Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.125 December 17, 1997 1) Abelson's encyclopedia (leon rosenberg) 2) H.D.Nomberg, the commentator (Louis Fridhandler) 3) efsher genug shen fun davenen (David Robboy) 4) yiddish expression (Pamela Quilt) 5) "hegdish" (Wolf Krakowski) 6) fremder menner fuhn kindheit uhn (Mel Poretz) 7) Linguistics (A. Manaster Ramer) 8) Jevel (Khevl) Katz - "Mucho ojo" (verter gezukht) (Zachary Baker) 9) khanike oy khanike (David Herskovic) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 10:34:41 -0800 From: leon t rosenberg Subject: Abelson's encyclopedia Re Abelson's encyclopedia mentioned by Gevaryahu [07.123]. I have a pristine copy of the text, but rebound. Whatever its lexicological or etymological or scientific linguistic merits it is an endless source of humor: the examples, in english, of 'idiomatic' usage are sensational. The best found to date illustrates 'to prune with' as "He pruned himself with borrowed feathers." More typical, 'hunt up' is given as "When you are in Chicago hunt up my uncle," which is certainly Ok. One can reconstruct a 1920s Brooklyn sociology from a compilation of the sentences given to illustrate usage, and in an evident attempt at being all encompassing, perhaps on the level of the Oxford-English, the archaicisms and colloquilisms defined are a gold mine. Whenever conversation with guests lags all one need do is take out Abelson, open to almost any page, and read especially the illustrative sentences. To illustrate, I have just taken the book off the shelf, opened at random, and have. by way of illustration thefollowing. avenge: He will avenge the blood of his servants. avenger: the Lord is the avenger of all. Right on! leon rosenberg 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 13:33:12 EST From: Lfridhan Subject: H.D.Nomberg, the commentator John Gay gave good advice. Those who in quarrels interpose, Must often wipe a bloody nose. John Gay (1685-1732), English dramatist. Fables, "The Mastiff" (1727). This post is, I hope, a contribution to Yiddish education, not to controversy. Reading Tsvishn Berg by Hirsh Dovid Nomberg piqued my curiosity about him. Surely there is more to him that that. I had read only what Encyclopedia Judaica said about him. Nachman Meisel includes a brief, appreciative essay about him in good Yiddish style and spelling in his book, Noente un Eygene (Those who are Close to us and of us), New York: IKUF (Yidisher Kulter Farband), 1957, pp. 121-127. It was written in 1942 in commemoration of Nomberg's fifteenth yortsayt, in the awful days of World War II. Meisel's essay is not the last word about him. Nothing is said about his participation in the Czernowitz conference of 1908, surely a key contribution and a key moment in Nomberg's life. In Meisel's assessment, Nomberg (1874-1927) emerges as lacking the soaring imagination required for story-telling belles-lettres. His characters never took on a life of their own, bursting the bounds set by the author, as happens in the works of many creative writers. On the other hand, in the last two decades of his unfortunately brief life, Nomberg became a highly talented and effective commentator on current affairs. _The commentator in him defeated the story-teller_. Once a week, he labored long and hard to put together his thoughts. The results were, in Meisel's judgment, masterful. Today, such carefully wrought commentaries would, no doubt, afford very valuable insights into the lively Yiddish world of those times. Are they accessible? In one passage, Meisel refers to Nomberg coming to Warsaw from his shtetl at almost 25 and his association with Peretz. Peretz was about 25 years older than Nomberg. Peretz was always filled with ideas, enthusiastic flights of imagination, and, compared to Nomberg, Peretz seemed youthful while Nomberg seemed old. In Meisel's essay, Nomberg emerges as a tragic figure, mainly pessimistic, depressed, and sometimes out of touch with then current excitements among fellow writers. Miesel writes (p. 121): grod ven nomberg gufe iz geven shvakh, mid, shtark-oysgeshept, iz dos arumike yidishe lebn in poyln ful geven mit lebn, mit impet, mit yunglekhe un laydnshaftlekhe farmestn. Oftmol hot es im shtark fardrosn un tif gekrenkt, vos di yunge, di naye farloyfn im dem veg, farshrayen im, fartumlen im... (Translation) Just when Nomberg himself was weak, tired, feeling rather drained, Jewish life in Poland around him was full of energy, bursting with youthful and passionate aspirations. Often he was deeply distressed and aggravated that the young, new colleagues would stand in his way, noisily shout him down... Of course, all of this is from Meisel's viewpoint, his _kukvinkl_. Nomberg deserves to speak for himself, and I hope some library collections afford that opportunity. Louis Fridhandler 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 10:43:43 -0800 (PST) From: David Robboy Subject: efsher genug shen fun davenen Concerning the ongoing discussion on whether the ongoing discussion of the word davenen is interesting, I found two things enlightening, not to say consciousness raising. One is that Philologos got dragged in, although he did not explicitly acknowledge Mendele in his column. The other was Leon Rosenberg's story about the parrot. David Robboy 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 01:41:02 -0500 (EST) From: Quiltmania@aol.com Subject: yiddish expression Is there a Yiddish expression that translates to "A rock in my heart"? I know a 94 year old woman that uses that expression in English, and am wondering if it has it's root in Yiddish. She speaks of the death of loved ones as "a rock in my heart". My grandma used to use the expression "A heartz vatic", which I believe to mean "heart ache"? Any Yiddish you know along these lines? Thanks! Pamela Quilt Minneapolis 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 15:46:18 -0500 From: "Kame'a Media" Subject: "hegdish" A "hegdish" was a community-supported building ( more often a hut or barn) for the use of the Jewish poor and homeless, and indigent transients in the shtetlekh. Its squalor and moreover, its < disorder> are memorialized in the use of "hegdish" as a synonym for "mess" or "chaos". Wolf Krakowski 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 15:58:47 EST From: EMPE Subject: fremder menner fuhn kindheit uhn Now that I read Mendele, I can scratch a longstanding itch propagated by my parents (Eishyshukers who prattled on in L:ithuanian, Polish, Russian, some German, their unique version of English as well as Litvak, der smetana fuhn Yiddisher folk. Who in the world are these people: the Motke in nit by Motke...the Itchkeh in Itchkeh der kuhritchkah...the Moyshe in Moyshe Kapoyer...the Mischa in Mischa Borch (a "pet" word for my father which my mother flung around the apartment like a bolo). I have a list of many other words which I haven't been able to trace strictly to Yiddish, though I haven't been as diligent about it as some of the polemicists I have been sloughing through since becoming an official Mendelista. Please forgive the horrible phoneticization. It's all I can do at my age to remember the subject of this brevele. Mel Poretz 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 16:31:42 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Linguistics Rick Turkel poses a good question when he asks what's wrong with admitting sporadic sound changes such as that in the Slavic word for '9' with a d- in place of Indo-European n-. The answer is rather simple: such sporadic developments (a) fall into cetain definite patterns, such as assimilation or dissimilation with respect to another item in a series (as in Slavic d- form for '9' because '10' begins with 'd') --but that only applies to words which are commonly found in a series; assimilation or dissimilation of nonadjacent s vs. sh sounds (e.g., Yiddish shames < shamash) or l vs. r sounds (e.g., pilgrim vs. peregrine), etc.,etc., and (b) cannot be used to justify an otherwise uncertain etymology--that is, we posit such changes in cases where we are certain about the etymology and cannot otherwise account for the sounds we find. There are many examples of very attractive etymologies which linguists would not accept until and unless the sound changes could be shown to be nonsporadic, although the best examples I can think happen to be in Armenian and so I wont go into them here. Davenen < divinare or divinum does not fit either (a) or (b), and THAT is why it cannot possiblybe accepted--even if there were no other objections (I think Birnbaum did have others). A. Manaster Ramer 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 16:35:29 -0500 (EST) From: Zachary Baker Subject: Jevel (Khevl) Katz - "Mucho ojo" (verter gezukht) Letstns hob ikh bakumen a cassette vos nemt arayn 10 gezangen funem repertuar funem argentiner yidishn artist Jevel (Khevl) Katz (1902-1940). A teyl fun di lider zaynen gezungen durkh Jevel Katz aleyn; di iberike durkh andere zingers. Di cassette iz geven tsunoyfgeshtelt privat, durkh mayne kolegn in argentiner IWO, fun alte diskn vos zaynen aribergefirt gevorn fun 78-rpm af tashme-format. A dank di bamiungen fun Chana Mlotek un Gila Flam hob ikh shoyn bakumen tekstn far 6 fun di lider vos af der cassette, ober nit tsu di iberike. Ikh vend zikh tsum oylem Mendelianer mit der bakoshe az, tomer ken ver fun aykh di verter tsu Jevel Katz's lid "Mucho ojo" (dem yidishn nusekh, nit dem shpanishn), iz zayt azoy gut un shikt mir tsu dem tekst. A hartsikn dank foroys. Zachary M. Baker 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 19:58:18 +0000 From: David Herskovic Subject: khanike oy khanike Can someone please provide the words for the khanike song 'khanike oy khanike'. The words were printed in last year's shabes khanike issue of the Forverts on the Mlotek's poetry pages. I had set the piece aside but unfortunately it got chucked out. a shaynem dank in a fraylikhn khanike tsi aykh ale. David Herskovic ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.125 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