Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 57 August 28, 1992 1) The Ashkenazic final /s/ (Ellen Prince) 2) Eyn balmelokhe tsum tsveytn (Pinye Weichsel) 3) Introduction (Ted Steinberg) 4) Sesame and Kibitzer (Robert Rothstein) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Aug 92 17:16:48 -0400 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 2.56 >[question] from subscribers: > > Would it be fair to assume that today's Ashkenazic final >-s (aggodes, tekhines, kehilles, etc.) was also used by >Yiddish speakers 200 years ago? yes, it would be fair to assume that. the /s/ is presumed to have arisen at a time when the hebrew target sound was /th/ (as in the english words 'both', 'wrath', etc.). yiddish speakers, like german speakers today, could not pronounce that and, again like many german speakers today, substituted /s/. i don't know the chronology of the hebrew sound change (perhaps someone out there in mendele-land does?) but i'm quite sure that hebrew /th/ ceased to be /th/ (and became, at least for most dialects, /t/) a lot farther back than 200 years ago. we can safely infer that the yiddish /s/ in these words predates the hebrew change to /t/, since yiddish speakers should have had no trouble with /t/ and the words you list would then be something like *agodet, *tekhinet, *kehilet. (the '*' means 'unattested'.) of course, this substitution may have already occurred for these speakers before they ever got to german-speaking lands. since none of the languages of lands adjacent to the german-speaking territory has or had /th/, it could have happened in any one of them. all we can safely say is that they didn't migrate to german-speaking lands from england or greece, at least not directly! :) ellen prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 20:32:22 -0500 From: Paul Weichsel Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 2.56 Oyb maine finger hoben farblonget un gemacht fun a "Baker" a "Taylor", beyten zey mechile - nor far dem veyl a nomen is take a nomen un nit veyl a shneider is epes an untermensh. Dos is far mir a persenlicher frage - ich kum fun a mishpoche shneiders. In meine hoys is "ptsha" gehesen "fargliverts". Paul M. Weichsel (Pinyeh) 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 11:21 am EDT (15:21:44 UT) From: "Ted L. Steinberg" Subject: Introductory statement Hi. I'm Ted Steinberg from the State University of New York College at Fredonia, which is not a center of Yiddish studies. I generally teach courses in medieval and Renaissance literature, but I have a deep interest in Yiddish literature. I wrote a book on Mendele (1977) and have written several articles on aspects of Yiddish (and medieval Hebrew) literature. Given the absence of anyone here who shares these interests, I was delighted to learn about the existence of MENDELE. Ted Steinberg 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 23:11:15 -0400 From: ROBERT.ROTHSTEIN@SLAVIC.umass.edu Subject: Sesame and kibitzer 1) Sesame The 1984 Russian-Yiddish dictionary published in Moscow gives _der kunzhut_ as the Yiddish translation of Russian _kunzhut_, 'sesame'. The word, with stress on the second syllable, is also used in Ukrainian and Byelorussian, and is said to be a borrowing from Uighur, a Turkic language. 2) The last word on _kibitzer_? In the first supplement to his _The American Language_, H. L. Mencken mentions _kibitzer_ as an example of a word of German origin that entered English through Yiddish. He further cites Dr. M. J. Bach, "for many years London correspondent of the _Wiener Neue Freie Presse_" on the origins of the term. Bach relates a story told by Count Karl Schoenfeld (1828-66), whose memoirs were published in 1909. Schoenfeld served in the Austrian army as a staff officer under General Haizinger during the Italian campaign of 1848-9. The general "had a little dog called _Kiebitz_, meaning a plover..." The line officers called the staff officers _Kiebitze_. The word _Kiebitz_ "soon became a slang word for anyone who merely looks on at the game, and from the army it spread to the cafes of Vienna." Mencken comments that the connection "arose from the fact that, to line officers, staff officers seem to be mere onlookers." Robert Rothstein ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.57 If your message is intended for MENDELE, please write to: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu If you want to discuss personal business or have a shmues with the shames, please write to: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles. Bob Rothstein