Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.007 May 24, 1994 1) Fornal (Bob Rothstein) 2) Voroshilovka (Bob Rothstein) 3) Meeting in Minsk (Shmuel Wolitz) 4) Dropped pronouns (Arre Komar) 5) Priziv (Chane Honig) 6) Preglen (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon May 23 16:39:55 1994 From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Fornal In Polish (whence also in Ukrainian) _fornal_ is a farm worker, especially one who works with horses. It originally meant the hook that is used to attach the wagon- or plow-pole to the traces (part of the harness) and is derived from German _Vornagel_. Bob Rothstein 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon May 23 17:09:25 1994 From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Voroshilovka In Mendele 3.344 Zachary Baker identified the location of Voroshilovka in Ukraine, citing _Where Once We Walked-, an extremely useful gazeteer. Another useful source for tracking down locations in the Russian empire is the _Russisches geographisches Namenbuch_, ed. Max Vasmer and Herbert Bra"uer, published in 11 volumes (plus map supplement) by Harrasowitz in Wiesbaden between 1964 and 1989. It identifies Voroshilovka, for example, as a small town or village at the confluence of the rivers Baran and Bug, in the Tyrovsk _volost'_ of the Vinnitsa _krai_ of the Podolia _guberniia_ (using the pre-revolutionary territorial divisions) and refers to V. K. Guld'man, _Podol'skaia guberniia..._ (Kamenets-Podol'skii, 1889). It also lists three other villages (in the Kostroma _guberniia_), Bol'shaia [Big] Voroshilovka, Malaia [Little] Voroshilovka and Sredniaia [Middle-sized] Voroshilovka. Bob Rothstein 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon May 23 20:48:48 1994 From: slwolitz@emx.cc.utexas.edu Subject: Meeting in Minsk May 25, 1994 a meeting on Belarus-Yiddish conference. Possibility of free room and board. Address: Belarus 220050, Mensk- 50, Vul. Revaliutsyia, 15 Mizhnarodnaia asatsyiatsyia belarusistan (MAB). The meeting will address Jewish Culture in Belarussian Culture and interexchanges. Shmuel Wolitz 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon May 23 20:50:54 1994 From: komar@yu1.yu.edu Subject: Dropped pronouns In heavily declined languages the pronoun is frequently redundant and therefore is easily dropped. One sees this very strongly in Spanish: e.g. "quiero ir","quieres beber?", etc. In Yiddish I have always felt that there is an additional impetus coming from the Hebrew usage of postfixed pronouns yielding such polyglot formations as "bistu gekumen?" From there it is a short step to drop the postfixed "u". What started off as the inverted order of the interogative form, once becoming a postfixed addition to the already declined verb, was perceived as a redundant addition to the already properly employed declension. Of course this is only a conjecture on my part and I would be interested in hearing the customary cavilling that is sure to follow. Arre Komar 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon May 23 23:24:07 1994 From: ahonig@mailbox.syr.edu Subject: Re: Priziv Rick Glidemeister asks about priuv. I believe that the word sought for is PRIZIV.... In the folk song Yoshke fort avek.." where the girl sings OY OY Der ban is shoyn gekumen, un es khapt mich on a shrek with the chorus being Oy Oy yoshke fort avek.... , Yoshke replies in the next verse that "ich vel fonye dinen" (I will serve the tsar"... she sings..."Koyf mir nit keyn lokenes (earrings?) und macht mir nit sheyn. Koyf dir a por shtivelach (boots) , in priziv darfst du gayn". Her reply in the song suggests that he is going into the tsar's long service. This is a wonderful song for singing in duets for a Yiddish folk song concert...when I do a concert...however, I play both parts...and it still sounds broad humor-ish. A shaynem dank far all the interesting mail from Mendelniks. Chane (Alice Honig) 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue May 24 00:33:32 1994 From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Subject: Preglen Leigh Lisker: My own very vague memory about a possible Slavic connection to preglen also stems from Uriel Weinreich. Can we compromise on something like "I don't know, but maybe it's . . . "? In any event, Bob Rothstein has just reported three entries in Grimm: bra"geln, pra"geln, and pregeln."The last two entries," he says, "cite Schade's hypothesis on a Slavic origin." So, to add to Ellen Prince's pro-drops, go figure. -:) Mikhl Herzog ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.007 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. 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