Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 202 April 1, 1992 1) A blessing? (Mikhl Herzog) 2) A blessing? (Zev Bar-Lev) 3) Wexler (Ellen Prince) 4) Yiddish for Hebrew speakers? (Mayer Goldberg) 5) Yiddish tapes? (Jeff Finger) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Mar 92 22:56 EST From: ZOGUR%CUVMB.BITNET@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: To Henry Mullish and Dan Breslauer Henry Mullish: Your version of that "blessing" is interesting. It seems to have reinterpreted a Slavic word into Hebrew. Hebrew "beten" is 'stomach' but, as I understand the phrase (which I did not hear from my mother), it's "gey ke benye matri" (Will some Slavist please reinterpret?) and its reference is NOT to the 'stomache'. Aside from discovering the phrase in the Yemenite repertoire you say nothing about having discovered what it means. Whadayasay? Dan Breslauer: Forgive me, I didn't mean to be "advising". Welcome! Mikhl Herzog 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Mar 92 13:00:03 -0800 From: zbarlev@sciences.sdsu.edu Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.201 is "gey kebetten materi" used in yiddish? am i late to a diuscussion here? in hebrew, it tends to be pronounced "kibini mat" (which almost makes it sound like an upside-down bathing suit), but the russian original is "k yabinoy materi" (which i will leave untranslated unless asked). Zev Bar-Lev 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Mar 92 12:48:42 EST From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.201 [Meylekh Viswanath writes:] >...Also, I have heard that on the >basis of syntax, modern Hebrew seems to be turning >Indo-european (e.g. the relative lack of usage of smikhut >forms, as opposed to 'x shel y', as in the book of the boy, >in English). >Meylekh please note that this change would be morphological, not syntactic, since np -> np pp was always grammatical in hebrew. (i.e. a noun phrase consisting of a noun phrase and a prepositional phrase.) in addition, a language cannot 'turn indo-european'--indo-european is a genetic classification. a language can come to look more like an indo-european lg than like another type of language, which is frequently the case where there is significant language contact, (actually, one of the most famous examples of this is in your native language! i'm thinking of emeneau's stuff on dravidian/indic constituting a 'linguistic area' with certain common features.) but a language cannot 'become' indo-european. the issue with wexler's claims is whether hebrew IS indo-european, genetically, not whether it has borrowed certain elements from indo-european. furthermore, i may be wrong on this, but i think i recall reading something about an analogous change in modern arabic. finally, neither yiddish nor slavic would say 'the book of the boy'. both would use genitive case-marking, not a prepositional phrase. so a yiddish or slavic explanation for the hebrew change would be suspect, to say the least. (and the fact that both yiddish and slavic use genitive case-marking in no way suggests that yiddish is slavic--GERMANIC and slavic use possessive case-marking. note that you don't really say 'the book of the boy' in *english*, either, tho you can get closer to it than in any other germanic language, perhaps due to the powerful influence of french on middle english.) zayt gezunt. ellen prince 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Mar 92 11:42:27 -0500 From: Mayer Goldberg Subject: An Israeli Student in the U.S. Would Like to Learn Yiddish ... I'm an Israeli student studying abroad. I would like to learn Yiddish. Can anyone recommend a text which is intended for Hebrew speakers? Thanks, Mayer Goldberg mayer@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Mar 92 16:29:39 PST From: Jeff Finger Subject: Yiddish Learn-a-language cassettes? Anyone know of any cassettes for learning Yiddish? Thanks, -- Itzik Finger -- ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.202 Submissions: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu Business: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles.