Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.212 December 4, 1994 1) Nishdogedakht; Chicago Yiddish Resources (Meyshe-Yankl Sweet) 2) Nit do gedakht (Ellen Prince) 3) Sheygets (Mikhl Herzog) 4) Sheygets (Michael Shimshoni) 5) A Necessary but not Sufficient Condition (Zellig Bach) 6) New Yiddish Childrens Book (Bobbi and Michael Zylberman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 11:27:03 -0600 From: msweet@facstaff.wisc.edu Subject: Nishdogedakht; Chicago Yiddish Resources Regarding Mikhl Herzog's remark on "Nitogedakht"--this may be the standard pronounciation, but my mother and her family (from Ukraine) always said "nishdogedakht", with a clearly voiced "d", supporting the "do" connection. This was a word I heard *very* frequently, punctuating a constant litany of tragic events, or so it seemed. Hate to tshepe people again, but I never got an answer to my question about Chicago YIVO. Surely someone is out there who knows if there is a YIVO organization there (nothing in phone book), and if they (or anywhere else in the area) has holdings of YIVO Bleter and other publications that I could consult. Zayt azoy gut Mendele-layt, un shikt mir an entfer. Meyshe-Yankl Sweet 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 02 Dec 1994 15:40:35 EST From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: nit do gedakht mikhl, i definitely vote for dovid's _do_ instead of _op_ since, in my (cy) family, /nishtugedakht/ was in complementary distribution with _nisht bay mir/dir/aykh gedakht_ and never *_nisht bay mir/... opgedakht_. btw, my father, who was a diamond cutter with the soul of a linguist, insisted that _nebekh_ was an acronym of _nisht bay aykh gedakht_. yeah, i know, it's from polish. but i like his story better. :-) re rogelekh, i never thought i'd be giving anyone baking lessons :), but the dough wasn't 'bent' into triangles--it was rolled into a flat circle (the word _volgerholts_ or something like that just woke up in my mental lexicon after a 40-yr nap!) and cut into sections, like a pizza, whereupon poof!, instant triangles! each one was then rolled into a crescent. proto-croissants... ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 2 Dec 94 17:29 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: "sheygets" J. Rosof: Contrary to the morphological spelling principle which prevails in the case of Yiddish words of German origin (and the phonetic principle in the case of Slavic-origin words), the etymological principle prevails with respect to Yiddish words of Hebrew and Aramaic origin. There are exceptions: some words, like "mekn" 'to erase', girls' names "Rive", "Sime", may lose lose their Hebrew identity (usually for explainable reasons, in these cases because of the fate of the old "khes" sound), and are consequently spelled "phonetically"; other words may be reinterpreted as being of Hebrew origin and are then given "Hebreoid" spellings: men's names "Zalmen" and "Kalmen", "khoyzek" 'mockery'. I know of _no_ instance in which Yiddish retains the Hebrew-like spelling implied by the absence of vowel letters, while "presuming" to alter the traditional spelling of the Hebrew consonants. Do you? If, as you claim with such certainty and, to be fair to you, our dictionaries imply, Yiddish "sheygets" (shin-giml-tsadik) is derived from Hebrew "shekets" (shin-kuf-tsadik), you might feel obliged to explain the spelling deviation. You could also strengthen your argument if you could adduce any other instance in which an intervocalic [-k-] in the source language yields Yiddish [-g-]? In other words, do you know any other case in which Yiddish [-g-] corresponds to (German, Slavic, Hebrew) [-k-]? Is the change _lautgezaetslich_? As you may gather, I'm not happy with the standard theory. I have nothing to substitute for it, but I'm prepared to say "I don't know". Mikhl Herzog 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 04 Dec 94 12:42:17 +0200 From: mash@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il Subject: Re: Sheygets There have been several contributions about the development of the use of sheygets and shiktse in various forms of spelling. While it is clear that these words are in some way derived from the Hebrew word sheqetz, the use of these Yiddish words for male or female (young?) gentiles is AFAIK absent from older Hebrew sources. These words are to some extend used in modern Hebrew, but it seems to me that this usage stems from Yiddish. Some kind of ping pong linguistic. Michael Shimshoni 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 21:09:27 -0500 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: A Necessary but not Sufficient Condition To Ellen Prince: Commenting on my posting "An Interesting Dispute" (4.207,5), you ask: "Who should be the experts [about Yiddish] if not native speakers?" Being a native speaker is a necessary but not a _sufficient_ condition. This is exactly why I put "certification" in quotation marks, since some native speakers issue _themselves_ "Diplomas" as "experts" in Yiddish. My very example of the described "dispute" abundantly illustrates this point. Zellig Bach 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 3 Dec 94 21:20:38 +1100 From: mzylberm@ozemail.com.au Subject: New Yiddish Childrens Book Melbourne schoolgirl Rebecca White, 14 is the author of a new children's book in Yiddish "Dancing Dinosaurs" released last week in time for Chanukah. The book tells of a little girl, Malkele, who can't get to sleep because she imagines dinosaurs are coming out of her doll box. Malkele's fears are overcome when her father promises he will eat up any dinosaurs he finds in her bedroom - with horseradish ! The 20 page book is illustrated by Dinah Butt. Dancing Dinosaurs is the fifth publication from Koala Farlag, a non-profit group established eight years ago out of concern at the paucity of new reading material in Yiddish for young children. The book can be ordered from the Workmens Circle bookshop in New York. Bobbi and Michael Zylberman PS Does anyone out there have a Yiddish translation of Maoz Tzur? ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.212 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) 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 Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu