Another ship of fools whose passengers DID get refuge
Joel Rubin
July 8, 2007
Fleeing Hitler and Meeting a Reluctant Miss Liberty
By CARA BUCKLEY
As the Statue of Liberty lurched into sight, Malvina Parnes felt a
knot rise in her throat.
It was Aug. 19, 1940, and she was 11, her skinny legs rooted to the
heaving deck of the Quanza, a Portuguese cargo ship that 317
passengers had chartered to flee war-torn Europe.
Malvina was desperate to feel safe. She had been seasick every day of
the 13-day voyage, and spent the nights wrapped in a blanket on the
open deck, unable to bear the fetid, windowless bunker where her
mother, her 3-year-old sister, Annette, and her aunt slept.
But New York offered no sanctuary. While 196 passengers, including 66
American citizens, got off, the other 121 passengers, nearly all of
them Jews seeking political asylum, including Malvina and her family,
were denied entry. Eighty-six of the 121 passengers were later turned
away in Mexico, too, and to their horror, the captain was preparing to
go back across the Atlantic. It was only when the Quanza anchored for
coal in Virginia on Sept. 11 and a State Department official finally
granted them visas, at Eleanor Roosevelt’s behest, that the refugees
were able to disembark.
Until recently, the plight of the refugees aboard the Quanza was all
but subsumed by history and faded memories. Their story had a happy
ending, unlike that of Jewish refugees from Germany aboard the S.S.
St. Louis, who were denied entry to Cuba and the United States in 1939
and were forced to Europe, where most died in the Holocaust.
[...]
bac...@vms.huji.ac.il
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/nyregion/08quanza.html
>
> July 8, 2007
> Fleeing Hitler and Meeting a Reluctant Miss Liberty
> By CARA BUCKLEY
>
> As the Statue of Liberty lurched into sight, Malvina Parnes felt a
> knot rise in her throat.
>
> It was Aug. 19, 1940, and she was 11, her skinny legs rooted to the
> heaving deck of the Quanza, a Portuguese cargo ship that 317
> passengers had chartered to flee war-torn Europe.
>
> Malvina was desperate to feel safe. She had been seasick every day of
> the 13-day voyage, and spent the nights wrapped in a blanket on the
> open deck, unable to bear the fetid, windowless bunker where her
> mother, her 3-year-old sister, Annette, and her aunt slept.
>
> But New York offered no sanctuary. While 196 passengers, including 66
> American citizens, got off, the other 121 passengers, nearly all of
> them Jews seeking political asylum, including Malvina and her family,
> were denied entry. Eighty-six of the 121 passengers were later turned
> away in Mexico, too, and to their horror, the captain was preparing to
> go back across the Atlantic. It was only when the Quanza anchored for
> coal in Virginia on Sept. 11 and a State Department official finally
> granted them visas, at Eleanor Roosevelt’s behest, that the refugees
> were able to disembark.
How Xtian of those "wonderful" people at the antisemitic State Dept.
to let in some Jews.
Josh
fla...@verizon.net
On 9-Jul-2007, bac...@vms.huji.ac.il wrote:
> It was only when the Quanza anchored for
> > coal in Virginia on Sept. 11 and a State Department official finally
> > granted them visas, at Eleanor Roosevelt’s behest, that the refugees
> > were able to disembark.
>
>
> How Xtian of those "wonderful" people at the antisemitic State Dept.
> to let in some Jews.
I'm sure Eleanor Roosevelt did all she could.
She should definitely not be forgotten.
Susan
J J Levin
news:f6t66d$kv6$1...@falcon.steinthal.us...
She also interceded several times to ease the entry into the US of Jews whom
varian Fry and his Rescue Committee tried to save. There are two excellent
biographical books of Varian Fry, for those who want to pursue this further.
Jay
Q
This story is from the book by Victoria Redel called "The Border of
Truth." (mentioned later in this article). Redel is the daughter of
my first ballet teacher, the late Natasha Redel. So everybody go out
and buy it.
-- Q
bac...@vms.huji.ac.il
I suggest you go to Google and type in: Eleanor Roosevelt antisemitic
where you'll see all her highly antisemitic letters and comments.
Josh
>
> Susan
J J Levin
news:f6tp8s$298$1...@falcon.steinthal.us...
The people who were allowed into the US through her interference with the
State Department, in helping Varian Fry and his rescue committee, would
surely disagree with you.
