about 20 km west of Ein Harod.
i’m thinking of the whole valley as the unit of space, partly because that’s how i’ve heard hadar ahuvia (the person i know with the deepest ties to the place) talk about it.
Various sources explain that heth comes from a word for courtyard (his fathers? left in Morocco?) and now is close in sound to a word for thread (of life and oneself?)
In Maghrebi Arabic, حيط ḥiṭ is “wall”, and خيط xiṭ is “thread”. Doesn’t look to me either like he was trying to evoke them, but for anyone who shared his background they would have come to mind. (Maghrebi Arabic has [e] only as an allophone of /i/.)
Lameen, do you have any idea on the origin of the name Chetrit/Shitrit?
English WP says, “of Berber Jewish origin. The original pronunciation in Moroccan Arabic is Sh-t-ret.” The Hebrew website of the Museum of the Jewish People says, irritatingly, that it comes from an Arabic word meaning ‘brave’, or that it comes from an Arabic word meaning ‘foreigner, distant’, and that it means ‘wise/clever/skilled’; all with no backing data.
And as everybody knows, every Arabic noun has three meanings: its unique meaning and also “lion” and “sword.”
Clearly they’re just hunting through a dictionary by root: šāṭir means “clever”, šaṭūr “far”, and, well, I can’t find a relevant derivative meaning “brave”, but maybe they did, unless it’s a misunderstanding of some French gloss of šāṭir. The root has a number of other meanings, including “half” and “cross-eyed”, so I wouldn’t care to bet on any of these without supporting evidence. The -īt at the end suggests some involvement of Romance; I should check Corriente’s dictionary of Andalusi Arabic. (The correct form is šǝṭrīt, as I understand.)
I got to have a look at Alexander Beider’s A dictionary of Jewish surnames from Maghreb, Gibraltar, and Malta. Beider wrote a number of encyclopedic books on Jewish onomastics, excellent in both thoroughness of research and scholarly care. And yet, the entry on שטרית Chetrit disappoints. It takes an entire page, but the etymology leaves one in the dark. To summarize, the name is attested as early as the 17th century from the Rif, later spreading further afield. For the etymology, all Beider can offer is “perhaps, from the verbal root šṭr شطر [Arabic (BEAU 526)] ‘to become skillful, dexterous, astute’, or /šaṭǝr/ شطر [Arabic (PREM 7:101)] ‘parsimonious, thrifty’. The exact origin of the suffix –ît is unclear.”
The rest of the article covers the many attested variants of the name: Striss, Sidris, Strich, etc., plus Ben Chetrit and its variants.
I wish I had checked for other -it surnames.