Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.040 June 26, 1994 1) Bintel Briv letters ('eynekh Sapoznik) 2) Bintel Briv letters (Ellen Prince) 3) Further thoughts on synonyms (Arre Komar) 4) Origins of "mies" (Margaret Mikulska) 5) East Side/Thieves' cant; translation; Pique (Mikhl Herzog) 6) A zakh verter (Daniel-Moishe Sherman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 24 11:56:40 1994 From: Sapoznik@aol.com Subject: Bintel Briv letters My experience with the Forwards as a one-time contributor and my ongoing work at its radio station WEVD, leads to me to conclude that the original Bintel Brief letters have either been tossed long ago (most probably) or hidden so well in the building's basement that it is not worth their time to dig them out. (I infer this because 5 years ago I was planning to have some Yiddish speaking actor/actress pals of mine come on my radio program DER FORVERTS SHO and read the old letters. Despite numerous request I received no replies or encouragement to seek them out. None. Lots and lots of irreplaceable materials were dumped when the paper moved from its breathtaking East Broadway building to its current less-aestheti- cally pleasing home. YIVO got a little bit they didn't manage to trash, but in my twelve years there I never heard about the Bintel Brief letters. (Even if they were at YIVO, finding them now during their move would not produce immediate results either.) 'eynekh Sapoznik 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 24 12:19:08 1994 From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: bintel briv letters uh, dave, if someone reads that their father isn't their father or that their fortune came from underworld dealings or that their parents were never married, you don't think they'd have a case? ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 24 12:38:11 1994 From: komar@yu1.yu.edu Subject: Further thoughts on synonyms Some thoughts (and an appreciation) on a recent comment of Khayem Bochner: In a language such as English or even more so, Yiddish, derived from many disparate linguistic sources many words occur of almost the same meaning. This not only adds to the richness of the language to the extent of being able to avoid monotony of expression, but also as the synonyms diverge subtly in nuance the modalities of the thoughts can be subtly modulated as well. Yiddish is particularly blessed with this sort of variey which gives the language a particular charm. As a simple and rather common example consider the words efsher, filaykht, mistame, ken zayn. As a first go around they are all essentially the same in meaning. However if we take in to consideration the modalities I sense the following distinctions: Filaykht = perhaps Mistame = most likely Efsher = maybe Ken zayn = it's possible The most Germanic of the words, Filaykht, is the most neutral in modality and thereby serves a valid discriminatory function. I do not know whether the ideologs object to this particular word or not , nor do I care. I find it silly to have to look up in a book to determine whether some authority gives me permission to use it. The richer the language the more wonderful it is. By the same token khilek and untershied, fenster and vinde, a zakh and fiel, lezn and leyenen, etc. should all belong. The speakers will eventually find a way to sort out the modalities. As a case in point in English we make the subltle distinction between much and many (one for continuous and the other for discreet sets, similarly as with less and fewer, etc.). I sense a similar distinction occuring in Yiddish between fiel (tsu essen, tsum bayshpiel) and a zakh (zakhn, l'moshl). Arre Komar 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 24 17:14:33 1994 From: mikulska@faust.Princeton.EDU Subject: origins of "mies" Gaston Schmir writes: > My friends [Swiss speaking Basel-Deutsch] were > astonished one day when they realized that I understood the word /mies/ > (=ugly) which they claimed was not extant in hoch-deutsch. I therefore > assumed that /mies/ in yiddish was a remnant of medieval german, which > had also subsisted in some swiss dialects. However, the fact that Uriel > Weinreich's dictionary gives the phonetic transcription of this word > suggests that it is of Hebrew-Aramaic origin. Does this represent another > instance of borrowing from yiddish into German, such as is presumably the > case with /ganef/ and /meshuge/? To the best of my knowledge, the word "mies" comes indeed from Hebrew and became part of the Yiddish vocabulary, from which it was borrowed (in 19th C only) by the dialect spoken in Berlin and subsequently spread to colloquial German in other regions of Germany. (Just like in the case of the German "Ganove" ("ganef"), the borrowing of "mies" from Yiddish into German occurred via the underworld jargon.) Margaret Mikulska 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Jun 25 09:52:57 1994 From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Subject: East Side/Thieves' cant; translation; Pique I. Joseph Sherman (South Africa): 1. Concerning the Jewish penchant for settling on the "East Side": For New York City, Jewish settlement on the Lower East Side has sometimes been explained in terms, of the following succession: The first settlers (for whatever reason) were the Irish Catholics. Their settlement proved attractive, for religious reasons, to a wave of German settlers who, in turn, attracted waves of Jewish settlers for linguistic reasons. 2. "ganef" in Dickens, etc.: The relationship of Yiddish to "thieves' cant" (German "Rotwelsch"), and to a variety of specialized trade jargons, is a fascinating subject, first mentioned in the literature by Martin Luther. In the late 60's, a linguist working in British prisons reported that he still required access to Yiddish to interpret much of what he heard. If our good shames can tell you how to access the relevant early issue of "Mendele" where I posted more extensive information on the subject, you might find it helpful. II. Bob Rothstein: Your piece on Russian to Yiddish translation is a beauty. I wonder if it reflects the "khumesh-taytsh" tradition of adding commentary to translation. Some time ago, I posted a citation from Shlomo Noble's book "Khumesh-Taytsh", concerning Esau, that you might find interesting. I don't have the book at hand. III. Respect for one's language. ANY LANGUAGE! As an old hand in the teaching business, I'm usually very tolerant of student error in the use of Yiddish. After all, there is so much for an English speaker to learn: gender, case, tense, aspect, prefixing, what have you. The pleasure a teacher derives from a student's progress as he comes to grips with these things repays all his investment and constraint. A teacher learns, soon enough, how to detect when a student is learning, and how to guage his progress. It shines through in many postings on Mendele, for example. By the same token, there are numerous postings in which it is equally apparent that no effort to learn is taking place and, perhaps worst of all, that the speaker or writer doesn't care. This can unnerve the most tolerant of souls. A topic for a sociolinguistic study: Would those to whom these words might apply permit themselves to make the same bizarre errors in writing Hebrew, English, French, Russian? Why not? Why is it permissible in Yiddish to write the equivalent of "Yesterday me will came" or "I didn't could understood" and expect polite silence in response? Why not simply write in English, instead? Mikhl Herzog 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jun 26 15:26:56 1994 From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.ca Subject: a zakh verter > Avade, sikher, siz shayn, hipsh tsu hobn a zakh, fiele verter tsu zogen > der zelbe zakh. Ober farvos ven men farzukht dos tsu ton mit lezn vs. > leyenen a greyse krieg, milkhuma immer, keseyder feyngt on? Vayl lezn un leynen zenen beyde geshtamen fun daytsh. Di andere verter zene eyns fun daytsh, eyns fun loshn-koydesh oder an andere shprakh. Az m'hot shoyn "leynen", vos darft men nokh a "cognate" fun daytsh? David (Daniel-Moishe) Sherman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.040 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu