Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.037 June 18, 1993 1) Vacation time (Noyekh Miller) 2) Miscellany (Bob Rothstein) 3) Nekhtiger tog (Pe'rets Mett) 4) Hybrid idioms; playing-card terms (Shleyme Axelrod) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Jun 16 13:17:59 1993 From: noyekh miller Subject: vacation time If you plan to be away from your machines for any length of time and don't want to clog up your mailbox, here's how you can disengage _temporarily_ from Mendele. Send this message: set mendele nomail to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Needless to say, when you've returned refreshed and ready for more mendele, send to the same address as above this message: set mendele mail Fort gezunt un komt gezunt! Noyekh 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 17 11:13:00 1993 From: ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN Subject: Misc. [shmarovoz--3.006] Ukrainian _shmarovoz_ or _smaroviz_ = a) 'wheel-greaser' and hence 'someone involved with wagons and therefore constantly covered with grease' and b) 'someone dressed in dirty clothing'. Yiddish also has _shmarovoz_ and _smarovoz_ in both meanings. Ukrainian _shmaruvaty_/_smaruvaty_ and Russian _shmarovat_ 'to grease, lubricate' are presumably from Polish _smarovac'_ 'idem', which is in turn from MHG _smir(w)en_ or MLG _smeren_. Cf. modern standard German _schmieren_. But there is also a Russian dialect and argot (thieves' slang) word _shmara_ = 'thief's lover or prostitute,' of uncertain etymology. Combined with the root of the Russian verb _vozit'sia_ 'busy oneself with' it gives another meaning to the word _shmarovoz_, namely, 'pimp.' I don't know whether that meaning exists in Yiddish; it would make sense as a possible reading of the line from the song "Dem ganefs yikhes" (or "Vos bistu, ketsele [or: kotinke] baroygez?"), especially in its context: Mayn tate iz a shmarevoznik [a variant form?], Di mame ganvet fish in mark, Un der bruder iz a kartozhnik, Un di shvester...ti di di di di di di di dom... (This is Kipnis' version; Cahan has a similar text, for which he glosses _shmarovoznik_ as 'proster yung.') [publication--compiled before Mikhl's brief note]] Since the authors receive no honoraria, I feel free to announce the publication by Northwestern University Press of the 5th collection of _The Field of Yiddish_, edited by David Goldberg, which contains the following papers: Edward Stankiewicz, "The Yiddish Thematic Verbs" Christopher Hutton, "Normativism and the Notion of Authority in Yiddish Linguistics" Ellen F. Prince, "On the Discourse Function of Syntactic Forms in Yiddish: Expletive ES and Subject Preposing" Robert D. King, "Early Yiddish Vowel Systems: A Contribution by William G. Moulton to the Debate on the Origins of Yiddish" Neil G. Jacobs, "Central Yiddish Backing and Drawl: The Implications of Fusion for a Phonological Rule" Jean Baumgarten: "Les manuscrits yidich de la Biblioteque Nationale de Paris" David Golberg: "Fantasy, Realism, and National Identity in Soviet Yiddish Juvenile Literature: Itsik Kipnis' Books for Children" Daniela Mantovan: "Der Nister's 'In vayn-keler': a Study in Metaphor" Dahlia Kaufman: The First Yiddish Translation of _Julius Caesar_" Robert A. Rothstein: "'Geyt a yid in shenkl arayn': Yiddish Songs of Drunkenness" Jeffrey Shandler: "'We Can Read and Understand': a Semiotic Analysis of the American Yiddish Primer and the Transformation of Literacy." Bob Rothstein 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 17 11:15:09 1993 From: P.Mett@open.ac.uk(Percy Mett) Subject: Nekhtiger tog Robert D. Rachlin writes: [Mendele 3.029] > Arnold Kuzmack's suggestion that nekhtiger tog may mean "a >day like night" comports with the usage I've heard. Usually it >follows some outrageously unlikely proposition, e.g.: "Shulamit in a >sheytl? A nekhtiger tag!" In my book, that doesn't prove a thing. a nekhtiger tog (= a yesterday) will never happen again, so is an unlikely proposition. Just in case you were interested. pe'rets mett 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 18 12:53:04 1993 From: Seymour Axelrod Subject: Hybrid idioms; playing-card terms In view of the weightier matters recently put on the table here (the startling proposals from Wexler that Yiddish is a Slavic language and that modern Hebrew is Yiddish, and the revitalization of Yiddish contemplated in Boro Park), I'm almost embarrassed to raise the following--but not so embarrassed as to refrain. (1) To Elye Katz: are bilingual (E-Y) expressions includable in your collection of idioms? A very common (and useful) one from my childhood: "pleyn un poshet" = straightforward(ly), without embellishment;`Period!' "Lomir zogn dem emes: er'z a ganef, pleyn un poshet." Also: "iz dos a sistem [what makes it hybrid is that the emphasis is on the first syllable: SIStem]?" = `what kind of way is that to run a railroad?'; where's the fairness/sense in that? Milt Gross, who wrote and illustrated brief comic pieces (English, with very exaggerated Yiddish accents) about apartment-dwelling immigrant Jews in New York City in the 1930's-40's [Nize Baby; Looey, Dot Dope], made frequent use of this. (2) I'd be interested in knowing how others refer[red] to playing-card suits and values. Weinreich gives club = der shpog diamond = der lekekh heart = dos royts, dos eykhl spade = der pik, dos shvarts ace = di toyz jack = der poyer (no separate entry for king or queen in cards) Maybe these were the standard terms in der alter heym. But when my father played pinochle, poker and klabyatsh with his landslayt and other friends (all native speakers of Yiddish, but long after their immigration to the US) in Brooklyn, the English words were generally used, except that a spade (or spades) were often called "shipe" (Slavic?). The cards from two through 10 were numbered in Yiddish, sometimes in diminutive: a tsveytl harts, for example. The picture cards and ace were English: dzhek, kvin, kin[i]g, eys. Trump was "tromf"; I never heard Weinreich's "kozer". --Shleyme Axelrod ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.037