Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 147 January 27, 1992 1) Watching, etc.(Moishe-Nussen Eytan) 2) Watching, etc.(Bob Goldberg) 3) Watching, etc.(Melekh Viswanath) 4) Oops! (Melekh Viswanath) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Jan 92 16:39:29 GMT From: me@SUZUKA.U-STRASBG.FR Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.145 Date: Wed, 22 Jan 92 20:29:54 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.143 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? I would use plain 'kiken' ('bakiken'/'unkiken' in the transitive case). 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; In fact 'ba`al' means 'owner'/'possessor' in Hebrew; that's the sense of ba`al as husband -- even it dismays some. With bar oyfes, I can immediately see bird keeper, but bird watcher seems farfetched. Perhaps mistakel oyf (on the pattern of mokher sforim?). melekh. Why not use 'tsoife oyfen' which is even closer to Hebrew; 'bar oifes' certainly doesn't mean bird-watcher for *me*, but I ain't neither a native Yiddish nor a native English (nor even Hebrew) speaker. ==moishe-nussen 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Jan 92 16:03:06 PST From: xidak!poseidon!bob@uunet.UU.NET Subject: David Sherman's Krign, Watch T.V. David: I see the problem with "get" since it's a degenerate case in English, both passive and active. Vos ken men ton? My son just learned his first pseudo-word yesterday, 'Dada', so right now he uses it to express everything he wants to say to me! Re: "vatchen", which I assume is really "vatshn" in YIVO: In English, "look [at]" and "see" are the active and passive forms, analogous to "listen" and "hear". The English "watch" also seems to be used as an active form of "see", but my gut feeling is that it's weird or special in some way. In Yiddish, there's "kukn" for "look [at]" and "zehen" for the passive form, "see", but I don't know a word for "watch", which in some contexts is very active, e.g., Watch the kids for me while I go next door. implies considerably more activity than "Look at the kids ..." or "See the kids ...". In Yiddish, there's an expression that literally means "keep an eye on", that would be appropriate in this context, but not for T.V. I almost wonder if "watch T.V." may be a misnomer in English, since it isn't very active. In fact, some people still say "look at T.V.", which is analogous to "listen to radio". Perhaps the etymologists can enlighten us on why we say "watch T.V.", and where "watch" came from. So my guess for "watch TV" is that one would use either "kukn" or "zehen". Thus, "ikh vil zehen 'L.A. LAW'" sounds OK for "I want to watch 'L.A. LAW'", which could also be rendered "I want to see 'L.A. LAW'". In my limited Yiddish, the more generic "I want to watch TV" could be "ikh vil kukn oyf televizshn", where the fact that there's no definite article before "televizshn" signals that I want to watch what's on T.V., rather than the T.V. set itself. I also assume that T.V. is English (in Yiddish, would it be "tes vov vov"???). For "May I watch [what you're doing]?", how about "ken ikh kukn [oyf vos du tust]?"? Or if they really mean they want to look AND COMMENT, how about using "kibitsn", which seems more honest than just "watch"? As usual, I have a frage of my own: My native-Yiddish-speaking grandmother used to say "di mime hodel hot genemen 'care' oyf untz" (Aunt Hodel took care of us). Vizoy zogt men 'take care of' oyf Yidish? Bob Goldberg 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1992 15:13 EDT From: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.145 Regarding dave's comment on his kids' use of vatchen, Mexican-Americans near the El Paso border ( I don't know of other places) use watchear for 'to watch'. bay undz nitst men 'afkikn af televizye'. melekh. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1992 11:09 EDT From: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.144 A correction to my previous posting regarding 'watching television'. My wife informs me that what she uses is 'kikn af televizye' and not 'afkikn af televizye'. Sorry for the error (as might be obvisou, I myself do not use these terms regularly. melekh. melekh ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.147