Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.105 November 21, 1997 1) shmuzn (Carl Goldberg) 2) talking turkey; back to India! (Meylekh Viswanath) 3) baleytn & banugenen (Hugh Denman) 4) Forverts book review (David Herskovic) 5) IB Singer's Spinoza of Market Street (Jacob Nussbaum) 6) forverts gehert tsu der literarisher velt (Leybl Botwinik) 7) Joe and Paul (Steve Berr) 8) Joe and Paul and KlezKamp (Heynekh Sapoznik) 9) Some general reflections (Alexis Manaster Ramer) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 18:48:54, -0500 From: BBNK42A@prodigy.com (MR CARL A GOLDBERG) Subject: shmuzn Can you stand one more contribution concerning the Yiddish word "shmuzn"? The word has entered German, too, but in the meanings of: 1) to soft- soap or butter up; and 2) to smooch, spoon, pet. In German, a "schmuser" can be either a flatterer or a flirt or smoocher. Carl Goldberg Tempe, Arizona 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 12:59:48 From: "P.V. Viswanath" Subject: talking turkey; back to India! Kathleen Rose tsitirt [07.103] Norman Berdichevsky ("the mother of languages" _ariel_ 104 1997), loyt vemen de torres, a converso, hot di akhrayes farn vort 'turkey' meynendik indik, vos er hot bazirt dem nomen afn hebreishn _tuki_. Oyb azoy iz turkey sof-kl-sof fun indiye, vayl Bishop Caldwell, in zayn 'Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages' halt az _tuki_ shtamt fun alt-tamil 'tOkai' 'sheyn foygl; pave.' Keday tsu dermonen az _tuki_ gefint zikh in tanakh in seyfer melokhim un in seyfer divrei hoyomim, baym dershraybung fun di skhoyres vos shloyme ha meylekh's shiffn hobn tsurikgebrakht fun indiye. Kathleen Rose cites Norman Berdichevsky as being of the opinion that De Torres, a converso was responsible for the use of the word _turkey_ to refer to the bird, and that it was a corruption of Hebrew _tuki_. If so, then it ultimately comes from India! Bishop Caldwell in his 'Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian languages' says that hebrew _tuki_ comes from Old Tamil _tOkai_ meaning beautiful bird or peacock. It is worthwhile to note that the hebrew word occurs in tanakh in Chronicles and Kings in connection with a description of items brought back by King Solomon's ships from India! Meylekh Viswanath Pleasantville, NY 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 02:17:11 +0000 From: Hugh Denman Subject: baleytn & banugenen I am grateful to Hershl Glezer for providing us with further examples [07.103:5] of the differential development of 'ge-' from MHG on the one hand to NHG and on the other hand to Y. In my view, what he says serves to amplify rather than to refute my earlier remarks on this topic [07.099:3]. Let us try and systematise. We seem to have 4 or 5 categories: 1. Y has retained 'ge-' where NHG has not: 'gefinen', 'gedoyern' 2. NHG has retained 'ge-' where Y has not: (are there any such cases? I know of none.) 3. Y shows greater Bavaro-Austrian influence than does NHG: 'glustn', 'gring', 'grod', 'g(e)vald' 4. Y has conflated two MHG prefixes (where NHG has not): 'dergreykhn' 5. NHG has conflated two MHG prefixes (where Y has not): 'begleiten', 'begnuegen' (This last example is particularly interesting, since it represents an exact parallel of the case previously under discussion: 'begnuegen' < 'benueegen' X 'genueegen'; 'banugenen' < a Middle Bavarian cognate of 'benueegen' lacking Ablaut. There is even a NHG influenced parallel to 'bagleytn': 'bagnugenen'.) But, in any case, there is no evidence for any general Y (preconsonantal?) 'g'-dropping rule (a fortiori in borrowings from NHG) pace [07.098:2]. Hugh Denman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 10:17:18 +0000 From: David Herskovic Subject: Forverts book review In the October, 17 issue of the Forverts, Yosef Fridlender reviewed an article by Dovid Asaf that appeared in a journal called 'Alafim' no. 14 1997. Some time ago he reviewed another book published by 'Mechon Yisrael'. Can someone please provide me with more information on the above journal and publishing house. Many thanks, David Herskovic 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 17:13:54 -0500 (EST) From: Jacsyl1@aol.com Subject: IB Singer's Spinoza of Market Street I do not have access to the original yiddish of Singers stories. Could you tell me the yiddish for the above story