Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 220 April 21, 1992 1) More about _bis_ (Joseph Galron) 2) Bis/word order (Ellen Prince) 3) Nokh a bisl (Brett Kessler) 4) Bis/word order(Moishe-Nussen Eytan) 5) Zikh ontrinken Peysekh (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 19:48:04 EDT From: Joseph Galron Subject: More about Bis ... I am not sure that I read all the Bis disscussion on Mendele, but I was sure that Bis in the Israeli jargon came from the German Beissen: I remember, as children we said: "Ten li bis meha-gelidah shelkha" (Give me a bite from your ice cream). This is my Bis to the discussion. -- Joseph (Yossi) Galron 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 19:59:49 -0400 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.218 [Ruvn-Mendl Turkel writes:] > >In response to Bob Werman's thoughts on Modern Hebrew "bis" >for bite: it most assuredly was borrowed from the Yiddish >"bisl" meaning "a small amount." Any attempt to involve >Arabic smacks of folk etymology - why look for a >complicated etymology when a simple one will do quite >nicely. if it's so simple, what happened to the '-l'? i've never heard bis in yiddish. or could it be from the yiddish noun _bis_ 'bite'? ----------------------------------------------------------------- [Gus Grannan writes:] > >I have a short question on the acceptability of a Yiddish >sentence. In History of the Yiddish Language, Weinreich >gives a sentence: Nokhn bentshen hot der zeyde gekoyft a >seyfer Is the following variant acceptable? Nokhn bentshen >der zeyde hot gekoyft a seyfer. no, it isn't. (you might find in a song or a poem, but it's not said.) if you're coming to this from germanic, you might want to add this to your database: ikh veys az nokhn bentshn hot der zeyde gekoyft a seyfer. *ikh veys az nokhn bentshn der zeyde hot... ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 17:53:56 -0700 From: Brett Kessler Subject: bit & bite & bisl & piece & epes For what it's worth, the derivations of Hebrew "bis" from Yiddish, and Yiddish "epes" from earlier "etwas" ring true to my ear, although I'd be interested in hearing a more closely reasoned explication of the alternatives. I can't subscribe to reb Ruvn-Mendl's surmise of cognation between "bis" and "piece", however. I don't think Grimm's Law would let us get away with this. A Gaulic "p-" would turn up in Yiddish as "v-", wouldn't it? Brett Kessler 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 11:00:32 +0100 From: me@suzuka.u-strasbg.fr Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.218 [To Ruvn-Mendl Turkel:} I would rather make its origin "a bays" which is exactly the same as "a bite" in English. [To Gus Grannan:] My immediate (intuitive) answer would be NO. But I am not a native yiddish-speaker and there are many savant linguists on the list who surely know better. ==m-n eytan@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 Apr 92 From: nmiller@trincc Subject: L'koved khol-amoyd-Peysekh Mikhl is of course correct in pointing out (Vol 1.218) that exuberant drinking is supposed to occur only on Purim and Simkhas Toyre. But what's a youngster to do? Hert a mayse: There was once a time (Mikhl knows this but maybe he's forgotten) when 'kosher l'pesach' labels were scarce indeed. The very notion that they could be used by non- Jewish firms was strange. (This is before Maxwell House and their free Haggadas.) So there was no milk, no seltzer, and water in my home town was utterly foul. Vos tut men? We kids would come home to a lunch of (what else?) gefrishte matzo fried in shmaltz and ..a glezele vayn. Where did you get wine during Prohibition? That's a story for another time. But since I wasn't the only kid on my block to get fed that way, you can imagine how much teaching our Misses O'Briens and Kellys accomplished. Maybe that's when I was supposed to have learned short division or what adverbs were. Noyekh ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.220 Submissions: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu Business: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles.