Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 146 January 27, 1992 1) Introduction (Fishl Kutner) 2) Farsheydns (Dovid Braun) 3) Grammar and etymology (David Sherman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Jan 92 05:57:15 -0800 From: Philip Kutner Subject: Introduction As editor of der bay, I want to add to contacts. It is sent 10X a year and started as Yiddish activities in the SF Bay Area. Now there is (TYN) The Yiddish Network in 78 cities in the US and 11 other countries. There are directories of Yiddish teachers, clubs, Yiddish/Klezmer groups (bands), and Yiddish radio announcers. Hope to be a clearinghouse for club and teacher information. Requests have been filled for teaching positions, gigs, and speaking engagements. I do not charge, but receive contributions to the Peninsula JCC which lets me use their facilities for our Yiddish club and mails the newsletter. No apologie--only a fact, I am just starting to begin to initially learn how to use this wonderful piece of equipment. Please let me hear from you. My home address is 1128 Tanglewood Way, San Mateo, CA 94403 USA, and the home phone is 415-349-6946. Please leave a message or respond on this medium. Philip "Fishl" Kutner 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Jan 92 16:25:46 EST From: braund@linc.cis.upenn.edu Subject: farsheydns Meylekh: For mistakl-of (singular: of; plural: oyfes) we would need to have mistakl in the Yiddish lexicon, which we don't. (We only have it, as far as I know, in a Whole Hebrew chunk -- in _peyrek_ [Pirkey Oves]: al tistakl bakankan...) So stam taking from loshn-koydesh doesn't help us. And _of_, anyway, is 'fowl, poultry' -- which I think is outside the observation habits of birdwatchers. Daniel (=David Sherman): The most common equivalent of 'to watch TV' in North American Yiddish is vatshn televizhn/televizye. From natives speakers in whose lives Yiddish has remained the dominant language (i.e., notwithstanding their move to the New Country) by speaking Yiddish in the family and with the spouse (esp. if the couple was together since before immigration and thus European speech habits were kept up to a greater degree than among others) I have heard kukn af televizye or kukn televizye. (Your in-laws, I assume, are still predominantly Yiddish users, nit azoy?) The latter is indeed a new use of kukn, since kukn is/was not a transitive verb. onkukn is a transitive verb, but it is a perfective verb and connotes intense, momentaneous looking (kh'hob ongekukt dem televizor = 'I looked at the TV [apparatus]' for but a moment, e.g.). From my family I know that 'to have a staring contest' (as kids are wont to do) is _onkukn zikh_. (The game that I know of this: lomir zikh onkukn. der vos vet frier lakhn der vil a khosn.) For the context that you mentioned, this would be perfect: ken ikh kukn vi du arbetst? (Note that arbetst is pronounced arbest.) Prilutski was a Yiddish linguist, folklorist, lawyer, member of Polish Parliament. Yidish far ale - pre-war YIVO publication, much like today's _Yidish shprakh_ of the YIVO. Yidishe filologye - dealt with lit., language, theater, folklore, cultural history. Also pre-war, YIVO publication. Use the Oytser fun der yidisher shprakh - it's the Yiddish thesaurus and can answer many questions for the person who already knows and uses the language. (For instance, the funny question a couple of months ago: are there Yiddish terms for descriptions of autumn. Az okh un az vey iz tsu undzere yidelekh if we couldn't express anything more than oysgetriknte bleter. The Oytser has the words under various categories.) It's also a YIVO poublication. Harduf's dictionary seems very so-so. The most necessary dictionaries are U. Weinreich's, which you already have, and Harkavy's Yiddish-English dictionary of 1927 (now reprinted by and available from YIVO). The latter publication has a lot of the less frequent words you'll find in Yiddish literature. It's indispensible. This e-message looks like an ad for YIVO! --Zaats gezint in a kish di kinderlekh. Dovid Braun 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 26 Jan 92 19:31:32 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.141 Ellen Prince writes: > re the idea about geveyzn at the end of the verb phrase and > geven in the middle, that's a nice project! i believe old > yiddish had only geveyzn, and we know that old yiddish was > verb final... We do? I didn't. Interesting. You mean participle final, like modern German? > dishevel: back-formation from disheveled disheveled: middle > english discheveled, transitive participle of middle french > deschevele', from old french, past participle of > descheveler, to disarrange the hair, from dis- + cheveler > (from chevel, hair of the head, from latin capillus). Oops! So I was wrong after all, though it's still dis- + xxx. Thanks for educating me on this one. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.146