Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 145 January 24, 1992 1) Yiddish and English (David Sherman) 2) Query (David Sherman) 3) Bal/bar and bird-watching (Melekh Viswanath) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Jan 92 20:29:54 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.143 Re visn/kenen: > This problem is encountered frequently among native English > speakers learning Yiddish (or German) because of the fact > that "to know" corresponds to both visn and kenen... Don't I know it. I have to work on my kids all the time on that one, even though they're "native" Yiddish speakers. But they're in school using English all day, which seems to affect the Yiddish they use at home with us and with each other. An even trickier one is "get". They (Ariela and Shoshana, who are almost 8 and almost 6; the two younger ones aren't old enough yet) know that "get", as in "receive", is "krign". This has led to things like "Ikh gay krign a lefl fun shiflud". I come back at them with "Krign krigt men fun an ander mentsh", which they're finally grasping (and using on each other!), and switching to using "nemen" instead of "krign" when the getting is active rather than passive. There's a more difficult use of "get", however. [Turn on whining tone] "Far vus krigt zi tsu hobn a tsikerl un nisht ikh?" Mistranslation of "get to", meaning, in youngkidspeak, to get some kind of special treat or favour. How should I tell them to express this concept? > I suggest the natural route > would be to borrow and not invent --"boyd-vutcher" sounds > good to me. mein eydim der boid vutcher--! Which leads me to another vocabulary question: for lack of a good Yiddish word, my kids use "vatchen" for watch, as for example if I'm assembling something and they want to watch me ("kon ikh dikh vatchen?"). Similarly, "vatchn TV". Any suggestions that don't sound stilted? 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Jan 92 22:09:59 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.137 Dovid Braun (hi Dovid!) writes: > I know of the 'ober/oder-"confusion"' from poylishe yidn > (Lodzh, e.g.). Doesn't Prilutski have a short article on > this in Yidishe filologye or Yidish far ale? Somebody > does, I just don't have the volumes at hand. Lodzh makes sense -- it's not far from Stashiv, which is my data point. Coming at all of this with little knowledge of the academic writings on Yiddish linguistics, I confess to never having heard of Prilutski. Could someone provide an overview of the main Yiddish language/grammar/linguistic publications that exist? For example, I have Weinreich's and Harduf's dictionaries, and I've seen the Oytser der Yidisher Shprakh, though never read or used it. Are Yidish filologye and Yidish far ale scholarly periodicals in & about Yiddish? (I'm probably opening a big can of worms here... I'm sure Mikhl Herzog's Yiddish-language-academics library is probably as large as my Canadian tax law library. I just have no idea of the range of what's out there.) And, tied in to the above, are there any publications people would recommend for people in our position, who are raising kids in Yiddish only (and starting to need more and more vocabulary, as the kids grow)? So far we've pretty much used Weinreich and my in-laws. Oh, and Mordkhe Shaechter's neat little verterbukh on "Trogn, hobn un fri'ike kinder-yorn". Anything I should try and get from the NYBC? 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1992 11:58 EDT From: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.144 My feeling is that bal and bar may only be used with nouns and they imply a certain amount of possession vis-a-vis the noun. This would fit bal guf, bal agule, bal shem tov, balebos, etc; There are other cases, such as bar plugte or bar mitzve or bal khoyv where the relationship is not directly possession, but even there the connection seems to be implied immediately by the noun. Thus bar mitzve is not one who has a lot of mitzves (under his belt) but he is one who is metzuve, bal khoyv can stand for the creditor or the debtor, and bar plugte is a disputant (plugte=dispute,argument). With bar oyfes, I can immediately see bird keeper, but bird watcher seems farfetched. Perhaps mistakel oyf (on the pattern of mokher sforim?). Even if it is a direct translation (almost) of bird watching, being from Hebrew would 1) give it the tang you want and 2) mark it as a non-conventional use of 'looking at birds'. melekh. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.145