What perfect expression,what delivery,and the inherent pathos shines through to me whatever the pronunciation. It feels as if I am there seeing it live. The mix of lyrics and nign is especially inspired. Superbe,la foule!
Yiddish is a foreign language for this singer. His mother tongue is probably German and he makes one mistake in pronunciation after the other. He really should not be singing Yiddish songs for an audience. Most internet viewers do not have a knowledge of the beautiful and expressive Yiddish language, and they don't know whether a rendition is good, bad or indifferent. Native Yiddish speakers (from eastern Europe) will notice immediately that the singer's so-called Yiddish pronunciation is not acceptable. The truth of the matter is that it ruins the entire song. Yiddish was the majority language of the more than six million Jewish men, women and children brutally murdered by Nazi Germany. If the singer really respected and cherished this cultural treasure, he would have made an effort to pronounce the Yiddish words correctly. [This comment has been written by a Yiddish linguist whose mother tongue is Yiddish. He is also a professional concert singer with a wide repertoire of Yiddish folk, art and theatre songs.]
Not so fast...a lovely voice and a familiar niggin bringing back memories of my father singing this song to me. The instrumentalists are also quite wonderful.
Thank you for this explanation. And most people don't realize that most Jewish population was in Eastern Europe, in what was the Pale of Settlement, not Germany and therefore far more from Eastern Europe lost to the Holocaust. But the verbal pronunciation aside, the instrumental music is done beautifully.
While your observations are enlightening Rene, I think you are being a little harsh. If he is succeeding in learning a foreign tongue well enough to perform, and in so doing is fighting to keep an endangered and beautiful language alive, hats off. While the pronunciation errors are understandably off-putting to someone with your level of Yiddish sophistication, there are by your own admission people in the audience who don't know that, and yet still benefit from much of a song with its equally important music. Also, in the diaspora there were multiple flavors of Yiddish weren't there?. But I understand the sentiment that poorly made knaidlach doesn't taste right to me, yet to a goy its great.
