Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 175 February 17, 1992 1) Alt-modish (Dovid Braun) 2) Jew (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Enjoy! (Ellen Prince) 4) Jew (Meylekh Viswanath) 5) Yiddish accents (David Sherman) 6) Klafte (Yude-Leyb Prager) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 16:16:25 EST From: David Braun Subject: alt-modish Yude-Leyb Proger: I betcha the spelling _alte-modish_ in Mod. Heb. is somebody's confusion of _alt-modish_ 'old-fashioned' with _alte moyd_ 'old maid'. Is the use of _alt(e)-modish_ in Mod. Heb. widespread, or is it just in the article you cited? Dovid Braun 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 19:24 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.173 "Jew" and "to Jew" and its equivalents in a number of other languages, are frequently not "nice" words. I doubt that the reasons have anything to do with their linguistic structure. "dervay" l "in the meantime". "vayl" 'because'. English "while" = Yiddish "beshas". Did my message to Bob Goldberg concerning "Lasche" get through to you? I seem to have missed it if it did. Mikhl. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 21:32:14 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: p.s. on 'enjoy!' i neglected to mention what i think is the yiddish influence in intransitive 'enjoy!'--the 'missing direct object'. this is standard in yiddish for *any* transitive verb when the object is salient in the physical or linguistic context and, to a lesser degree, is found in 'yinglish', a dialect of jews of yiddish background, e.g. 'i'm making popcorn--you want?', as opposed to standard english '... you want some?' for some reason, 'enjoy!', with the object missing (and usually salient in the physical context, the speaker having just served it to the hearer), is, i believe, originally one of these yinglish usages but it has, for some reason, swept the country and become quite standard, as a sort of idiom. (i say 'idiom', since it's only used in the imperative, e.g. you still can't say in standard english 'i ordered a prime rib and i enjoyed.') Ellen Prince 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1992 11:49 EDT From: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.173 > > Why does _Jew_ make some people uncomfortable? I'd >like to hear people's feelings about this. >Dovid Braun In addition, English has a pejorative use of the word Jew as in 'to jew down'; on the other hand, we have 'to welsh on (a bet)', but Welsh is used nevertheless to refer to something/someone from Wales. Meylekh. _____________________ With respect to the very interesting analysis of Herzog's on why Yiddish speakers may be more into (folk?) etymology than other language speakers, here's another observation. I was listening to a gemore shier yesterday and the blat in question discussed why dror meant freedom and the explanation given was that it came from the word 'dar'= to reside; a free person can reside where he chooses. This is not an isolated instance; the gemore does that all over the place. In Eastern Europe, a Jew (not a Jewish person) would have been exposed to such etymologizing through his gemore study; and even if he himself (or she herself) did not lern, magidim would have exposed him/her to such etymologizing. Would not such preoccupation with exegesis be another explanation for the Jewish predilection for etymologizing? Meylekh. 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 14:12:21 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.161 Mark David writes in #161: > I found dumb the use of Yiddish accents in the film > "Enemies, A Love Story". If you think about it, in "real > life" the characters were really speaking Yiddish much of > the time with no accent whatsoever among themselves... The same goes for "Yentl". The characters in the film would have all been speaking Yiddish all the time. Yet when Yentl (Barbra Streisand) is being fitted for her khosn's suit the day before the wedding, the tailors speak with a strong Yiddish accent. (I don't remember whether her father, at the beginning of the film, and other characters, are also given Yiddish accents. The tailors are on the soundtrack, which I listen to occasionally.) What's more, they use classic Yiddish-in-English expressions, which I suppose Yude-Leyb would call ludicization: "You got trouble with the pents." "What's wrong with the pants?" "You'll find out ven you go, excuse me, to relieve yourself." And, to digress somwehat, where does the interpolation of "excuse me" *before* a reference to a "dirty" subject come from? I've heard it in English, from Yiddish speakers, but not in Yiddish. What's the Yiddish form? 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 09:16:30 IST From: len Subject: klafte i glimpsed at the reply on ENJOY -- which I still believe to have entererd General English via Jewish English from Yiddish -- and it is certainly true that I am not exactly up on what has been happening to English in the USA. -- i have an immediate problem -- i was called from a local paper and asked to say something about the origin of _klafte_ , which in Israeli Hebrew is not as strong as bitch -- there is a variant _kelevte_, on the pattern of _khaznte_, etc. that raises no problems -- but where does /klafte/ come from? the /f/ before /t/ is no problem, but where is the pasach from. in 1910 Golumb (p. 188) suggested the word is from H. _kalba_ (which is 'bitch' in the straight and figurative senses) or _kalvito_ which I don't know. in the next few hours i will try to learn something about this, but in the meantime perhaps mikhl herzog or others could give some etymological first aid -- does the atlas have anything to say on _klafte_? is is known in Western Yiddish? when does it first appear in EY? i know a 110 year old text where the writer uses _kalbe_ for 'bitch'. Yude-Leyb Prager ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.175