Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 185 February 24, 1992 1) Dos und yents (Dovid Braun) 2) Skotsl kumt (Bob Rothstein) 3) Hitn un vayl (Mordechai Steinberg) 4) Salad (Yude-Leyb Proger) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 16:36:53 EST From: David Braun Subject: dos un yents Yes, ikh hob af dir faribl = 'I'm upset/displeased with you, you've offended me'. The word is not a negative polarity item, i.e., it doesn't need to appear alongside a negative. It may be used in an affirmative sentence. reb yude-leyb: what is the pronunciation of _parech_? If [parekh], then it's from Yiddish parkh (regionally pronounced [parx, parex] 'head scab; S.O.B. (male only, I think)'. The derogatory epithet of Yiddish-speakers (and their Mod. Heb.-speaking progeny) for Sephardim is dokh _frenk par(e)kh_. Is this the same word? I wasn't clear in my note about the Bund. There was a Yugntbund (Bundist youth organization) in the US (and elsewhere?) until the most recent decades (in the 70's definitely; into the eighties?) And Camp Hemshekh was of the Bund (closed in early '80's, methinks). Anyone with more (and more precise) info.? Does anyone know the lyrics to the song "Rumenye" which Aaron Lebedeff was famous for singing? Or does anyone know where they are printed? A dank in foroys. Dovid Braun 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 21:02:38 -0500 From: ROBERT.ROTHSTEIN@SLAVIC.umass.edu Subject: "Skotsl kumt" In re "skotsl kumt": In vol. 17, no. 2 (Dec. 1957) of _Yidish shprakh_ Yudel Mark answered an inquiry about the expression as follows [in my translation]: "The greeting _skotsl kumt_, with which one primarily greets a dear female guest (although one could in certain cases say the same words to or about a man), has intrigued many people. All sorts of hypotheses have been put forward about the origins of the expression and a number of folk etymologies have been created. The most widespread are: (1) "gots viln kumt," as an allusion to the women's blessing "sheosani kirtsono"; (2) "eyshes kotsin kumt." It was also suggested that it comes from the German expressions: _sei Gotts willkommen_ and _das Heil Gottes kommt_. The great Jewish philologist Dr. Alfred Landau showed that the expression comes from a Middle High German greeting formula: _bis gote (unde mir) wilkom_, or for short, _bis (mir) gote wilkumen_. Alfred Landau also cites dialect forms: in the Swabian dialect, _bis got wilke_; in Regensburg and generally in Bavarian German, _gotlkum_; in an area of Moravia, _skolkuom_; in Silesia, _skodlkomt_. (For more details, see _Yidishe filologye_, 1924, pp. 336-334.)" Bob 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 24 Feb 92 12:17:00 EST From: Nahum Goldmann Subject: Message Re: Bob Goldberg's request. 1) To keep an eye on = akhtig gebn. Gib akhtig oyf di kinder zey zoln gurnisht zebrekhn. Also hiitn = keep an eye on. Hiit up di kinder zey roln kholile nisht krank weren. hiit up = gib achtig. 2) Veil: Gib achtig oyf di kinder veil (because) ikh muz geyn zim Shoykhet. Du kenst oyfmakhen dus Fenster veil di kinder Shlufen. (veil - while). 3) Veil sounds right in the sentence "Konikh gey arop in keler veil du bist in kikh". 4) Take care of = Di mime hot untz gehitn - or better - hot oyf untz akhtig gegebn. Mordechai Steinberg c.o. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 20:14:57 IST From: RHLE302@HAIFAUVM.BITNET Subject: Salad TENDENTIOUS POSTCARD CAPTION A picture postcard of Mea Shearim published by Palphot of Herzlia, Israel, carries the English caption: "Jerusalem - At Mea Shearim Quarter / Extreme Religious Jewish Quarter." The Hebrew caption is neutral and translates the first half of the English caption. -.Extreme-. is quite a loaded descriptor and hardly appropriate for a postcard. Most of these "extremists," incidentally, speak Yiddish, which obviously only an extremist would. ***** AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS OF YIDDISH This association (which in Yiddish calls itself "Amerikaner farband fun yidish-profesorn"), with headquarters at Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, New York 11367, USA, publishes the English-language journal _Yiddish_ and a newsletter. It is alluded to (and perhaps immortalized?) by the British novelist and critic, David Lodge, in his brilliant comic romance, _Small World_ (London: Secker and Warburg, 1984). Describing the social amenities which are inseparable from the scholarly sessions at the annual convention of the Modern Languages Association