Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.309 February 1, 1995 1) Litvish masculine first names (Dovid Braun) 2) Nisim v'nifloes (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 18:33:55 EST From: dovid@mit.edu Subject: Source of litvish masculine first names bere, hirshe, leybe There are subdialects of litvish Yiddish (as spoken in Ponevezh, Aniksht, Pumpyan and others -- these are where my informants are from) where the word-final sequence /en/ is reduced to syllabic /n/ in all environments. Whereas for most of the rest of Yiddish it's /getrunkEn/, /klangEn/, /zingEn/ (where by capitalizing the "E" I only mean to draw your attention to it, i.e., it is pronounced), these speakers say /getrunkn, klangn, zingn/. Also, what for the rest of Yiddish is /moyshen/ as in "ikh hob geredt mit moyshen" is for them /moyshn/. Thence (I guess) Mikhl Herzog's suggestion that the names Leybe, Hirshe, Bere are back- formations: speakers of this type of litvish Yiddish heard "ikh reyd mit meyshn" and knew that the guy's name was _meyshe_, and also heard "ikh reyd mit leybn" and reanalyzed his name as _leybe (bere, hirshe, etc>_. BUT: these names are common in other litvish subdialects, subdialects in which /yungen/ 'youths, [noun]' and /yungn/ 'young, [adj., acc/dat]' *are* phonetically distinct. (These are *not* distinct in Ponevezher Yiddish, meaning that the morphologically conditioned distinction between /n/ and /en/ in the-rest-of-Yiddish has disappeared in Ponevezh et al, where phonology has taken over and levelled them. If I'm not mistaken, even what for the rest of us is /ratevEn/ is in Ponevezh: /ratevn/.) So _leybe_ and the like spread considerably far from this territory, if M. Herzog is right. Also, if his account were right, wouldn't we expect many more name variants ending in -e in litvish? (There's no *do'vide, *ne'y(a)khe, *me'y(e)re, o'sh(e)re, *no'kheme, *mikhle [for males, at least].) Here's an alternative hypothesis: there seems to be a preponderance of male hypocoristics in litvish Yiddish with -ke (meyerke, neyakhke etc. etc.). And if a name already ends in /e/, a hypocoristic may be formed by inserting /k/ between the /e/ and the preceding material (e.g. meyshe --> meyshke, itshe --> itshke, shleyme --> shleymke etc. etc.). Maybe the progression of the name type M. Herzog is talking about went like this: leyb --> leybke --> leybe; hirsh --> hirshke --> hirshe; ber --> berke --> bere. The intermediate forms (berke, leybke, hirshke) are also characteristic of litvish Yiddish, note. Where a dialect has the form _bere_, it also has the form _berke_. If _berke_ is thought of as the even-more-diminutive form (e.g. _leybele_ is the further diminution of _leybl_ which is, in turn, the diminutive of _leyb_), then the progression of berke --> bere is a back-formation, just like rokhl --> rokhele --> rokhe. Note aso the variants /avrome, avromke, avreme, avremke/. When hearing "ikh hob geredt mit avromen", there are 2 parsing possibilities ("parsibilities"): the inflectional morpheme added to the name is /n/ or /en/. (*/mn/ in *avromn is an impossible sequence in the language.) So the name could be analyzed as _avrom_ or avrome_. Now take "ikh hob geredt mit goldn". There are 2 possibilities for analysis here, too (for the Ponevezher, that is -- *not* for the rest-of-Yiddish): 'I spoke to a guy whose last name is Gold' or 'to a woman whose first name is Golde'. If _bere_ arose because the acc/dat form _bern_ was reanalyzed as _bere_ + _n_, it wouldn't be surprising if the opposite reanalysis had taken place, giving us women's names such as *gold or *feyg (instead of _golde_ and _feyge_ -- since they surfaced as /goldn/ and /feygn/ in the dative). And another thought: _fayve_ is a form of _fayvish/fayvush_. Assuming that the hypocoristic is built off of _fayvish_ (or stg similar), you can imagine this progression: fayvish --> fayvke --> fayve. (Under MH's account, the progression might have been fayv --> fayve, by analogy with the ber --> bere progression: "ikh hob geredt mit fayvn" would be reanalyzed as _fayve_ and not _fayv_. Problem is: there's no such name *fayv in any of the other dialects.) Material for footnotes (if I had the time to actually have footnotes and to better organize the posting -- my apologies, btw, for any unintelligibilities): 1. I allude to "the-rest-of-Yiddish" above, to make a distinction between the /zingn/-dialect (Ponevezh un arum) vs. /zingen/-dialect ("the-rest..."). In fact, there are other dialects (quite far from the Ponevezh area) in which the morphologically conditioned distinction between /n/ and /en/ has been levelled. For instance, the Lodzh area (if memory serves me correctly) says /getrinkn, zingn/ etc. but I don't know whether the other facts regarding the phenomenon are the same as in Ponevezh. The subsequent volumes of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry that Mikhl Herzog is preparing will provide us with the details. E.g., does Lodzh say /mit moyshn/? In most other dialects, however, there is a distinction between /yungn/ and /yungen/, i.e. this is a minimal pair showing that syllabic /n/ and unstressed /en/ are distinctive. 2. I was present at a misunderstanding between a Ponevezher and a Bukoviner involving the above-noted phenomenon. The Ponevezher was talking about her friend Golde. At one point in the conversation she says, "montik for ikh tsu goldn. Ba goldn vel ikh zayn a vokh tsayt" (or something like that). The Bukoviner asks "ver iz dos der gold?!" thinking that the Ponevezher suddenly introduced a guy named Mr. Gold into the discourse, but somebody whom they hadn't been talking about before. The Ponevezher answers: "Mayn khaverte Golde! Di vos ikh dertseyl aykh dokh vegn ir!" Dovid Braun 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 22:50:39 From: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu Subject: Nisim v'nifloes Az di velt iz af hefker, dos veysn mir shoyn ale. Ober amol amol kert zikh iber dos redl. Hert a maynse: In 4.118 Zellig Bach had some critical things to say about the sub- standard use of Yiddish in Steven Pinker's highly popular _The Language Instinct_. In 4.129 the author wrote a repentant explanation and promised to make amends in the next edition of the book. Steven Pinker has kept his word. The 1995 paperback edition (Harper Pernennial) gives us: "az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde". A vast improvement to say the least. Book publishing is a slow and tedious business. Given the fact that Mr. Pinker's note to Mendele was written a short four months ago it's clear that he moved decisively and with considerable dispatch to make the necessary change. Kumt im a sheynem yasher koyekh. And a yasher koyekh to Zellig as well. May all his other battles on the language front end as sweetly. Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.309 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. 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