Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.301 March 25, 1994 1) Periphrastic verbs (Yonah Moshe Lakin) 2) Shlekhte gramatik (Moyshe-Zekharye Beker) 3) Vayter migldik (Arre Komar) 4) Salte noces (Dan Leeson) 5) Sarg/sargenes, [z]/[s] (Molly Diesing) A gutn zisn freylikhn yontef aykh alle! Noyekh Shames 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 24 15:11:03 1994 From: Subject: Periphrastic verbs To answer your question Jeremy, from what I have learned from my Yiddish course I am taking now, ich bin zich moyde would seem to be the correct answer. Our teachers explains this as such: When conjugating verbs, any "attachments", whether it be the reflexive zich, pronouns or the such, they should follow the active verb in the sentence. Thus in this case the active verb is bin and so the zich should follow the bin. So if my logic is right, if you put the same sentence into the past tense you should have the following: ich bin zich geven moyde. Yonah Moshe Lakin P.S. I may be wrong. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 24 15:41:05 1994 From: Subject: Shlekhte gramatik Shraybndik af english, halt ikh zikh far a shtikl medakdek. Deriber kent ir zikh forshteln af vifl ikh shem zikh derfar vos in mayn letstn onzog hob ikh gehat a groysn toes mit mayn mutershprakh. Geshribn hob ikh azoy: "... those MENDELnikes who, like I, are passionately attached to this nation's fourth largest city," ober farshteyt zikh az rikhtik darf men shraybn oder "like me" oder "as I am." Ikh bet bay ale mekhile un kh'vintsh aykh alemen a zisn peysakh. (Nu, un vos shaykh mayn yidish bet ikh bemeyle mekhile.) Moyshe-Zekharye Beker, o.b.v [oykh bakant vi] Zachary Baker 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 24 16:12:33 1994 From: Subject: Vayter migldik Meylekh asks for documentation on the use of migldik in written and or sopken Yiddish, implying that such documentation would settle the issue under dispute between the usage of migldik vs. the usage of ekldik. But it seems to me that he is missing the point or origen of the discussion. I don't believed that anyone asserted that migldik could not be regarded as a Yiddish word. The point was that it was very rare, in fact not even listed as such in Harkavy. the common, proper Yiddish word was ekldik. Someone then complaind that ekldik should be regard as a daytchmerism and that migldik was preferable. It was at that point that the obscurity of migldik was pointed out. In fact I find that that has frequently been the pattern of the discussions with those who are militantly opposed to perceived daytchmerisms. Someone writes in to Menedle using proper Yiddish and a militant rushes in to say that it is incorrect, me tor nisht! One should rather use some obscure slavic or hebrew or italian synonym. When its obscurity is pointed out, and the standard nature of the original version is emphsized, the reply invariably is that the variant is not as obscure as all that so why should there be an argument. Why indeed? Arre Komar 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mar 24 16:19:57 1994 From: leeson@cedar.fhda.edu Subject: Salte noces I am probably going to open mouth and insert foot, but judging from a conversation already in progress when I joined it, it seemed to me that someone was trying to find out what salte noces are. They are cheese kreplach. Now if the discussion was about the derivation of the words from middle-Indo-Serbo-Crotation, I apologize for misunderstanding what the discussion was about. However, if I am right, I have a recipe for them in a Jewish cookbook that refers to them by that name. Am I in trouble? Dan Leeson 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Mar 24 16:46:04 1994 From: Molly Diesing Subject: Sarg/sargenes, [z]/[s] Mikhl Herzog writes in response to Marnen Laibow-Koser: > The connection of German "Sarg" to Yiddish "sargenes" is only a visual > one. The word-initial German sibilant is [z], spelled "s". Yiddish has > both [z] and [s] in word-initial position BUT, with the exception of > "say" (as in "say vi say" and "saydn" 'unless', ONLY initial [z] occurs > in words of German origin. Ergo, Yiddish words with initial [s] cannot be > of German origin, however much they might appear to be. For example, try > your hand at Yiddish "soldAt" 'soldier' and "samet" 'velvet'. The [z] pronounciation of word-initial "s" in German holds for most of the northern dialects, but in many southern dialects (such as spoken in Bavaria and Austria) word-initial "s" is in fact generally pronounced [s]. "Sarg" would be pronounced with an [s] in these dialects, so the connection may not be merely visual. The Austrian dialects in particular share other phonological features with Yiddish, such as unaspirated [p,t,k] in positions where they would be aspirated in the northern dialects of German. Molly Diesing ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.301 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