Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 140 January 19, 1992 1) Geven and geveyzn (David Sherman) 2) Kayn ayin hara (David Sherman) 3) Folk etymology (David Sherman) 4) Folk etymology (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 Jan 92 13:19:09 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.133 Bob Goldberg says about 'geven' and "geveyzn': > I believe Weinreich has them as alternative forms, but my > grandmother used them both. I think she used the longer > "geveyzn" at the end of a long sentence, perhaps for > emphasis: "ikh bin dortn in varshe tsvey vokhn geveyzn" (I > was in Warsaw for two weeks), while the shorter "geveyn" > was used immediately after the helper verb: "ikh bin > geveyn in hospital" (I was in the hospital). I have noticed exactly the same distinction in my mother-in-law's usage. I'd been planning to ask this question to MENDELE, in fact, but Bob beat me to it. I've adopted the same distinction in my daily speech, and I find it very natural in terms of the rhythm of a sentence -- which might in fact explain the origin of the distinction. I don't know if the linguists & phoneticians have a word for this, but it seems to me that in the middle of the sentence, the word has less stress and there's more of an incentive to "get on with it" and progress to the meat of the sentence (that is, WHAT or WHERE were you geven'ing). On the other hand, if you're putting the word at the end of the sentence (for reasons other than having learned too much German grammar:-), then (a) you've already covered the important stuff and explained what or where you were gevezn'ing, and (b) you are deliberately stressing the having-been part of the sentence for whatever reasons, so why not give it another syllable? Comments from the professionals? 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 Jan 92 14:17:13 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.132 Bob Goldberg writes: > And this brings up my final comment in this now rather long > message: Use of "kayn" without "nisht". Obviously the > expression "kayn ayin ha ra" (no evil eye) (pronounced > "kayn-e hora" or "ken-e hara") is a counter-example to the > claim that "kayn" is never used by itself. I'd disagree. Kenehora certainly isn't a sentence or a clause, but just an expression or fragment. The full expression (no longer used) would be "keyn ayin horo zol nisht ...", wouldn't it? 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 19 Jan 92 11:46:24 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: tsu-rik and d-ort While we're on the subject of etymologies, folk or otherwise, there are a couple that I didn't notice for a while, but now seem obvious. Can anyone confirm whether the etymologies are legitimate? 1. tsurik (back, as in direction), seems to come from tsu + rikn (back, as in anatomy). 2. dort (there) seems to come from d + ort, "the place". (Actually, I first noticed this was saying to one of my kids who was trying to fit something into some place that didn't fit, "s'iz nishtu ka or't dor't".) There are a couple in English, incidentally, that sort of caught me by surprise when I first noticed them. "painstaking" is, of course, pains + taking, but there's a tendency to think of it as pain + staking, which doesn't contribute anything to the meaning. Second, "dishevelled" is from the French deshabille', and is dis-helleved, not at all related to the dish. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 19 Jan 92 12:49:56 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.136 >From: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET >Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.133 > 1) folk-etymology cannot be folk-etymology >simply because it is wrong. Such a use of the term would >seem to rob it of its usefulness. 2) Defining folk- >etymology on the basis of the actual hypothesis cannot be >meaningful either; professional linguists themselves use >sound similarities to posit relationships; they too pull >apart words to make sense out of them. Hence it must be >what is done after the hypothesis is generated (or not >done) that makes folk-etymology what it is. This was my >suggestion. hi melekh. of course you're right on (1)--it's not being wrong that makes it a folk etymology. it's just that the wrong ones are the 'cute' ones that linguists mention. but i disagree with (2)--historical linguists (i.e. those that worry about positing etymologies) do NOT use the same 'methodology'--they study old texts, where available, and do comparative and internal reconstruction, a description of which is even too tedious for *me* to subject mendele to. there is no way their methodologies could ever come up with sparrowgrass for asparagus or the like. and it's exactly the methodology of looking at a single word and hypothesizing an etymology on the basis of sound or spelling similarity to other words that makes it a folk etymology, whether it's right or wrong. better? ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.140