Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.148 November 29, 1993 1) Words and melodies (Andrew Cassel) 2) Schmuck, etc. (Bob Poe) 3) Man/mentsh;Schmuck,etc.;Esau (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Nov 28 17:58:36 1993 From: ACASSEL@delphi.com Subject: Words and melodies In Mendele 3.147 Noyekh Miller writes: "The sissel story has its comic elements; at least we like to play it that way. But it's a sad story as well. Sholem Aleichem, in "Vos iz Khanuke?", saw it. So does the old hasidic story of the song whose words and later melody are forgotten." For we the ignorant (but interested), can you share the hasidic story? And perhaps also synopsize "Vos iz Khanuke?" A dank Andrew Cassel [The shames hopes that readers more competent than he is will come to the rescue. nm] 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Nov 29 13:27:17 1993 From: poe@keps.com (Bob Poe) Subject: Schmuck etc. Leigh Lisker writes: > > The German Schmuck of course rhymes with book, not with buch. To > forstall any more such distressing discussing, it should be pointed > out that German Putz, with a vowel like that in book, means finery, > etc., i.e. semantically akin to Schmuck. It's presumably no problem > to figure a semantic connection with the Yiddish words that resemble > them phonetically. I would have supposed that the Yiddish cognates of Schmuck and Putz, if they existed, would be `shmuk' or, more likely, `shmik' and `puts' or `pits' and would be pronounced accordingly, rather than `shmok' and `pots', which correspond to the pronunciation I have always heard. The spelling `schmuck' and `putz' could just be the typical, non-standard rendering common in the U.S., based on English phonetics and some misplaced preference for pseudo-Germanic orthography. So, are the Yiddish words actually cognates of the German words? An alternative explanation is that the rude Yiddish words actually are pronounced `shmuk' and `puts' by native speakers. (I never heard my mother pronounce them!) The common spelling may then have been phonetically accurate (i.e., essentially identical to the German words), but that English-speaking people modified the pronunciation by misinterpreting the spelling according to the conventions of English orthography. Anyone know? Bob Poe 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Nov 28 20:14:22 1993 From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.Columbia.edu Subject: Man/mentsh, Schmuck,etc., Esau In my retirement, I find myself working overtime. Still, hope to find the time to comment on a number of back issues, including the matters KHOYLEM, UFRUF, etc. I`m coming up for air now only for a couple of minutes to comment briefly on three more recent items. I should say that the nature of my keyboard prevents me from using a number of symbols that might make reading easier (quotation marks, for example). I beg your indulgence. 1. MAN un MENTSH. Problems of political correctness aside, I can testify to the following approximately 450 native Yiddish speaking emigrant informants were asked to translate the following English&Hebrew sentence (or its Hungarian&Rumanian equivalent) into Yiddish. The man with the wine& ha ish im hayayin. The interviews took place in Israel, the US and Canada, and Mexico. Invariably, the word MAN was offered only in the US and Canada elsewhere, the sentence was rendered der mentsh mitn vayn. The word man in Yiddish designated husband. Interestingly, this was an unanticipated finding. The sentence was designed to elicit the vocalic distinctions, Northeastern Yiddish "mayn man" Central Yiddish "ma'n man" Southeastern Yiddish "man mon". It didn`t work, except in English speaking countries where Yiddish&English MAN have converged. 2. Leigh Lisker refers to the semantic connection between the Yiddish words that resemble the German Schmuck and Putz. At the risk of repeating myself or others, I thought it worth mentioning that, despite frequent suggestions to the contrary, neither Yiddish word is easily derivable from the German word it resembles. To begin with, the phonetic resemblance, in both cases, is only partial. German Schmuck, to rhyme with English book, but Yiddish shmok, to rhyme with Yiddish shtok, bok, zok (as against English schmuck, to rhyme with luck, although it is derived from the Yiddish word). There is NO phonetically reasonable way to derive Yiddish shtOk from German SchmUck. Furthermore, origin in SchmUck would require a non existent Yiddish variant SHMIK. Although Max Weinreich seems to suggest that shmok is derived from shtok by means of the well known shm prefix (e.g. fancy shmancy, cancer shmancer, etc.), Edward Stankiewicz`s suggestion that it is derived from (a variant of) Polish "smok" serpent, tail, is more convincing. German Putz and Yiddish puts (finery, etc.) rhymes with Schmutz, shmuts. English putz rhymes with English guts and derives from Yiddish pots which rhymes with hot, shtot, etc. again, not derivable from the German form. The Yiddish word probably derives from Turkish (glossed cleft in the buttocks [Dan Slobin, please confirm]) or Greek. 3. I can`t resist a comment on Amitai Halevi`s example concerning Esau, the grandaddy of them all: ...vayokhal, vayesht, vayaqam, vayelekh, vayivez Esav et habekhorah. In his book Khumesh taytsh, the late Shlomo Noble used the same example to illustrate the manner in which taytshn, the traditional process of word for word bible translation also involved a process of interpolated commentary. I cite the following (possibly inaccurately) off the top of my head> In order to distinguish Esau from (the pious) Jacob, the taytsh went something like this: ...vayokhal, un Eysov hot gegesn un nit gemakht keyn brokhe; vayejsht, un er hot getrunken un nit gemakht keyn shehakl; vayokom, un er iz ufgeshtanen un hot nit gebentsht; vayeyleykh, un er iz avek un hot nit gekusht di mezuze. Mikhl Herzog ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.148 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files