Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.286 March 15, 1994 1) Game-"Orde,borde,shorde" (Alan Lankin) 2) Parpar in Hebrew (Daniella HarPaz) 3) Nebakh and nebbish (Bob Hoberman) 4) Tsevi Hirsh Chajes (Jay Lee) 5) Feygele (Eve Sicular) 6) Shmushkele (Arre Komar) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 14 13:46:56 1994 From: <73302.2024@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Game-"Orde,borde,shorde" I'm passing on this question from Pamela Hitchcock. She's researching the song 'Harshl' for her performance. The song is about a gangster in Warsaw in the 1930s. There's a reference to the game "Orde, borde, shorde," which a translation says is tic-tac-toe. Is anyone familiar with this game? Is it a version of tic-tac-toe, and if not, what is it? Alan Lankin 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 14 14:18:31 1994 From: Daniella.HarPaz@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Parpar in Hebrew Michael Shimshoni...having checked dictionaries finds that parpar doesn't imply homosexual in Hebrew...well, I didn't ever read it in a dictionary, admittedly, but I'm quite certain that as I've heard it used by not so PC family members and friends that they mean homosexual... sometimes it's used to imply that the man being called a parpar is effeminate....maybe my experience with this word is an oysnam.... Daniella 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 14 14:49:40 1994 From: Subject: Nebakh and nebbish I'm not so sure these two aren't related. It's true that the kh-sh alternation is not common in Yiddish, but it's plausible in Juedischdeutsch. (Juedischdeutsch is the strongly Jewish-flavored German used by Jews in Germany among themselves, containing elements from Western Yiddish and Hebrew/Aramaic.) A German Jewish colleague (right now I don't remember where exactly he's from) here tells me that in his native speech the word is pronounced as if it were spelled Nebbich, that is, with the palatal "ich-Laut" (i'll write it as /ch/) which is between /sh/ and /kh/. In his speech /ch/ sounds very close to /sh/, much closer than in some German pronunciations. He assumes, and this seems reasonable to me, that /nebich/ was heard as having /sh/ by English-speakers in America, and repeated that way. Furthermore, in my father-in-law's German dialect (Hessen, near Frankfurt), the "ich-Laut" has become identical to /sh/, so that "ich" and "Fisch" rhyme perfectly. So the shift /nebakh/ to /nebich/ to /nebish/ could have taken place entirely within Juedischdeutsch. The test of this theory would be to see whether Nebbich is attested in German Jewish language or nebbish in English before the big E-European immigration of the 1880's and after. A bit of Juedischdeutsch humor: about someone my Litvak parents might call a Meyshe Kapeyer, who does everything backwards and wrong, you say: Taanes esst er, Purim fast er 'on a fast day he eats and on Purim he fasts' (a pun on Taanis Ester, the Fast of Esther just before Purim). Bob Hoberman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 14 16:25:19 1994 From: Subject: Tsevi Hirsh Chajes Khaverim oyf Mendele: A colleague of mine has been wracking his brains over the spelling of a rabbinical scholar. I have twice tried to forward his appeal to Men- dele, but without luck (I do not know how to send messages and append comments). This time I write directly. "Could you help me find the correct form of the name for the 19th century rabbinical scholar Z.H. Chajes? The Encyclopedia Judaica and the introduction to the English translation of his work, _Student's_Guide_to_ the_Talmud_, both give his name as Zevi (or Tsevi) Hirsch Chajes. The Library of Congress, however, gives his name as Zebi Hirsch Chajes. Do you know of any reason why the name could be spelled with these two differing forms? He was born in Galicia in 1805. "Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated." If anyone can help, but for some reason does not want to post an answer on the network, my colleague Joe Ross can be reached at: JTRoss@ucs.Indiana.edu. A sheynem dank far di hilf, Jay Lee 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 14 17:19:19 1994 From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu Subject: Feygele debate In the recent discussion of Yiddish references to homosexuality, at least one colloquial term current in pre-war Eastern Europe has as yet gone unmentioned. According to Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter of Columbia University and the League for Yiddish, the word "fraymayer" (literally, "freemason") was used before the war in his heym-shtot of Chernovits to mean male homosexual. As a slang term, this seems to carry a heavy dose of irony, but not necessarily derision. Connotations of the word in this context include exoticism (Freemasonry in its original sense was an institution not well-known in this part of Eastern Europe), mystery (as in membership in a secret society), and cosmopolitanism, but not, apparently, subjection to discrimination, despite various instances of persecution against Freemasons. Lesbians were not indicated by this usage, Dr. Schaechter says, because such people were not even imagined in his circles. Additionally, I would like to announce the upcoming publication of my article on gay subtext in the Yiddish cinema, "A YINGL MIT A YINGL HOT EPES A TAM": THE CELLULOID CLOSET OF YIDDISH FILM, coming out in the Media Issue of The Journal of Jewish Folklore & Ethnography later this year. Examples cited are from such classic titles as YIDL MITN FIDL, DER DIBUK, AMERICANER (sic) SHADKHN, and DER VILNER SHTOT-KHAZN. The title of the paper is a quotation from one of Molly Picon's lines in "Yidl." Eve Sicular, Curator of Iconographic Materials, YIVO Institute 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 14 17:42:17 1994 From: Subject: re shmushkele Before Michael Sweet maligns his mother further re "shmushkele" I seem to recall that the Polish word for "pacifier" (i.e. the gadgets babies suck) is "shmuchik". I therefore wouldn't vouch for his etymology. Arre Komar. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.286 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 Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net