______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.280 March 11, 1994 1) Takeh (Meylekh Viswanath) 2) Prudery (Meylekh Viswanath) 3) Ashkenazik (Rick Turkel) 4) Avu tut dir.. (Ellen Prince) 5) Number agreement (Ellen Prince) 6) No more Klez camp (Daniella HarPaz) 7) Ansky exhibit (Zachary Baker) 8) Counting Jews at a Minyon & shimmelekha (Sylvan Beer) 9) Sargenes (Marnen Laibow-Koser) 10) Farsheydns (David Braun) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 12:24:38 1994 From: VISWANATH@draco.rutgers.edu Subject: Takeh Anatole Beck rules out a czech origin for take=indeed in yiddish, since tak (cz.) seems too far away. but there is also, take (with an accent on the final e) which means even, as in _i take_ = and even ; this would seem closer to yiddish take, since both words indicate emphasis. (my czech is somewhat old, so I apologize in advance for faulty memory.) Meylekh 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 12:30:40 1994 From: VISWANATH@draco.rutgers.edu Subject: Prudery anatole beck writes: >I have been struck by the prudery in Ashkenazic life. As an >example, there are not native slang words for the sex organs. there >are of course shmuk (jewel) and putz (decoration) for the penis, and >I do not know of any vaginal references at all, besides the >indescribably filthy lokh . There is 'pisherl' for penis, and 'mayse' or 'oyse mokem' for vagina. I'm sure we will get other words from mendeleniks, and explanations. I will forbear with mine. Meylekh 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 13:03:01 1994 From: rmt51@cas.org Subject: Re: Ashkenazik Anatole Beck asks: >I am interested in running down the question of whether Daitch was >ever widely used and a synonym for Yiddish. There is a Yiddish bible commentary called "Ivri Taitsh" which I think satisfies the query. > There seems little >doubt that the source of Yiddish was the Rhenish of the 10th or 11th >Century. I think that's the old line. The more modern one (I can't remember to whom to attribute it, but I heard him speak at Ohio State a number of years ago. Neil? Dovid?) has as its basis the southern German dialect around Regensburg, on the Danube. This was based on a detailed study of German dialectology and a comparison with various features of Yiddish as they contrast with Rhenish (and with standard Hochdeutsch). Rick Turkel 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 13:19:27 1994 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: avu tut dir... thanks to everyone who wrote about 'avu tut dir vey avu'! (i'm going to rent 'of thee i sing' and have myself a good laugh.) ellen prince 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 13:57:00 1994 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: number agreement (warning: long post!) no, mikhl, my father was definitely not a litvak. (kha kha kha!) i'll put it on the list of things to check out with my uncle (his brother) in tel aviv this june. by the way, the examples you give (mayne shikh iz gemakht...) do not really occur in royte pomerantsn tho there are many singular verbs with plural POSTPOSED subjects. here's a complete list. (the number refers to the number of the anecdote.) es iz avek a por teg (2) ober es iz faran andere... (26) iz dokh nito keyn tirutsim (28) es iz avek a yor, un tsvey, un dray (29) ...vifl es iz do shvigers in shtot (30) in shul iz geven a sakh mit mentshn (39) in akhsanye iz grod geven a sakh yunge layt (41) es iz avek khadoshim (44) es treft zikh yidn... (59) es vet zayn genug tsvey (71) es iz faran mentshn... (81) es iz dokh do tsvey meglikhkaytn (91; twice) iz dokh do tsvey meglikhkaytn (91; twice) nor fundestvegn, iz nokh alts do tsvey meglikhkaytn (91) es iz faran tsvey meglikhkaytn (91; twice) es iz do tsvey meglikhkaytn (91) iz nokh do tsvey meglikhkaytn (91) es iz nokh alts faran tsvey meglikhkaytn (91) es iz geven sakones nefoshes (100) in shif iz geven a sakh englender mit daytshn, mit fonyes. (101) un dortn iz geven a kitayets un eyner a yid (101) ...in boykh fun kit iz geven der korb mit di epl, un der kitayets un der yid (101) es iz geven a geshrey un a gepilder un a geruder (107) es iz avek khadoshim un khadoshim (109) in telegram iz geshtanen nor tsvey verter... (109) ...un vifl es iz geven mentshn in shif (112) ...hot zikh mamesh geshotn pekh un shvebl fun zayn moyl (123) es iz geven a groyer regn un a vind (149) es geyt nit avek keyn tsvey minut (154) iz avek a vokh nokh a vokh (165) iz gekumen der feltsher un der doktor (167) es ligt a driter un a ferter (169) geveyntlekh iz oyfn tish geshtanen vayn mit bronfn (172) un es iz shoyn avek fir sho (173) in zayn shtub iz do fule vent mit bilder (194) in a vayle arum kumt arayn der kondukter un take mitn kontroler (198) ...vifl iz gedirt di nesies fun kiev keyn peterburg (203) es iz nito nit der vogn un nit dos ferdl (208) ...ale yidn, vifl es gefint zikh in shtetl (220) ba dem tish vet zitsn oybenon avrom ovinu, yitskhok ovinu, yankoyv ovinu, dovid hameylekh... (223) es iz faran geveyntlekh lomdim oykh... (224) nor es iz faran, vos davenen nor tishebov... (224) iz ban mekhutn gekumen a sakh balebatim mitn rov, mitn shoykhet, mitn dayen (235) un vayter iz do banen (237) es iz faran a sakh mentshn (248) vifl es iz geven mentshn oyfn feld... (248) ok, now here's the complete list of singular agreement with a plural subject with the subject in initial position: neyn, keyn eyer iz grod nit faran in shtub (209) i don't think we have to be great statisticians to conclude that there's some relation between postposed subjects and lack of number agreement, wouldn't you say? any thoughts? ellen prince 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 15:21:02 1994 From: Daniella.HarPaz@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: re: no more Klez camp Elia Novick... Even two summers ago when I was at the YIVO Weinreich Summer Program I'd heard talk of the end of Klez camp, the issue was money..no money...no camp. Sad.... Daniella HarPaz 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 15:59:33 1994 From: (bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu) Subject: Ansky exhibit In response to Lewis Leavitt's query in MENDELE 3.276, whether "there is to be an exhibit 'somewhere in Europe' of recently recovered material from Ansky's ethnographic expedition of 75 years ago": In 1992 the Joods Historisch Museum of Amsterdam did indeed mount such an exhibit. The published catalogue, "Tracing An-sky: Jewish collections from the State Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg," edited by Mariella Beukers and Renee Waale (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers, 1992), is fairly widely available. It includes some striking objects and photographs. The Ansky exhibit traveled from Amsterdam to Jerusalem (Israel Museum), and is scheduled to open shortly at the Jewish Museum, New York -- sorry, I don't yet have the dates on that. Zachary Baker Zachary Baker 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 17:30:08 1994 From: Sylvan Beer Subject: Counting Jews at a Minyon & shimmelekha The origin of avoiding the use of actual numbers is probably Exodus 30.12 where Moses counts shekels submitted rather than heads to avoid a plague. I always assumed that when children drew a circle on someone's back and said "I make a shimmelakhle and someone hides" they really meant to say "shmule lekhle", meaning a small hole. Sylvan (Shmuel Zanvil) Beer 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 17:37:47 1994 From: laibow@brick.purchase.edu Subject: Sargenes Sidelight on the word "sargenes": the word for "coffin" in German is "Sarg". Marnen Laibow-Koser 10)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 10 18:38:30 1994 From: Subject: farsheydns I too was under the impression that _feygele_ came from Eng. _fag_ only on American soil. Daniella HarPaz's note that Mod Heb uses _parpar_ makes me think, though: what are the slang terms in Russian, Polish? One of the Yiddish words for _butterfly_ is _zumer-feygele_. If Russian or Polish use 'butterfly' equivalents, we'd have a story for Yiddish incorporating those forms and passing them on to Hebrew (or Heb getting them directly from Russian or Polish). I second Elye Katz's etymology/explanation of _shmolyares_ -- this was my conclusion, too. And I too have only heard the word with [o] and not "oo" (whatever Roth meant by that) -- even from Southern Yiddish speakers. To Dvosye Bilik: I've recorded a version of "a gutn purim malekh" with the beginning: a gitn pi:rem malokh vi akh gay fal okh ('a gutn purim malekh, vu ikh gey fal ikh') from a Polish informant. By the way, who is the "malekh" addressed in the song? One hypothesis (I don't remember whether this is Max Weinreich's or Y.L. Cahan's in a footnote to Cahan's book, cited by Robert Rothstein): a gitn pirem ale a:kh --> ...piremalekh --> ...pirem malekh I don't think there is any deep historical explanation to shprintse-leye. Numerous actual names have become pejorativized to denote characters, personality types. On the male side there's khayim-yankl and perhaps others which don't come to mind immediately. On the female side, there's yente and yakhne, 2 previously neutral names. And then some names, whose distribution I don't know about, but seem to have lost connection to any specific person (but presumably were connected to some specific female): in my family (Yiddish-speakers from Northern Poland, between Bialystok and Grodno) a snotty or spiteful girl is called a khane-sime [xanesi'mi] and a 'yakhne/yente' is called a khaye-sose [xajso'si]. I've heard of other such 'types' from Jews of other regions, but I can't access the notes right now. I betcha other readers will be able to identify such names being used for types, without being able to identify David Braun ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.280 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