Jay
Q
I think that Mrs. Roosevelt's deal was -- supposedly -- that she was
eager to assist and promote minorities, but did not wish to know them
socially. The Roosevelts -- including TR and his family -- were
famously snobbish. E.R. was, however, rumored to have had an affair
with her biographer, Joseph Lash, who was Jewish.
IMO, this is probably untrue and was an invention of the sort of
people who will make up any damn thing about somebody they don't like
or who does not share their POV.
-- Q.
fla...@verizon.net
On 9-Jul-2007, bac...@vms.huji.ac.il wrote:
Which makes it even odder that she would have worked
even harder than the post above says she did to save Jews.
Susan
fla...@verizon.net
On 9-Jul-2007, bac...@vms.huji.ac.il wrote:
You mean like this one:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/sfeature/md_ri_04.html
HYDE PARK, AUGUST 13, 1943 - I talked a little while yesterday morning with
a representative from the group which is trying to formulate plans to save
the Jewish people in Europe. Some people think of the Jewish people as a
race. Others think of them purely as a religious group. But in Europe the
hardships and persecution which they have had to endure for the past few
years, have tended to bring them together in a group which identifies itself
with every similar group, regardless whether it is religious or racial. The
Jews are like all the other people of the world. There are able people among
them, there are courageous people among them, there are people of
extraordinary intellectual ability along many lines. There are people of
extraordinary integrity and people of great beauty and great charm.
On the other hand, largely because of environment and economic conditions,
there are people among them who cringe, who are dishonest, who try to take
advantage of their neighbors, who are aggressive and unattractive. In other
words, they are a cross-section of the human race, just as is every other
nationality and every other religious group.
But good or bad, they have suffered in Europe as has no other group. The
percentage killed among them in the past few years far exceeds the losses
among any of the United Nations in the battles which have been fought
throughout the war.
[snip]
I do not know what we can do to save the Jews in Europe and to find them
homes, but I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur
without exerting ourselves to correct them."
[end quote]
Or, did you mean stuff like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/reviews/990704.704dowdt.html
"Cook finds most fault with her subject on her silence on the growing
violence against Jews in Hitler's Germany: ''Silence is the ultimate
collusion.'' The First Lady had been instructed by the State Department to
say nothing on other international crises. Cook can only speculate why the
usually irrepressible Eleanor Roosevelt muzzled herself: ''F.D.R. relied
upon and required the enormous German and Catholic vote; and the support of
the Southern Democrats who dominated Congress. . . . Eleanor relied on her
Jewish friends, including Elinor Morgenthau and Bernard Baruch, who feared
that domestic Jew-hatred would be intensified by protests against Germany's
official anti-Jewish decrees. . . . Whatever the reason, the United States'
determined silence of 1933-38, combined with Britain's appeasement and
collaboration, allowed Hitler to believe he had no serious opponents.''
Like others in the WASP hierarchy, Mrs. Roosevelt displayed a casually
anti-Semitic attitude in private. Forced to attend a party for Bernard
Baruch when F.D.R. was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Eleanor wrote to her
mother-in-law, ''I'd rather be hung than seen at'' it, since it would be
''mostly Jews.'' Afterward, she reported back: ''The Jew party was
appalling. I never wish to hear money, jewels and sables mentioned again.''
Her ugly comments diminished, Cook says, as her friendship with Baruch and
other Jews flourished. She was grateful to Baruch because he ''looks on me
as a mind, not as a woman.'' By the time of the New Deal, she was coming
around, risking criticism to meet with Jewish groups, supporting an array of
Jewish causes and writing articles urging tolerance. ''It is the secret fear
that the Jewish people are stronger or more able than those who still wield
superior physical power over them, which brings about oppression,'' she
wrote in Liberty magazine. ''I believe that those nations which do not
persecute are saved only by confidence in themselves and a feeling that they
can still defend themselves and their own place in the world. Therefore, I
am forced to the conclusion that the Jewish people though they may be in
part responsible for the present situation are not as responsible as the
other races who need to examine themselves and grapple with their own
fears.''
[end quote]
IOW, she probably had absorbed a good deal of prejudice from her upbringing
-
& then, when she actually got to meet/know Jews, she realized she was wrong.
Susan
D.M. Procida
> > The people who were allowed into the US through her interference with the
> > State Department, in helping Varian Fry and his rescue committee, would
> > surely disagree with you.
>
> I think that Mrs. Roosevelt's deal was -- supposedly -- that she was
> eager to assist and promote minorities, but did not wish to know them
> socially. The Roosevelts -- including TR and his family -- were
> famously snobbish. E.R. was, however, rumored to have had an affair
> with her biographer, Joseph Lash, who was Jewish.
