É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.

ORMOS, István: Goldziher's Mother Tongue: A Contribution to the Study of the Language Situation in Hungary in the Nineteenth Century

GOLDZIHER'S MOTHER TONGUE "cultivated" language the night before? Or was it someone else? Or is Goldziher's account simply somewhat careless?

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1' He does not say what language he used to answer the address, but it is likely to have been Jargon too.

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4" Nordau was not an unlikely candidate to address Goldziher in clear and distinct Jargon because it was his mother tongue and it was certainly the language he always used in conversation with his mother. Bom in Riga, educated in Vilna, Nordau's mother came to Pest as a school-teacher, and stuck to her native Jewish-German all her life without ever making an attempt to acquire another language except for a few scraps of Russian and the Hebrew of her prayers. Nordau's father went from Russian Poland to Prague, then moved to Hungary, first to Pozsony

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1 and subsequently to Pest. He had an excellent knowledge of German and Hebrew, and even taught his son the Jewish-Spanish of their ancestors at a remarkably early age, but he apparently never learned Hungarian.

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2 The deliberations of the Vorstand of the Budapest Jewish community were also conducted in Jargon, but here again we are told that Goldziher was obliged to hear this Jargon, he does not explicitly say that he himself used it actively, although this is probably what can be assumed.

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3 It may be noted that these remarks seem to be distinctly derogatory. So is another quotation from the "supreme president of local Jews": "Der Doctcr Galdzieher mit seinen nerwehsen Karakter... " [Doctor Goldziher with his nervous character...].

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4 A similar medium seems also to have been used by Vámbéry, whose bad German pronunciation and grammatical mistakes Goldziher holds up to ridicule: "Tch hab bekommen Jahresgehalt von der englischen Königin und vom Sultan für politische Dienste. ... Ich weiss ja, du bist ein berihmter Mensch, ich hab das in Ausland gehehrt. Du misstest auswandern.' Dann noch einige ungrammatische Tiraden über die Niederträchtigkeit aller Religionen, über den Socialismus, über Patriothismus (die grösste aller Schwindeleien) etc. etc."['l received an annual salary from the English Queen and the Sultan for political 1" This is not the only case when one has the impression that Goldziher's mind was working much faster than his pen and his statements cannot be interpreted literally but are strongly in need of exegesis. 141

1 It may be noted that there are eight letters by Nordau to Goldziher in the Goldzihercorrespondence: all of them are in standard literary German, written in Gothic script. There is also the draft of an answer by Goldziher, also in standard literary German, written in normal Roman characters. Cf. Alexander Scheiber,'Max Nordau's Letters to Ignace Goldziher', Jewish Social Studies 18(1956), 199-207. 14

1 See note 23 above. I

4" Nordau, Erinnerungen.... 12, 15, 127. 14

3 Goldziher, Tagebuch. .. 213 (lines 3, 18), 244 (line -2). Ádám Nádasdy points out to me that the form "Brod" as used by Goldziher (p. 213, line 18) displays the voicing of the final unvoiced consonant, a characteristic feature of both Jewish-coloured German and Yiddish, although as a word it does not exist in its own right in Yiddish. 14

4 Goldziher, Tagebuch..., 217. 233