Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.135 January 19, 1998 1) pronunciation: idish vs. yidish (Elaine Gold) 2) Kybosh (Arthur Sugerman) 3) a lost chorus (Mel Poretz) 4) tshvern, sheken, fesn (Freyde Parsky) 5) pravn, broyges, anglicization (Rick Turkel) 6) Shul/Temple (Ellen Cassedy) 7) Etymology of praven (A. Manaster Ramer) 8) Famished is fermisht (Gilad J. Gevaryahu) 9) John Glenn (Al Grand) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 09:50:34 -0500 (EST) From: Elaine Gold Subject: pronunciation: idish vs. yidish Could someone explain the the variant pronunciation 'idish' rather than 'yidish'? Is it due to dialect variation? spelling pronunciation from avoidance of the double yod? (If this has already been discussed on Mendele - please excuse.) Elaine Gold 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 15:56:48 -0500 From: Arthur Sugerman Subject: Kybosh I hope I may be permitted to reopen this topic,and perhaps to close it permanently! I agree that kybosh is not Yiddish, but as a Jew born and bred in Ireland and familiar with Irish Gaelic the origin of Kybosh has always been obvious to me. In Irish Gaelic and I'm sure in Scots Gaelic also Caip Bais -pronounced kipe (to rhyme with ripe) bawsh - means cap of death. It was applied to a black cap which a British judge put on before pronouncing a sentence of death. Hence to put a Kybosh on, or put on the Kybosh. According to Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins and also Robert Hendrickson's Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins the Irish poet and storyteller Padraic Colum was aware of the "cap of death" meaning of Kybosh, although they both give "Cie Bais" as the Gaelic form. I am sure Padraic Colum knew better than to give this impossible Irish formation. Arthur Sugerman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 10:58:23 EST From: EMPE Subject: a lost chorus My mother, Anna Lubetsky Poretz, was the reigning songbird of Brighton Beach from the mid-thirties to 1986 when she died. She held court at the Fourth Street Boardwalk Pavillion, at supermarket openings such as (anshuldik mir) The A&P, at senior citizen clubhouses and would belt out her considerable repertoire at the drop of an invitation. One song she sang with particular gusto had five choruses. All I recall are four, with the next to last a blur. She'd hear a song on Second Avenue where I was shlepped as a child because the union assessed our family three tickets to their "benefits" and I was the unlucky (then! lucky today!) child to fill that third seat. This particular song might have come over from Eishyshok with my folks as it was a hotbed of anti-Hasidic sentiment. Its great shul allied itself closely with the philosophy of the Gaon in nearby Vilna. The song is lusty and my non-singing father was always there at the end with a rousing TA-DA, such as the way Lebedeff finished off many of his numbers. I'd welcome the missing stanza. In a shtetele nit veyt fuhn dahnent...Ay Yi Yi Is a rebbele dohrt fahranent...Ay Yi Yi Lebben lebt ehr nit fuhn shaymas...Ay Yi Yi Nohr fuhn d'Hasidim, di bahaymes...Ay Yi Yi Yi ...Ay Yi-Yi-Yi...Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi Is der nessen shtetl gesheyn...AYY Mehn hut der rebbe's zuhn gezeyn...AYY Mit a shiksa tsuvishn der beymer...AYY Un a shamas und un a shaymer...AYYY (per opening stanza) Is der rebbe bahld geluffen...AYY Mit a shtecken zey bahshtruffen...AYY Is der rebbe's zuhn fahtribben...AYY Un aleyn mit der shiksa is der rebbe fahrblibben...AYYY (per first stanza) Enferen eynem dem tsvayten...AYY Vus hut dus badeyten?...AYY Hut der shiksa yetst alleh myles...AYY Un zee ken affileh paskeneh shylehs...AYYY (per first stanza) TA-DA! Mit freundshaft MEL PORETZ 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 12:23:25 -0500 From: "Kame'a Media" Subject: Ratevet! Ikh greyt tsu tsu zingen a kloglid (fun Vashtin) fun Beregovski's purimshpil dem 29tn yanuar. Ikh volt gevolt visn di maynungen fun etlekhe verter vos ikh ken nisht gefinen, say in verterbikher, say in Stutchkofn. Khotsh zey zeynen zeyer daytshmerish, kenen mayne daytsh-redndike fraynt oykh nisht di verter. Di verter zeynen geshribn romanizirt, loytn altn rusishn stil. 1) tshvern-- dem heylikn fayertog, vos ikh hob geton mit di yidishe meydn, shpinen un trinen, shpinen un tshvern 2) sheken--atsind muz ikh sheken mit mayne ale fir tsu der tir. 3) fesn--Zamstag derum hob ikh voyl batrakht un ir mol herun un fesun, ayn gute nakht. A dank, Freyde Parsky 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 12:50:37 -0500 From: rturkel@cas.org (Rick Turkel) Subject: pravn, broyges, anglicization 1) pravn I agree with Meinhard E. Mayer that pravn comes from the Slavic. Cognates exist in several other Slavic languages besides Russian. I also agree re: bentshn, although I must have missed something because I never saw any specific question on its origin. 