Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 71 September 22, 1992 1) ES and DOS (Ellen Prince) 2) A.A. Roback (Shloyme Axelrod) 3) ES, etc. (Mikhl Herzog) 4) Purim terminology (Fishl Kutner) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Sep 92 11:57:06 -0400 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: ES and DOS [nick leibovic writes:] >es and dos need not be at the beginning of a sentence to >mean roughly "it" and "this",respectively.but in >colloquial usage they are often just fillers and don't >refer to anything... thanks, nick, but it's precisely the sentences in which they are 'just fillers and don't refer to anything' that i'm interested in. would you understand a sentence with one of these 'fillers' EXACTLY the same way you would understand the same sentence without it? a dank. ellen prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 22 Sep 1992 13:22:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Seymour Axelrod Subject: A.A. Roback Can someone explain the apparent disregard of the Yiddish-related work & thought of A(braham) A(aron) Roback (1890-1965), psychologist (Harvard, maybe) and Yiddishist? The libraries here at State University of NY at Buffalo have many of his books in English, mostly on psychology but some on Jewish topics, and one in German (psychology). He seems to have been a heavy contributor to Yiddish periodicals, specializing in issues of Yiddish usage, orthography, grammar, and so on. Two collections of his pieces appear as *Di imperye yidish* and *Der folksgayst in der yidisher shprakh*. I believe that some of his work was published by YIVO, but he has sharp criticisms of some of the dicta of the YIVO regularizers, e.g., Max Weinreich. He was upset, for example, by the loss of non-inital shtumer alef; his distress seemed partly based on esthetics, but also on grounds of legibility. He asks us (in *Der folskgayst*) to consider the made-up but possible name "Vuvulski", which in pre-YIVO oysleyg would be [tsvey vovn-alef-vov-alef-tsvey vovn-alef-vov-lamed-samekh-kuf-yud], but which would require six consecutive vovn in YIVO style: [tsvey vovn-vov-tsvey vovn-vov-lamed...] (Roback disapproves of any nikudes except in pasekh-alef and komets-alef.) "Es heybt on poshet shvindlen in di oygn ..." (The shtumer alef is of course not daytshmerish, nor is it potato- [or vinde-] Yiddish. What WAS the point of the ruthless stripping?) A related proposal by Roback: Yiddish should make use of the doublets *idish* (shtumer alef-yud...) and *yidish* (yud-yud...), the first to mean "Jewish", and the second "Yiddish". This seems a reasonable attempt to disambiguate. So "Mendele, Sholom Aleichem un (lehavdl) Norman Mailer zaynen ale idishe shraybers, ober nor Mendele un Sholem Aleichem zaynen yidishe." Is there anything wrong with the reasoning here? Seymour (Shloyme) Axelrod 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Sep 92 14:18 EDT From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Subject: ES and other matters Dave: re the "es" that I asked about. I have it recorded in Kovno. I've often heard it but never stopped to think about it. Some of your qu to me are precisely the ones I need answered. Another teaser: the "a" in the following: ver es hot anor farshtanen un ver es hot anor gevolt ANYONE? To return to some lingering questions: Yiddish "pots" (rhymes with "klots") from which English "putz" (rhymes with "guts") is, of course, NOT an acronym although the euphemism "pey tsadik" makes it seems so. It derives from a form widespread in the Aegean area (cf. Turkish where it means 'cleft in the buttocks' and Greek 'penis', I think). I wonder if it came West (along with croissants, perhaps) in French "put"-forms, English "pussy" --does anyone out there know. As for English "shmuck" (rhymes with "puck") from Yiddish "shmok" (rhymes with "shtok"), forget the "family jewels" nonsense. It cannot derive from German Schmuck which would have yielded a Yiddish variant *shmik. Silly, huh? Best bet (according to Stankiewicz) is Polish-origin smok (?) 'serpent'. Anyway . . . By the way, the word 'frum' is applied to God/G-d himself in khumesh-taytsh (See S. Noble in book of the same name). Mikhl. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1992 16:17:11 -0700 From: Philip Kutner Subject: Purim terminology My timing may be off, but I've been wanting to ask this . Can someone help me on the origin of "Purim-gret". Somehow the two words separately don't come out as the final word. Is there another meaning for "gret" not in Weinreich? Laundry, hmm :-). Fishl Kutner ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.71 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.