Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 119 December 3, 1991 1) Vatnmakher (Aren Abramson) 2) Vatnmakher (David Sherman) 3) -ekhe (Khayim Bochner) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 02 Dec 91 13:37:48 EST From: Aren Abramson Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.118 Re: /vatnmakher/ I look forward to Mikhl Herzog's finding of the work of Dov Sadan on the topic. In the meantime, I must say that my group's gloss of the term as 'cotton-maker' is surely not good. Having looked it up in the Harkavy and Weinreich dictionries, I guess a better gloss is 'wadding-maker' or 'padding-maker.' It must be a person who makes cotton stuffing for quilted garments or bed- quilts. Anyway, an explanation of the folklore is still needed. Aren 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 2 Dec 91 16:53:05 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.117 I'm just guessing, but might it be a reference to the vatenmakher taking old horses, slaughtering them, and using them (perhaps the bones?) in some way relating to his trade? I plead ignorance as to what a cotton-maker actually does. (Doesn't cotton *grow*?) 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 02 Dec 91 18:49:12 -0500 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.118 Ellen Prince writes: > i take back whatever i said about judgekhe, since i have no > idea what -khe is. what is it? There's a feminine suffix -ekhe, which I've mostly seen used two ways: 1) In folktales and the like, to form words for female animals where there is no established word for the female. (berekhe = she-bear). 2) To form a nickname for a woman based on her husband's name; Mikhl has given examples of this. Both uses have, to my "ear", an old-fashioned folksy/humorous sound. (I put "ear" in quotes because I think I've only encountered this suffix in writing.) Yudel Mark's grammar mentions these two uses, and also 3) Forming a nickname for a woman based on her lastname (e.g. Goldbergekhe). Maybe the reason Noyekh preferred this suffix is that the woman in question was the wife of a judge rather than a female judge. Previously the other feminine suffixes were often used this way, but nowadays, in non-orthodox circles, a khaznte is more likely to be a female cantor than the wife of a cantor (I think :-). So maybe Noyekh preferred this (rare) suffix because it's unambiguous: it always, as far as I know, names a woman based on the name of the corresponding male, while the other suffixes nowadays tend to name a woman based on her own characteristics. (And more power to them for that!) -- Khayim ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.119