Even having an affair with someone doesn't really count as knowing them
socially.
Human beings are sufficiently complex that someone can be a supporter of
minorities while at the same time having attitudes towards them which
would seem to be quite at variance with that.
I don't think it diminishes their achievements if we acknowledge thier
failings. As often as not it puts those achievements into perspective.
Kant said something along the lines of: Of such such crooked wood as
humanity, nothing straight was ever made. If you can accept that human
beings doing good things are crooked wood trying to be straight, then
their failures to be perfectly straight are easier to accept.
If you want your heroes to be perfectly heroic, then you will always be
disappointed.
If Eleanor Roosevelt helped Jews despite the ordinary daily antisemitism
of her world, then bad for the antisemitism and good for her, even if
it's a shame that she wasn't able to shake it off wholly.
Daniele
Q
That's a very wise observation.
It would be nice if people brought that degree of understanding to
their dealings with gentiles instead of the "I-can-spot-a-bigot-a-mile-
away" mentality that we sometimes see in discussion groups.
-- Q
>
> Susan
Q
Procida) wrote:
> Q <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > The people who were allowed into the US through her interference with the
> > > State Department, in helping Varian Fry and his rescue committee, would
> > > surely disagree with you.
>
> > I think that Mrs. Roosevelt's deal was -- supposedly -- that she was
> > eager to assist and promote minorities, but did not wish to know them
> > socially. The Roosevelts -- including TR and his family -- were
> > famously snobbish. E.R. was, however, rumored to have had an affair
> > with her biographer, Joseph Lash, who was Jewish.
>
> Even having an affair with someone doesn't really count as knowing them
> socially.
And it has certainly been known to happen that antisemites will have
affairs with Jews, and even marry them.
Eleanor Roosevelt, however, was so widely-disliked among the American
right wing that she was accused of every bad and also "bad" thing they
could come up with, including sexual affairs with men and women who
were deemed particularly inappropriate.
>
> Human beings are sufficiently complex that someone can be a supporter of
> minorities while at the same time having attitudes towards them which
> would seem to be quite at variance with that.
In fact, a similar attitude can be found in the correspondence -- and
even actions -- of many political, cultural and military icons.
>
> I don't think it diminishes their achievements if we acknowledge thier
> failings. As often as not it puts those achievements into perspective.
Most people are products of their upbringing, and circumstances seldom
provide them with the opportunity to broaden their outlook.
Many people get tarred with the "bigotry" brush, who are actually
simply ignorant, and nothing more.
>
> Kant said something along the lines of: Of such such crooked wood as
> humanity, nothing straight was ever made.
Very true. That's what keeps the tabloids in business. -- Q
(snip)
itzh...@frumspace.com
Victoria Redel was my freshman composition instructor at Columbia back
in 1984. Was Natasha Redel a Holocaust survivor? I am almost sure
Victoria (she was only a few years older than we were and she insisted
we call her by her first name) mentioned that at least one of her
parents was a survivor.
Q
I don't think so.
Natasha Redel was an American -- born well before the Holocaust --
who had Russianized her forename (Natalie) because -- back in those
days -- that's what American dancers did in order to make their way in
the ballet establishment. I first knew her during the latter 1940s,
and we reconnected in the 70s, when I was looking for a ballet teacher
for one of my daughters. When she died in 1983, none of her obits even
mentioned the fact that she had had this long career teaching ballet,
first at the Swoboda School, and later at her own school in Scarsdale.
I am almost sure
> Victoria (she was only a few years older than we were and she insisted
> we call her by her first name) mentioned that at least one of her
> parents was a survivor.
That would have been Irving Redel, who was one of the passengers
aboard the Quanza.
-- Q
vict...@victoriaredel.com
Hi, I've just found this thread and reading through to the end have to
now reply. In fact my mother, Natasha Redel, was not American born--
but born in Roumania to an Egyptian born father and a Russian born
mother. She arrived in New York City in 1942 having spent two years in
occupied Paris. Her birth name is Natalie though she was called
Natasha or Nata -- both Russian nicknames. Her life in occupied Paris
is quite fascinating because her family's- persian passports gave them
a bubble of safety (German need for oil). It is moving to me to
see( or read) people who have been my mother's ballet students and I
have always found one of the most moving aspects of a life in writing
to be the reencounters with people whose lives were touched by my
mother's life as a teacher. It has made me think about writing about
her as a ballet teacher and the role of dance teachers in the lives of
young girls-- and even the dream (if even momentarily) of dance for
girls.