2) broyges Re: the question of Mark Shenken about broyges. It is of Hebrew origin: "rogez" means "angry, irate;" "berogez" is therefore "in an angry state." "Breyges" is a litvish pronunciation, which goes well with his observance of this pronunciation among South Africans, who were mostly of litvish origin. [Note from moderator: other readers sent similar responces] 3) anglicizing Yiddish words Bob Poe wrote about how Yiddish words are spelled in English. As strongly as I feel about standardizing the transiteration of Yiddish into English for scholarly purposes, I think trying to change established spellings of accepted Yiddish words is like spitting into the wind; it's oysgevorfene verter. Unless there is a well organized movement to do so, I can't imagine the entire English- speaking world agreeing to change spellings that have existed for decades (or longer). Even the mail.jewish moderated mailing list, which attempts to use standardized transliterations, accepts the established spelling of words that have been assimilated into English, whatever their form - Hanukka(h), Cohen, etc. 4) hegdesh Bernard Gershen asked about this word. It is of Hebrew origin, and is more properly written as "heqdesh." Something (usually produce) that was set aside to be brought to the Temple as an offering was heqdesh, or made qodesh (holy), and once so designated was forbidden from any other use. The reason the /q/ became a /g/ has to do with assimilation to the following voiced consonant. Rick Turkel 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 13:23:14 EST From: CassBlum Subject: Shul/Temple Elye Palevsky (07.133) refers to a story by Avrom Reisin in which the distinction between a shul and a temple figures heavily. The story is "Der yid vos hot khorev gemacht dem temple." It appears in "fun undzer yidisher literatur: lernbukh farn limud fun yidish" (From Our Yiddish Literature, edited by Chava Turniansky, published by the World Council for Yiddish and Jewish Culture, Tel Aviv, 1983). In the story, the assimilation-oriented congregation of a New York suburban "temple" is greatly affronted by the loud Old-World-style davening of a greenhorn who mistakenly believes himself to be in "shul." Ellen Cassedy Bethesda, MD 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 15:35:22 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Etymology of praven The question of just which Slavic language Yiddish gets its Slavicisms from is intricate. In some cases, such as domb, pl. dembes 'oak', there is no question that this can only come from Polish, but in other cases we either can't know, don't happen as yet to know, or have to do some careful thinking to find out. It is in particular all too easy to assume that the Slavic languages from which Yiddish has borrowed are only Polish and Russian (as many amateur Yiddishists seem to). Especially for the oldest Slavic words in Yiddish, it seems pretty clear that at least some of them come from Old Czech or Old Sorbian. And here is an interesting thing to ponder: unless I am much mistaken, even the best experts until recently simply did not consider Sorbian, even though once this possibility was mentioned (by Paul Wexler I think), it becomes clear that words we used to regard as Czech in origin can equally well or better be analyzed as Sorbian instead. Now, how do we approach questions like this? I will not go into details here, but there are really three considerations. One, we must think not of which Slavic peoples Yiddish speakers have had close(st) contacts with in the 18-20th centuries but rather in the Middle Ages, and once we see this, it becomes clear that we must look to those Slavic languages spoken furthest to the west or southwest AND that we must take into consideration the fact that Slavic (incl. Sorbian) was spoken in much of today's eastern Germany. Two, we must pay attention to the precise forms of the words, so that a word like nebekh can only be from a Slavic language (like Czech or Sorbian etc.) where the sound 'g' had changed to 'h' or 'kh', and so this cannot for example be from Polish nieboga (which would have given Yiddish *nebek or *nebeg and not nebekh). Three, we must pay attention to the precise histories and meanings of the words in the different Slavic languages. I have never studied the problem of praven specifically, but these are the kinds of things I would consider before deciding which Slavic language it actually comes from (or whether it is even possible to tell--because in some cases it just is not possible to decide). A. Manaster Ramer 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 15:45:14 EST From: Gevaryahu Subject: Famished is fermisht Harkavy lists it as 'mixed up' and Weinreich (p.473) fermishn 'confused'. My parents used it too. Gilad J. Gevaryahu [Note from moderator: other readers sent similar responces] 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 16:21:28 EST From: Savoyid Subject: John Glenn The news that John Glenn is going back into orbit again at the age of 77 brings to mind a story that I heard when he was the first American to orbit the earth 36 years ago. It's about a woman who hears a news report on the radio about Glenn having made three circumnavigations of the world in a space capsule. She meets her neighbor that morning and says, "Host gehert az John Glenn iz arumgeforn der velt dray mol ?" Not overly impressed, her neighbor quickly replies, "Nu, az me hot gelt, fort men !" Al Grand ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.135 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