Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 118 December 2, 1991 1) Vatbmakher (Mikhl Herzog) 2) -khe (Ellen Prince) 3) Double negatives (Bob Werman) 4) Koshere vayber and antinomianism (Hershel Bershady) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Nov 91 15:40 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.117 Re: vatnmakher: I think that Dov Sadan has a piece on this somewhere. I'll follow it up. Mikhl. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Nov 91 23:33:25 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.117 >From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET >Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.114 > >Ellen: It has to be judgeKHE! It's just NOT judgeKE. > >Mikhl. mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. (somehow 'mayn aveyre, mayn aveyre, mayn greste aveyre' loses in the translation...) i take back whatever i said about judgekhe, since i have no idea what -khe is. what is it? 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 30 Nov 91 21:49 +0200 From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.116 Robert D Hoberman writes: I don't know when all this came into Hebrew. I'm pretty sure Biblical Hebrew does not have negative concord. It might very well be due to Yiddish influence. I don't have my copy of Haim Blanc's article "Some Yiddish Influences on Israeli Hebrew" from The Field of Yiddish at hand. *************** He may be right that Yiddish contributed to negative concord in modern Hebrew but it cannot be the only source. Even though double negatives meaning no are not clear in Biblical Hebrew they are striking in the language of the Talmud. Thus, we find uses like lo amar \clum, lo asa v'lo clum, lo clum hi. See TB Erubin 11a; Yoma 11b, Mishna Nedarim 1.1. __Bob Werman rwerman@hujivms.bitnet rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il Jerusalem 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 01 Dec 91 21:26:29 EST From: "Dr. Harold Bershady" Subject: Der rebbe Mendele has evoked shards of memory I didn't realize I had One such is of my Bubbe laughing with some of her women friends over a song. 2 of the verses went, I think: "Sha, sha der rebbe geht/Sha, sha der rebbe geht/ Sha, sha die rebbetzin tsishpreht/ A tishtich affen tish; Sha, sha bime rebbe angt/Sha, sha bime rebbe angt/ Sha, sha bime rebbe angt/ A zager affen vawnt.." I would be grateful to Mendele for any further verses. What is of interest to me other than the pleasure of this memory is the fact that my warm, knishes and chalah baking Bubbe, punctilious in her observance of the Sabbath and all other holy days, sang (or at least enjoyed) this bawdy, "anti-clerical" song (this doesn't seem the right way to characterize it, but how would one refer to such a song?) Do any Mendele subscribers know of other such songs? Or bawdy stor- ies or perhaps jokes? Were the singers of such songs (if more than one) more often women than men? (I don't recall my Zayde participating in this) The joke tellers are often men, of course; it's the songs that are of interest. A final note: when one calls someone "buhbi" this is a term of endearment, meaning sweet, honey, etc. Is this a spinoff from bubbe, who's often sweet, but rarely if ever called buhbi? Hershel ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.118