As for Eleanor Roosevelt-- I find all the discussion really
interesting. In writing The Border of Truth (where one of the central
characters is obsessively writing letters to ER) I saw ER as a boy
stuck on a "returning ship" might-- a possible American mother. My
character admits to her that he's rather be writing Hedy Lamar or
Ginger Rogers-- but he figures ER has more clout.
In anycase-- partial stories, what is the truth?, all of this is
central to the novel I've written and interesting to see other threads
of it emerge.
As for the old student who suggests that everyone buy the novel-- how
can I disagree with that!
Q
She spoke perfect American English when I first knew her, and that
would have been only six or seven years after she arrived in America.
I always assumed she'd been born here. It's unusual for a person who
arrives in America at age 11 or so to learn to speak English with no
accent at all.
> It is moving to me to
> see( or read) people who have been my mother's ballet students and I
> have always found one of the most moving aspects of a life in writing
> to be the reencounters with people whose lives were touched by my
> mother's life as a teacher.
Her students adored her.
> It has made me think about writing about
> her as a ballet teacher and the role of dance teachers in the lives of
> young girls-- and even the dream (if even momentarily) of dance for
> girls.
Sometimes the dream lasts. At least one of her students from her
Swoboda School days -- who was my closest friend (three of us rode the
subway into Manhattan together) -- went on to join the Ballet Russe.
I'm sure there must have been many others.
> As for Eleanor Roosevelt-- I find all the discussion really
> interesting. In writing The Border of Truth (where one of the central
> characters is obsessively writing letters to ER) I saw ER as a boy
> stuck on a "returning ship" might-- a possible American mother.
Again, it's hard to know the truth. Especially with Eleanor
Roosevelt, who was viewed through a prism of wishful thinking by those
who loved her, as well as those who disliked her.
>My
> character admits to her that he's rather be writing Hedy Lamar or
> Ginger Rogers-- but he figures ER has more clout.
>
> In anycase-- partial stories, what is the truth?, all of this is
> central to the novel I've written and interesting to see other threads
> of it emerge.
> As for the old student who suggests that everyone buy the novel-- how
> can I disagree with that!
All stories are -- by necessity -- partial stories. Occasionally, one
or another of my children would ask to tell *me* a story at bedtime --
instead of vice versa. And what the story would consist of was an
unsorted set of facts about the story's hero. The story would include
everything, including how the hero got out of bed, brushed his teeth,
put on his slippers and so on. I think we train ourselves as we get
older and smarter -- or at least more efficient -- to edit out
everything but what we think are the salient bits.
And of course, some of the stuff we edit out (deliberately or not, or
something in between, who knows?) is pretty important -- which is one
of the things your book is about.
-- Q
Abe Kohen
>
> She spoke perfect American English when I first knew her, and that
> would have been only six or seven years after she arrived in America.
> I always assumed she'd been born here. It's unusual for a person who
> arrives in America at age 11 or so to learn to speak English with no
> accent at all.
I would conjecture that the cutoff for accentless pronunciation is around
puberty. Henry Kissinger was about 15 when he came here.
Best,
Abe
07-25-07
R'foo-ah shlay-ma for Shayndel bat Gittel
R'foo-ah shlay-ma to all victims of Islamofascist terror
bac...@vms.huji.ac.il
> "Q" <quon...@yahoo.com> wrote
>>
>> She spoke perfect American English when I first knew her, and that
>> would have been only six or seven years after she arrived in America.
>> I always assumed she'd been born here. It's unusual for a person who
>> arrives in America at age 11 or so to learn to speak English with no
>> accent at all.
>
> I would conjecture that the cutoff for accentless pronunciation is around
> puberty. Henry Kissinger was about 15 when he came here.
Almost correct. The cutoff point is about age 8 [based on a monograph
written about 20 years ago by a Japanese otorhinolaryngologist on the
development of deviated septum]. The most intriguing thing is that
until age 8 (give or take) the nasal septum is absolutely straight. From
age 8 there starts the process of nasal septal deviation with its effect
on brain hemisphericity and the nasal cycle. Our group in 1990 found an
extremely rare (1:3000) "defect" in 10/11 expert simultaneous translators.
See: Backon J, Negeris B, Kurzon D, Amit-Chochavi H.
Int J Neurosci. 1991 Jun;58(3-4):157-63.
