Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.030 June 25, 1995 1) Introduction (Leo Kanowitz) 2) A sakh (Arre Komar) 3) A sakh (Reuven Rachlin) 4) Math (Mikhl Herzog) 5) Ribe (Keyle Goodman) 6) More on Tevye (Bob Werman) 7) Yiddish and German (Leo Kanowitz) 8) Our feelings for Yiddish are not irrational (Zellig Bach) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Jun 24 09:12:26 1995 From: kanowitz@uchastings.edu Subject: Introduction I am a professor emeritus at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, having "retired" from active law teaching four years ago (although I am still active as a labor arbitrator). During my 30 years of teaching, I was also on the law faculties of Saint Louis University (1 year) and the University of New Mexico (8 years). As a visiting professor, I taught at the following university law schools: Harvard, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Washington U. in Saint Louis, Grenoble and Nantes. I've also lectured on American labor law in Japan, Korea, Yugoslavia, Switzerland and various French-speaking countries in Africa: Benin, Togo, Gabon and Cameroon. Among my 12 published books are: Women and the Law: The Unfinished Revolution (1969), which sold 55,000 copies; Alternative Dispute Resolution (1985); and a translation from the Japanese of a labor law treatise by Kazuo Sugeno of the University of Tokyo Law Faculty, entitled "Japanese Labor Law" (1992). Although I am proficient in several languages, (French, Japanese, German, etc.), my Yiddish needs much work. Before entering the U.S. Army during WWII, I was taught by my father to read and write Yiddish so that we could correspond while I was away. Yiddish was also our language at home in the Bronx. That was over 50 years ago, and I have rarely used it since. Having discovered Mendele only recently, I look forward to relearning Yiddish. Because my Yiddish has grown rusty, I suspect that my "contribution" to the discussion will be rather limited for a while, and will consist more of questions -- I am submitting one as a separate message today -- than of answers. Leo Kanowitz 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 21:03:28 -0400 (EDT) From: komar@yu1.yu.edu Subject: A sakh zakhn I was surprised to learn of the Yiddish word sakh being derived from the Hebrew. I too always "sensed" that is was related to the German sakh (thing), since it occured so frequently in combination with it; as in "Oy hob ikh a sakh zakhn tsu ton!" On a related point, I sensed that my mother's Yiddish made a distinction in usage between a continuous set and a discrete set of things, much as is done in English; e.g. "I have much milk" ; but, "I have many cookies". Or: "I have less milk" but, "I have fewer cookies." I similarly recall "Ikh hob fihl tsu ton", but "Ikh hob a sakh sakhn tsu ton"; and eventually by elipsis "Ikh hob a sakh tsu ton" with _zakhn_ implied. Is this idiosyncratic or do others sense this distinction? (Incidently, the more coloquial translation of "a sakh", "a lot of", does not respect the distinction so carefully adhered to formal English.) Arre Komar 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 10:26:06 -0600 From: rrachlin@drm.com Subject: A sakh I would take issue with Mr. Helfgott's derivation of "a sakh" from the German Sache. I believe the origin is from the Hebrew "sakh" (samekh-khof) meaning total, or number. When the expression "a sakh" is written in Yiddish, it is always spelled as in Hebrew -- samekh-khof. Reuven Rachlin 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 95 05:12 EDT From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Math By any count, "long" or "short", _khes_ is 8, not 9. [See 5.029] I erred. I apologize. Forgive me. Mikhl Herzog 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 12:34:40 -0700 From: ac939@lafn.org Subject: Ribe Who would have thought that Afn Pripetchik would have generated such a strong response? For what it's worth my father used to speak about a shelf over the oven. He called that shelf a "ribe." I can still hear him saying, "Vi geshmak s'fleyg zayn tsu shlofn af der ribe." A grus ale mendelniks. Keyle Goodman 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 Jun 95 1:24 +0200 From:rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il Subject: More on Tevye Sholem Aleichem writes Tevye in the ambiguous ktav Haser [contracted form] tet-bet-yod-heh, leaving the vowel sounding between the tet and the bet up for grabs, ah, e, ey, oh, u. I reviewed my video tapes of Tevye scenes. Maurice Schwartz, in his 1937 movie _Tevye der Milkhedicher_ clearly uses Tevye throughout. On the other hand, Shimon Dzigan, in Israel after the second war is uncomfortable with this pronounciation and uses Toyva. More confusion. Bob Werman Jerusalem 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Jun 24 09:14:48 1995 From: kanowitz@uchastings.edu Subject: Yiddish and German Many years ago I read or heard somewhere that Yiddish and German were both variants of an earlier Germanic language; that Yiddish "stabilized" earlier than German; and that modern-day Yiddish can, therefore, be traced back further to its roots than modern-day German. By "stabilize," I take it, was meant that the changes which followed were of a _relatively_ minor character. I assume this applied only to the proto-Germanic elements of Yiddish, and not to words of Slavic or Hebrew-Aramaic origin. Is there any merit to this description of the history of the two languages? Leo Kanowitz 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 24 Jun 1995 19:34:41 -0400 From: zellig@aol.com Subject: Our feelings for Yiddish are not irrational a) I join with Harvey Spiro (5.025,1) in his protest against the local (Vienna, Georgia) United Jewish Appeal Committee for its reckless disparaging of Yiddish. In its recent Newsletter the Committee profiled two U.J.A. activists of the area, and gave their "favorite Yiddish expressions" and Jewish culinary preferences, as if these two aspects were the essential ingredients of Jewishness. In my recent "Genghis Cohn" post (5.019,4) I pointed out the grotesque side of such a minimalized, watered-down, diluted view of Jewishness. Harvey supposes that neither of the two activists are native speakers, and he is particularly outraged at the mangled, shamelessly misspelled "favorite" expression of one of them, namely: "Svayir suit sain i yid" (sic) [shver tsu zayn a yid]. I hope Harvey sent his protest to the local U.J.A. Committee, as well as to the U.J.A. Headquarters in New York. b) In the same post Harvey wrote: > Although I have strong (admittedly irrational) feelings about Yiddish...> Why irrational? I am positive that many members of the Mendele khavruse have similar strong feelings about Yiddish, but do not consider them irrational. While both emotion and reason, its evolutionary descendant, lent survival advantages to cerebral man, the fact that an emotional overlay is laminated, so to speak, to a well-reasoned, logical rationale for the love of Yiddish, does not _ipso facto_ make it irrational. We have a wealth of weighty _reasons_ to be deeply concerned about Yiddish, and at the very same time feel a strong _emotional_ bond to it. One does not necessarily nullify, or even neutralize, the other. They can and do coexist in a strong alliance, one enhancing the other and reciprocally strengthening each other. Zellig Bach Lakehurst, NJ ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.030 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) 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 ****Getting back issues**** 1. Anonymous ftp archives are available. ftp ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files A table of contents is also available, along with weekly updates. 2. Mendele archives can also be reached as follows: via WWW: http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mewais.html via gopher: gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/../.pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele via ftp: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele