______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.261 March 4, 1994 1) H'vr Ozhegov entfert... (Jay Lee) 2) Kabak (Mottel Lakin) 3) Terminologye (Khayem Bochner) 4) Tumtum (Khayem Bochner) 5) "Jewish" & "Yiddish"/makhn shimelekhlekh (Shleyme Axelrod) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 17:26:07 1994 From: "Jay M. Lee" Subject: H'vr Ozhegov entfert... Recently Bob Poe inquired as to the meaning of Kabak in Russian. I turned to the czar of Russian dictionaries, the Ozhegov, and got this answer: kaBAK,-A, v starinu: pitejnoe zavedenie. "Chto za k. zdes' ustro- ili?" (peren.: o besporjadke, nerazberikhe, shume, razg. neodobr.). Gol' kabatskaja (star.). Kabatskie nravy (takzhe peren.: grubye; razg.). The translation, roughly hewn, is an archaic term meaning "drinking establishment." (The Russian word, by the way, is always end-stressed.) The phrase "What kind of tavern have they built here?" is translated as having to do with messes, muddles, noise, and impolite conversation. The word also gives us the archaic "tavern beggars" and "tavern manners," the latter of which can be translated as course, esp. of conversation. --Jay Lee 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 17:38:19 1994 From: Martin Lakin Subject: Kabak Bob Poe asks about the meaning of his mother's usage of "Kabak". Shame on her, for it is a tavern, usually of a low type; it is also a "pigstie", But perhaps she was just warning Bob to stay away from such places, as a good Jewish mother should do. The word is indeed Russian. Mottel Lakin 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 18:21:04 1994 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: terminologye Ershtns, a por grusn: Gitlen un Meylekh: Mazl-Tov! A brokhe oyfn kinds kop! Odemen: Borukh-habe! Me zol dermonen meshiakhn! Yude Rozof shraybt: > Af e-mail volt natirlikh geven tsu zogn "elektropost" > ober farvos nisht oykhet "blitzpost"? Un lesof, mayn zum grestn > oysgefinenish: meshalekh zayn a blitzl. "blitspost" gefelt mir take. "meshalekh zayn a blitzl" iz, dakht zikh, a bisl ibergetribn. Ober "blitsbrivl" oder, "blitsl" bekitser, iz zeyer sheyn, meyn ikh. she-koyekh! -- Khayem 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 18:27:43 1994 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Re: tumtum Dan Leeson writes: > But he was very effeminate in his mannerisms and was called "Onkle > tim-tim." Now I do not know to this day if that was a Yiddish expression > from somewhere relating either to gay men or to effeminate men "tumtum" (or "timtim", allowing for dialect) is a real word. Harkavy says something like "sexless person or animal". Presumably this is meant to refer to some one whose physical development is incomplete, but it's not surprising to see it carried over to effiminate mannerisms, etc. Several stories by Bashevis Singer involve a character called Meyer Tumtum, a man who is beardless and has a high-pitched voice, if I remember correctly. This is incidental to the stories; Meyer Tumtum is also notable for being insane half the time. The stories are quite interesting. They're in the volume title "Der shpigl un andere dertseylungen", but I don't know if they've been translated. Anyway, that's where _I_ learned the word ... Khayem 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Mar 1 18:29:35 1994 From: Seymour Axelrod Subject: "Jewish" & "Yiddish"/makhn shimelekhlekh 1. A.A. Roback once suggested that in Yiddish writing, use should be made of the then-current two spellings "idish" beginning with shtumer alef-yud, and "yidish" beginning with yud-khirek yud. The proposal was something like this: "idish" would mean "Jewish" generally--everything Judaic from Avrom-ovinu on; "yidish" would refer to things Ashkenazic, including in particular east European culture and language. "Yidish" would thus be a subcategory under "idish"--just as in English "Yiddish" is a subcategory under "Jewish". A useful suggestion, I thought, which apparently no one but Roback took seriously. 2. I can put Meyshe-Yankl's game at least 20 years further back in Brooklyn, where we used to "make a shimele[y]khl" in the 1930's. I didn't think it involved tracing a face--just a circle. In any event, I didn't know then and don't know now where the word came from. --Shleyme Axelrod ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.261 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU 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 Mendele: Yiddish literature and language