A straight nasal septum and right unilateral hypertrophied inferior nasal
turbinate, a very rare anatomical phenomenon, in skilled language translators:
relevance to anomalous dominance, brain hemisphericity and second language
acquisition.
Josh
James Kahn
I've heard claims that it's 10 or 11, and this seems consistent with
my experience. As one anecdote, my father's first cousin moved back
to Russia (unfortunately) from New York at age 9 (he's now about 75). He
kept his English (which was his native language through age 9), but now
speaks it with a Russian accent. So clearly as of age 9 he was still
not "set" in his language.
--
Jim
New York, NY
(Please remove "nospam." to get my e-mail address)
http://www.panix.com/~kahn
Q
> "Q" <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote
If you look online, you see that there's a wide diversity of opinion
about that. I expect it depends on what the first language is -- as
well as the second language.
I was brought to Mexico at the age of eleven, and my Spanish has
never been especially good, even after living there for four years. I
suppose I had less of a gringa accent than my parents and the end of
our stay there. My brother -- who is five years younger than I am --
never developed into much of a Spanish speaker either.
When we moved to Ireland, two of my children began to speak English
with an Irish accent. It was the two middle children who did that.
The eldest -- who was about nine -- and the youngest both retained
their American accents. The two middle children also learned to speak
and write in Irish.
I've noticed that boys tend to do better with accents than girls --
that was certainly the case among the Mexican boys and girls I knew
who had learned English.
-- Q
Q
> In article <f88ril$lk...@falcon.steinthal.us>, "Abe Kohen" <ako...@xenon.stanford.edu> writes:
> > "Q" <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote
>
> >> She spoke perfect American English when I first knew her, and that
> >> would have been only six or seven years after she arrived in America.
> >> I always assumed she'd been born here. It's unusual for a person who
> >> arrives in America at age 11 or so to learn to speak English with no
> >> accent at all.
>
> > I would conjecture that the cutoff for accentless pronunciation is around
> > puberty. Henry Kissinger was about 15 when he came here.
>
> Almost correct. The cutoff point is about age 8 [based on a monograph
> written about 20 years ago by a Japanese otorhinolaryngologist on the
> development of deviated septum]. The most intriguing thing is that
> until age 8 (give or take) the nasal septum is absolutely straight. From
> age 8 there starts the process of nasal septal deviation with its effect
> on brain hemisphericity and the nasal cycle. Our group in 1990 found an
> extremely rare (1:3000) "defect" in 10/11 expert simultaneous translators.
>
> See: Backon J, Negeris B, Kurzon D, Amit-Chochavi H.
> Int J Neurosci. 1991 Jun;58(3-4):157-63.
>
> A straight nasal septum and right unilateral hypertrophied inferior nasal
> turbinate, a very rare anatomical phenomenon, in skilled language translators:
> relevance to anomalous dominance, brain hemisphericity and second language
> acquisition.
>
Does that mean you can tell by the way a person looks whether he or
she will have an aptitude for learning languages? Can you tell from x-
rays or other images?
Is there any relationship between skill at acquiring languages and
musical pitch?
-- Q
Abe Kohen
My own findings, and I grew up in an immigrant community, align with yours.
Once I was stunned when I met an Israeli woman in the Minny Apple who spoke
an unaccented American English and claimed to have come to America past the
critical age, until she told me that at around age 4 or 5 she spent a couple
of years in America with her parents.
What's even more amazing is the horrible English that some of my yeshivish
American born cousins speak.
But who are we "amateurs" to argue with the scientific deviate findings? ;-)
Best,
Abe
07-26-07
Hyp...@giganews.com
<ako...@xenon.stanford.edu> wrote:
>"Q" <quon...@yahoo.com> wrote
>>
>> She spoke perfect American English when I first knew her, and that
>> would have been only six or seven years after she arrived in America.
>> I always assumed she'd been born here. It's unusual for a person who
>> arrives in America at age 11 or so to learn to speak English with no
>> accent at all.
>
>I would conjecture that the cutoff for accentless pronunciation is around
>puberty. Henry Kissinger was about 15 when he came here.
Henry's disgusting accent is pure schtick. He's no dummy, despite his
total amorality; after all these years in the U.S. he could talk
normally if he wanted, but he uses it for schtick.
Speaking of men I'd hate to have sex with, this repulsive creature has
always been #1 -- that is, until the current Administration.
And yet, he's reputed to have been quite a ladies' man. I guess
power attracts certain kinds of women...