title? Thank you. Jacob Nussbaum 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 08:51:54 +0200 From: Leybl Botwinik Subject: forverts gehert tsu der literarisher velt in mendele 07.104 shraybt Sholem Berger dos folgndike: "Congratulations to the Forverts editors on joining the rest of the Yiddish literary world! " ikh bagris oykh dem forverts farn onnemen dem yivo oysleyg (khotsh ikh halt zeyer shtark fun dem shtumen alef, un s'iz mir a shod vos es vet dort mer nit zayn. ober nit vegn dem bin ikh oysn, un nit itst iz di tsayt dos tsu bahandlen). ikh meyn, ober, az es iz a feler tsu zogn az 'ersht itst' vert der forverts a teyl fun der literarisher velt. hekher 100 yor vi di beste yidishe shraybers un literatn shraybn farn forverts. es kumt oys, az ale shraybers un ale yidishe oysgabes un bikher vos zaynen nit 100% "yivo", gehern nit tsu der raykher yidisher literarisher velt... ikh meyn, az es fodert zikh do an oyfklerung. leybl botvinik, netanya -derekh agev, ikh hob a nayem internets-adres. es iz: leyblb@Amdocs.com 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Nov 97 10:13:40 -0500 From: Stephen Berr Subject: Joe and Paul Oh boy! I do remember it!.. but I think that the penultimate line went "a suit, a coat, a gabardine". This is the tiniest change! I also remember "coat" being pronounced something like "koyt". The beat was quite infectious. A driving syncopation with klzmer like sound. Steve Berr 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 10:54:19 -0500 (EST) From: Sapoznik@aol.com Subject: Joe and Paul and KlezKamp In response to fraynt Dembart's frage about Joe and Paul's: Yes, there was a store by that name (billed as "The Aristocrats of the Clothing Industry") which sponsored Yiddish radio broadcasts in the NYC area from the middle 1930s until it closed sometimes in the late 1940s. Their catchy jingle was written by Sholom Secunda. The song quoted in Lee Dembart's posting was a popular parody by the Barton Brothers in the early 1950s made for the Apollo label aptly named "Joe and Paul". Secunda's jingle went as follows: Joe un Paul a store a fargenign Joe un Paul dort kent ir bilig krign A suit a coat a gitn zolen perfect Nor fregn darft ir, koyfn nor bay Joe un Paul Speaking of commercials, many Mendelyaner have e'd me asking if there is still space at this year's KlezKamp: the answer is yes, but not for long. Please don't delay, if you are interested in attending don't postpone returning your application and if you'd like one please drop us an e at: livetrads@aol.com. Heynekh Sapoznik 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 10:58:36 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Some general reflections Some of the recent discussions on Mendele seem to me to suggest that some (many? most?) of the participants seem to forget that (a) 'Yiddish' is not just the language of the Jews of Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine in the 19th-20th century, but was also the language of the Jews of Alsace, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, Northern Italy (some of these into our times, some earlier) and that it goes back uncontroversially to the Middle Yiddish texts of the 15th century (whether 'Old Yiddish' going back a couple of centuries earlier is also Yiddish is controversial), and (b) Max Weinreich's big book is not the only nor by any means THE authoritative work on the history of Yiddish (the works of Birnbaum, Fischer (Bin-Nun), Mieses, Beranek, Sapir, and others are at least as important and on some points obviously superior; moreover, there has been a lot of work since Weinreich's death, by people such as Katz, King, and Wexler, which one cannot ignore even if one disagrees with them on many things, as I do). Let me give some examples of why these two points are important to remember. First example: many of the questions and points made here make sense only with regard to modern Eastern Yiddish, but not with regard to Yiddish generally. One may wonder about Slavic influence on the syntax of modern Eastern Yiddish but not on that of Yiddish, because Yiddish as a whole has very very little in the way of Slavic of any kind: the words nebekh, koyletsh, khotshe, khapn, and at most one or two more are the limit of the Slavic influence on Yiddish as a whole (and indeed until my recent paper, I believe that the