Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 73 October 1, 1991 1) More curses (Hershel Bershady) 2) Fuller Amplification (Aren Abramson) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 30 Sep 91 19:18:04 EST From: "Dr. Harold Bershady" Subject: CURSES, DISTINCTIONS, ADDENDUMS Many thanks to Mikhl Herzog for clarifying the difference between "broygez" and "in ka(a)s." Types of naronim were wonderful. Here is an addition to the trolley car in "bukh": zol essen nickels und cocken trahnsfers. I owe this to my cousin Helen Schneyer. A relative once shouted to an asssimilated Jewish woman the following in English -- I'm sure it's a translation: "Nothing perso- nal, but if you lived out the rest of your life today, I wouldn't mind." Can anyone supply the Yiddish version? 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 01 Oct 91 09:47:03 EST From: Aren Abramson Subject: RE: Mendele Vol1.65 I think Shames Noyekh is right about /kloks/ as a mishearing of /klog/ in what may have been to begin with /a klog tsu Kelombes/ 'Woe to Columbus." Perhaps this was the process. My English-speaking friend, or maybe his grandmother, devoiced the /g/ in /klog/ by assimilation to the voiceless affricate in /tsu/. With a weak stress on the latter,the vowel may have been so reduced that our English speaker, not really knowing Yiddish, made the wrong word-break, yielding /klokts/, which was then simplified by the dropping of the /t/, yielding /kloks/ as an idiosyncratic neologism. Having unknowingnly created this distortion, he then chose another preposition, /af/ 'upon', to put after it. If some such explanation is right, it supports my memory of my childhood experience. I wonder what a Yiddish linguist like Mikhl Herzog would say about this. By the way, a quick look at home early this morning showed /klog/ to be feminine in the Weinreich dictionary but masculine in Harkavy! The latter gives a number of examples of its use. Aren ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.73