Thursday, May 19, 2005

Yiddish in Taiwan? Who knew?

http://www.juf.org/news_public_affairs/article.asp?key=6068

[sidebar: http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15769&intcategoryid=2 ]

[Sidebar 2: What's in a name? Peacetime Foundation. Chien, Dennis Lin, JTA, by Dan Bloom , Mandarin, Jews, Islam, root character, Chinese, missionaries, 1830, China, Jerusalem, Israeli trade office, Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Taipei, Taiwan. TAIPEI, Taiwan, Aug. 26, 2005 (JTA) The Chinese language is comprised of thousands of characters and combinations of characters, each composed of various strokes. Now a human rights group in Taiwan is calling on Chinese journalists and academics around the world to stop the discriminatory way that characters for Jewish people are written in Mandarin.
There are many Chinese characters for you-tai, or Jew, but the combination that is currently being used refers to an animal of the monkey species, and has the connotation of parsimoniousness, Chien Hsi-chieh, director of the Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan, said recently.
Chien's remarks at a news conference in Taipei, complete with illustrations...]

TAIWANESE PROFESSOR AT WENZAO URSULINE LANGUAGE COLLEGE IN TAIWAN IS YIDDISH FAN


Taiwanese scholar knows her Yiddish

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15471&intcategoryid=5

For linguistics scholar in Taiwan,

Yiddish is more than just shtick


By Dan Bloom

TAIPEI, Taiwan,

May 26 (JTA) -- Jewish Telegraphic Agency, New York City

S.H. Chang is a Yiddish specialist at Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages in Taiwan. She may be one of a kind -- after all, you don't find many Chinese academics in Taiwan studying and writing about Yiddish. A soft-spoken Taiwanese woman in her early 30s who has written about and researched the Yiddish language -- she speaks it as well -- Chang is one of the few Yiddish philologists in the Chinese-speaking world.She heads the department of German at Aiwan College in the subtropical, southern part of Taiwan, an island nation of 23 million Buddhists and Taoists."When I set about learning Yiddish, I was merely opening up a new door for myself," the professor says.With a doctorate from Germany's Trier University under her belt, Chang has gained world renown as an expert in German and Jewish literature, delivering academic papers around the world. In addition, she has become a Jewish historian for the Chinese and Taiwanese people, as well as a philologist of German and Yiddish.Chang admitted in a recent telephone interview with JTA that learning Yiddish did not come easily at first, though she said that the fact that the ``language of Jewish exiles'' contains around many German morphemes made it easier, since she already had mastered German as a university student in Taiwan and Europe.In addition, she speaks Chinese, Taiwanese and English.Chang plans to write a book for the reading public in Taiwan, explaining the nuances of Yiddishkeit and the history of the Jewish Diaspora -- and the meaning of such words as kvell, chutzpah and nachas, she said.Posted: 5/31/2005

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Department of German & Yiddish

Professor S. H. Chang, department chairwoman

Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages

900 Mintsu 1st Roadd,

Kaohsiung City

807 Taiwan

TEL: +886 7 3426031 ext. 5703FAX: +886 7 3474683

EMAIL: changsh@mail.wtuc.edu.tw