Hypatia
Tim Meushaw
Now I'm really curious about my family past. From what I've been told,
or at least what I remember (the two of which don't usually coincide),
my grandmother came to the US from Scotland when she was 17. She also
had no trace of a Scottish accent. Her father, on the other hand,
I've been told had an accent that got thicker and thicker as he got
older. So now I'm wondering if there was something similiar, if she
came earlier than I thought, or had been here temporarily before
moving permanently, or what.
Shabbat shalom,
Tim
--
Timothy A. Meushaw
meu...@pobox.com
bac...@vms.huji.ac.il
More or less though the simplest way to discern the septal deviation is
by physical examination or use of Podoshin plates (metallic foil placed
under the nostril).
>
> Is there any relationship between skill at acquiring languages and
> musical pitch?
>
Yes.
http://www.mckergow.com/2003/index.jsp?lnk=304 Click on his 170K file.
Jewish tradition has stressed use of musical intonation in developing
learning ability (e.g. the concept of "arichat sefatayim" in Pirkei Avot
6:6).
Josh (going back to lurking mode)
Q
> On 2007-07-27, Abe Kohen <ako...@xenon.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
If they were here in 1930 -- or before -- you can track them down in
the census, which you can access by computer via Heritage Quest or
Ancestry.com. One or both of these is almost certainly available
through your public library. The censuses contain all sorts of
information, such as the person's address, occupation, birthplace,
birthplace of parents, date of arrival in America, language spoken at
home, degree of literacy, age, other members of the household and so
forth. The censuses are now available from 1790 to 1930. The 1940
one will be released in a couple of years, IIRC.
The immigration databases are trickier (www.ellisisland.org and
www.castlegarden.org, for earlier immigrations) because people
traveled using other people's passports and tickets, they changed
their names, and mostly, the immigration clerks were cavalier with
spellings of unfamiliar names. It's amazing the many many ways they
managed to spell a common name like "Shapiro." So with these
databases, you have to improvise a little.
Hunting for this stuff sounds like it might be tedious, but actually
it's a lot of fun -- and you end up with documents "suitable for
framing," as the catalogs like to say. My children and I have visited
a number of the buildings on NY's lower East Side that my father and
his family had lived in when he was growing up. I have the ship's
manifest from my grandmother's immigration. I even have digital
copies the WWi draft cards of all my ancestors and relatives who were
alive at that point. If you find the actual records, you can download
jpegs of the originals.
Gravestones and death certificates are also good sources of
information. The Historical New York Times is also a very good source
-- particularly the weddings and death notices -- because back in its
earlier days it functioned as a local paper and wrote about actual
people who live in the community.
-- Q
>
> Shabbat shalom,
> Tim
>
> --
> Timothy A. Meushaw
James Kahn
I think the pattern may be different for accents within a language
versus resulting from having a different native language. I've
noticed that adults moving from the USA to the UK or vice-versa,
or from the southern US to the northern, say, can begin to acquire
at least a bit of the new accent. Some do and some don't, and it
seems partly a matter of will. (I think I've shed my
Michigan accent having spent almost my entire adult life in the
Northeast.)
Of course this is assuming your grandparents' native tongue
was English with a Scottish accent, not true Scots or Gaelic or
whatever.
Harry Weiss
> > But who are we "amateurs" to argue with the scientific deviate findings? ;-)
> Now I'm really curious about my family past. From what I've been told,
> or at least what I remember (the two of which don't usually coincide),
> my grandmother came to the US from Scotland when she was 17. She also
> had no trace of a Scottish accent. Her father, on the other hand,
> I've been told had an accent that got thicker and thicker as he got
> older. So now I'm wondering if there was something similiar, if she
> came earlier than I thought, or had been here temporarily before
> moving permanently, or what.
> Shabbat shalom,
> Tim
My mother was 21 when she came to the US. English is her 6th language
(after Yiddish, Hungarian, German, Italian, and Hebrew). She has only a
trace of an accent. My father a"h always had much more of an accent
despite taking classes to speak better.
> --
> Timothy A. Meushaw
> meu...@pobox.com
--
Harry J. Weiss
hjw...@panix.com
Q
Not practical for a lay person, I guess.
>
>
>
> > Is there any relationship between skill at acquiring languages and
> > musical pitch?
>
> Yes.
>
> http://www.mckergow.com/2003/index.jsp?lnk=304 Click on his 170K file.
>
> Jewish tradition has stressed use of musical intonation in developing
> learning ability (e.g. the concept of "arichat sefatayim" in Pirkei Avot
> 6:6).
Very cool.
Thanks!
-- Q