of America, Lodge writes: "You can attend the cocktail party by the Gay Caucus for the Modern Languages, or the Reception Sponsored by the American Association of Professors of Yiddish, or the Cash Bar Arranged in Conjunction with the Special Session on Methodological Problems in Monolingual and Bilingual Lexicography...." (p. 314) There are professors of Yiddish in America, and some of them belong to the above association (not all of whose members can read Yiddish -- many teach Yiddish literature in translation). Lodge's collocation here (only part of the list) of gays, Yiddish professors and lexicographers (known as harmless drudges) was, perhaps, random. Yet to many people the words "Professor of Yiddish" sounds like "Professor of Graffiti" or "Instructor in Underworld Slang." In short, it sounds incongruous, but only to those with misconceptions and prejudices regarding the language. ****** JEWISH MOOD CUBE (Ludic Yiddish Revisited) One of the many expressions of the vulgarization of Yiddish in our day is the proliferation of "gimmick" objects which exploit sentimental cliches commercially. The customers for these items may even be under the impression that there is Jewish cultural value to owning them. One American entrepreneur has concocted a "Jewish mood cube," each of whose four sides is inscribed with a Yiddish expression of the sort which persons who might know very little Yiddish would recognize immediately. The principle of the cube is that of the _dreydl_, known to all Jewish children from the celebration of Chanuka. The _dreydl_, or top, has four sides, each of which is marked by the first letter of significant words (Nes godol hoyo shom) 'A great miracle occured there', the letters nun, gimel, hey and shin traditionally standing for the Yiddish words nem 'take', gib 'give', halb 'half' and shtey 'stand'. A "pot" of hickory nuts or pennies or some other desired prize is shared out according to one's luck at turning the top. The same notion of four various fates is present in the presumably amusing "Jewish mood cube." David Gold has called attention to the "ludic" function of Yiddish, a function he finds characteristic of declining languages. The words on the cube, which I give as spelled there, are _farblonjet_ 'lost', _tsuris_ 'troubles', _a mechaieh_ 'feels good' (exclamation), _oy vay!_ 'good God!' or 'help!' (exclamation). The manufacturers (Colton-Lewis) of the "fun" cube tried to represent the sounds of the words as they are spoken in Jewish English, where they are current. The correct transcription is farblonzhet, tsoris, a mekhaye, oy vey! Tsuris is a legitimate variant and the spellings, while not scientific, do somewhat help the ordinary person in recognizing the words. The manner in which they are actually pronounced would depend on a number of factors, principally on the speaker's distance from spoken Yiddish. The word farblonzhet, it is interesting to note, is regarded as a "funny" word per se. It is derived from a germanic prefix and a slavic stem, but is felt to be uniquely Yiddish. It is that, but those who react to the word as comic per se are delimiting the word's meaning as a native speaker would not. This is not to deny that the word farblonzhet often crops up in Yiddish in humourous contexts. Trivial though the cube is in itself, it tells us something about the way isolated lexemes in a declining language are selected for survival. All the four terms of the cube are affect terms, three of them negative and one positive. The acculturated children of East European immigrants are perhaps less emotionally candid in certain respects than their less cultivated parents, who spoke a language rich in exclamations and expletives. Each of the four terms in question have particular phonotactile features and are normally spoken with distinct expression, accompanied by facial and other movement. The two exclamations in particular are virtually sung and dramatized when used conversationally. Such words, therefore, are hard to forget and hard to give up, since they do not have felt equivalents in English. At the same time the cube may be mocking typical emotional outbursts of the immigrant generation and the tendency for frightened people to panic needlessly in moments of apparent difficulty. The cube is thus also self-directed in-group humour. It could also be skirting a psychological truth, which might explain why otherwise sensitive people have bought this toy. Yude-Leyb Proger ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.185