antiquity of even these few Slavicisms in Yiddish was not accepted). Thus, as far as syntax goes the only thing we can say is the trivial observation that nebekh seems to have the same syntax in Yd as in Slavic (by the way, for those who still do not accept that nebekh is Slavic, the fact that this word occurs in sentences in the places where it does seems to me to prove the Slavic origin, even if we had no other arguments). Second example: in deciding where a word like dav(e)nen (or any other) could come from, one needs to have some sense of what we do know about the evolution of different Yd dialects (and of course one needs to know which dialects the word occurs in). It is difficult, for example, to agree that a Turkic origin makes sense given that this word occurs in large parts of German Yiddish. Also, my own view (this might be controversial) would be that dav(e)nen must have replaced orn (a word of Romance origin) in the more easterly dialects of Yiddish (orn survives throughout the more westerly dialects), and that the dynamics of the history of Yd suggest that the more easterly dialects often replaced words of Romance or German origin with either Slavic or Hebrew-origin ones. Since Slavic has nothing for us to derive dav(e)nen from, Hebrew seems the obvious working hypothesis (although with adequate evidence one COULD show that this is not so). Third example: the idea that Yiddish originated among French Jews who migrated into the Rhineland was to be sure common to Birnbaum, Fischer, and Weinreich (although the latter also mentioned the Bavarian city of Regensburg as a non-Rhineland place where the 'Earliest Yiddish' was spoken, and I dont think ever said where those Jews came from). But as far back as the 1920's, Mieses offered very good arguments (which later writers mostly ignore) that almost all of the Romance vocabulary in Yiddish comes not from France but from Italy. It is too early to be sure, and no one has done any serious work on this, but my own research tends to bear out almost everything Mieses said. In addition, the nasal realization of the Hebrew ayin which (I think) we must assume for the earliest forms of Yiddish in words like mayse, gayve, mayrev, etc. are consistent with the nasal pronunciation of ayin in Italian Jewish Hebrew pronunciation, and so on. (This too is a topic where more work is needed, and is now being done). The bowdlerized version of Weinreich's theory that Yiddish originated in FLoter' (meaning the Rhineland, not Lorraine, by the way) was not even the whole of his actual theory (though it may have been Fischer's and Birnbaum's), and it certainly is not sufficiently supported to be held up as established fact. Nor is it even today the received theory, since in particular Katz, King, and Wexler all reject it (for their own reasons). In short, I think that the history of Yiddish is a fascinating area of study where much more remains to be done than has already been done, and the true joy of Yiddish to my mind is in the doing. Such problems as the etymology of dav(e)nen are in this picture very small beer indeed, but it is precisely against the background of this bigger picture that we must seek to solve such problems. But much bigger questions to which we do not yet know the answers are how old Yiddish is, where in Germany it originated, what kinds of German, Hebrew, and Romance entered into it, where exactly it gets its small Slavic component (we do know it cannot be Polish, contrary to "common sense"), and so on. And all of these problems are being actively worked on, with every hope of the answers being found in the next 10 years so. If we restrict our notion of Yiddish to the language of Mendele (i.e., recent and modern Eastern Yiddish) and/or if we assume that the history of Yiddish is a done deal and to be found all conveniently laid out in the one more or less popularly accessible book (and the only one available in English or Yiddish), we will miss the whole point of Yiddish historical linguistics. Alexis Manaster Ramer PS. Lest I be misunderstood, none of this means for example that my preferred etymology for dav(e)nen is right. It is the overall approach to ANY problem of Yiddish historical linguistics that I am concerned with here. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.105 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html