Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 178 February 19, 1992 1) Frantsoyzish (Mikhl Herzog) 1) Various (Mikhl Herzog) 2) Zhargon (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Jew, Klafte (Bob Werman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 08:35 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB Subject: Frantsoyzish To Ellen Prince and anyone else interested in the history of French, roosters, cats, and nuts: Ellen, The recent bit about "Welsh" brought an old fantasy to mind concerning the history of French about which I know nothing except with respect to the French "rooster". I think I've found/invented/dreamed a parallel. It occurred to me one day as I walked along the Seine and passed a restaurant named "Nos Ancetres les Gaulois (sp?)". To be fair to others, I recapitulate, briefly, the French "rooster" story. (More about the barnyard school of linguistics on another occasion.) Allowed to develop unhampered, the Latin words, gallus 'rooster' and cattus 'cat' would have merged in a single form *gat meaning both 'rooster' (Standard French "coq") and 'cat' in (southwestern?) French dialects. The threat (to farmers, hens, and cat lovers) of being unable to distinguish these two creatures led to the substitution of a number of slangy type terms to designate 'rooster' in the affected area. In the trade this is known as applying therapeutic methods to the pathology of homonymy. Now to the point: "Wales" and its derivatives "Welsh", "walnut", etc., are cognate with "Gaul". Question: How do you say "walnut" in French? "Noix", right? (Ital. "noce"?) which just means 'nut', no? Why isnt it further specified? How about this as an explanation; in the absence of drastic measures to prevent homonymy, the name of the above-mentioned restaurant could be read to refer to "our ancestors, the walnuts". Intolerable, for right thinking Frenchmen, I'm sure. What do you think? Mikhl p.s. Yiddish is an important source of Rotwelsch! [In order to sneak a little more Yiddish into Mikhl's post, the shames asks him and others to comment on 'galiganske hon' i.e. a swaggering cock-of-the-walk Pat Buchanan kind of fowl.] 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 22:48 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB Subject: Re: Mendele Vol 1.176 1) Dovid: re palatalization of "l" after k/g: klyafte/glyuz, etc. see also palatalization of "n" after k: knyi, knyepl, knyobl, etc. 2) As for "Jew": it's "marked" and it carries its "markedness" into situations in which, as you say, "nobody is shouting it in a derogatory way. 3) "faribl" as in "hot keyn faribl nit" 'don't take it amiss', i.e., 'don't take it FOR EVIL'. Used positively? In what sense? Perhaps only in "Ikh hob faribl gehat". Mikhl. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 23:05 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB Subject: Re: Mendele Vol 1.172 Leonard, Sholem Aleykhem called himself "a zhargonisher shrayber". Historically "zhargon" is just another name with which the language was designated, perhaps a word of pejorative connotation etymologically but not applied pejoratively within the language. I think we have to distinguish between things like Yiddish is just a jargon, not a language" and, as many right-meaning Yiddish speakers still recall, saying that "er redt zhargon". Also, I'm reminded of Max Weinreich saying that when an English speaker doesn't understand a word, he hides the fact and quietly goes to look it up in a dictionary; a Yiddish speaker, zolst mir moykhl zayn, writes a letter to the editor of the Forverts and says "there ain't no such word". I'm not sure I've ever used the word "frekh" but I'm sure I've heard it used in Yiddish. "A frekher yungerman, an azes-ponem". Daytshmerish? Maybe! Hob keyn faribl nit. I delight in your stuff. Mikhl 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 12:19 +0200 From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.174 In Mendele Vol 1.174, Ellen Prince writes: >on the home front, there was a similar taboo on 'jew' in >america in the early part of this century, with 'hebrew' >being the euphemism chosen. cf. hias ('hebrew immigrant aid >society') and the ym/ywha (young men's/women's hebrew >assn). I remember hearing "of the Mosaic persuasion," which sounds positively Byzantine to my ears, and therefore - presumably - perfectly acceptable. ************************ In Mendele Vol 1.175, len asks for the origin of klavte. Klavte is the standard Aramaic pronounciation of the female dog, or bitch, kaf-lamed-bet-tav-aleph, which scholars suggest should more properly be pronounced kalb'ta. __Bob Werman rwerman@hujivms.bitnet rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il Jerusalem ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.178