Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 132 January 5, 1993 1) Reflexives (Yankel Lantz) 2) Reflexives (Yankl Matisoff) 3) Reflexives/Yiddish goats/Ukrainian goats (Bob Rothstein) 4) Reflexives (Moshe Taube) 5) Annual State of the List message (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 Dec 1992 23:15:34 -0500 (EST) From: STU_RWLANTZ%JMUVAX.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: reflexives Many thanks for your responses concerning my question involving "Dem Milners Trern." I was, indeed, guilty of a misunderstanding of the lyrics when I heard "Juden" instead of "Yurn." I have a real problem with lyrics in any language. At any rate, the question of reflexives becomes even more interesting. Of such things are dissertations born, I suppose. Yankel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 2 Jan 93 17:06:46 -0800 From: matisoff@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Reyzele dreyt zikh Khaver Khaim Bochner, in connection with a discussion on reflexives, quotes a line from the song Reyzele as "Gey zikh nokh a por mol iber" --but the way I remember it fromthe record is "DREY zikh nor (nokh?) a por mol iber, bald vel ikh zayn fray..." Yankl Matisoff 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 03 Jan 1993 21:16:20 -0500 (EST) From: rar@titan.ucc.umass.edu Subject:Reflexives/Yiddish goats/Ukrainian goats The examples discussed by Messrs. Lantz, Finkel, Axelrod and Bochner (Mendele 130-31) warm the heart of a Slavist since the Yiddish _zikh_, like the corresponding element in the Slavic languages, has a multitude of functions, only one of which is the etymological, reflexive (object = subject) one (hence the quotation marks in my title). 1) In "di reder dreyen zikh" the otherwise transitive _dreyen_ is made intransitive and a possible object ("someone or something turns the wheels") becomes the subject. 2) In "di yorn geyen zikh" the "reflexive" element is really dative and the line is parallel to a different line from "Reyzele" than the one quoted by Khaim Bochner, namely, "gey ikh mir a freylikher." In both examples the dative (like Polish _sobie_ or Russian _sebe_) adds the meaning of casualness, of doing something for oneself without any attention or interest in what is going on around one. In a song by the Russian bard Bulat Okudzhava a solider says, "Idu sebe, igraiu avtomatom"--"I just walk along playing with my machine gun." 3) When Reyzele tells Dovidl "Gey zikh nokh a por mol iber," she's using a "reflexive" verb _zikh ibergeyn_ 'take a stroll', which is not in Weinreich or Harkavy, but is in the _Groyser ver- terbukh_, and which is probably a calque from Polish _przejsc sie_ [diacritics missing] or Russian _proitis'_. 4) "Se davnt zikh nit" is also a Slavic-like construction. I would expect that you could add a dative, e.g., "Mir davnt zikh nit." Here the "reflexive" element serves to present the action as happening (or rather not happening) independently of the subject, which can only be expressed as someone experiencing (but not causing) the action: it's not that I'm intentionally not praying, but that the not-praying is happening to me. 5) One of the classic examples of Slavic influence on Yiddish is the replacement of separate reflexive pronouns for first, second and third person (as in Germanic and Romance) by a single reflexive pronoun: cf. French je me lave, tu te laves, il/elle se lave; German ich wasche mich, du waschest dich, er/sie wascht sich vs. Yiddish ikh vash zikh, du vashst zikh, er/zi vasht zikh like Polish myje sie, myjesz sie, myje sie. The original text of Zalman Shneour's "Margaritkelekh" (1909) shows the older Yiddish construction in the verse where the boy asks the girl if she's bashful/embarrassed: --Du libst mikh? --Ikh lib dikh! --Du shemst DIKH? --Ikh shem MIKH! --O lib mikh un shem DIKH un shvayg... Most modern editions have --Du shemst ZIKH? --Ikh shem ZIKH! --O lib mikh un shem ZIKH un shvayg... [emphasis added]. [More about Yiddish goats] In Mendele 110 Seymour Axelrod asked about Bernstein #362: "Oyf a yungn boym shpringen ale tsign" and Yitzhak Kertesz later suggested that the proverb may really be about "gentlemen, who also prefer to jump on the 'yunge boymelakh.'" He may well be right, but since proverbs rarely have only one reading, let me propose another, based on international parallels. Polish has a proverb (attested as early as 1527) that states that even goats climb or jump onto a tree that is leaning: "Na pochyle drzewo kozy laza" (or: "Na pochyle drzewo i kozy skacza"). There are also parallels in Russian and Ukrainian. The 1527 attestation is from a collection of Polish proverbs with Latin parallels, and the Latin version for this one is: "Arbore dejecta quis ligna non colligit." (With my minimal Latin I make of this: "Who does not collect the wood of a fallen tree?"). The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs cites (2nd ed., p. 837): "When the tree is fallen, every one runs to it with his axe (hatchet)," with parallels from classical Greek (Menander) and a variant of the Latin proverb just cited. In the Kosciuszko Foundation Polish- English dictionary the Polish proverb cited above is translated 'people will walk all over you if you let them.' Of course leaning trees are not young trees, but the Ukrainian variants do include versions with low, crooked and small trees as well as leaning ones. Now what we really need is to find someone who actually uses the proverb or remembers hearing it used. [More about Ukrainian goats] Reb Noyekh and Elliot Gertel (120-21) recall a mixed-language story about a Jew and a goat: Panyuh maruhvoy, duh mansuh iz uhzoy: Yah mahyu shookhn Heyrsh Beyruhluh Tu vihn mayoot para izim. Tu shtikhum krikhum nah mayu dakh. Yah yeymu skazaluhm tu vihn shelakh. I was stumped by the _maruhvoy_, but finally realized that this is the Russian _mirovoi_ 'justice of the peace'. So the Slavic component of the text is a somewhat less than grammatical mixture of (mostly) Ukrainian, Russian and Polish: _panie mirovoi_ 'Mr. Judge', _ia maiu_ 'I have', _ta vin maie_ 'and he has', _na moiu dakh_ 'onto my roof' [incorrect feminine accusative _moiu_ for masculine _mii_], _ia iemu skazal ta vin_ 'I told him and he' [with what seems to be the Polish 1st person singular ending (_-em_) on the past tense form of the Russian verb _skazal_ 'said']. Bob Rothstein 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 04 Jan 93 14:04:18 EST From: Moshe Taube Subject: Reflexives 1. You misheard some of the words. It is "di yurn geyen zich" `the years go by' 2. The zich is not exactly `themselves'. It is the Dative reflexive, sometimes called `ethic dative' or `sympathetic dative', of the kind you find in : gey ich mir shpatsirn. Moshe Taube 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 16:24:23 EST From: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Subject: State of the List A gut yor aykh alle, tayere mitarbeter un leyzer! Ikh gib do iber dem letstn khezhbn fun unzer reshime. Medine Abonantn ------- ----------- Australie 1 Belgie 3 Brazil 1 Canada 13 Daytshland 4 Fareynikte Shtatn 175 Groys Britanie 4 Israel 16 Nederland 2 Poyln 2 Sakh-akl 221 Nishkoshe. Alevay voltn geveyn mer. Ober der _iker_ iz: men darf _shraybn_, nisht nur leyzn. Vos zogt ir? Noyekh ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.132