The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #26508   Message #1643993
Posted By: chico
08-Jan-06 - 01:44 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen
"written as "schoen" mit an umlaut over the "o" so it would appear to be from German instead of yiddish in order to sell more records in those antisemitic times."

That is quite a strech that the record industry in America (Strongly influenced by Jews) in the late 1940's was "antisemetic". It is in fact quite unsupported by any evidence. There is something called the law of parsimony--I'll spare you the explanation. Nevertheless, it is far far more likley that most people both and outside Germany are more familar with the standard German character rules and preferred to have the title with the correct spelling. The "Yiddish" words above are in fact transliterations from the actual hebrew script (which Yiddish is written in). They are transliterated without modern German spellings for various reasons, but a conspiracy of "antisemitism" is not one of them.

Please do not spread rumours without some basis in fact.