Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.044 July 10, 1995 1) Teaching Yiddish (Patty Becker) 2) School song to melody of the Internationale (Shimen Kass) 3) A sentence of Sholem Aleikhem's (Arnie Kuzmack) 4) Yiddish speakers wanted (Nicolas Grossfeld) 5) Af tselokhes vs dafka (Arre Komar) 6) Af tselokhes (Michael Shimshoni) 7) Fun shames a bakoshe (Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 9 Jul 95 15:27:00 EDT From: patty_becker@mts.cc.wayne.edu Subject: Teaching Yiddish I only remember my own experience in the Arbeter Ring Shule in Detroit in the late 40s and early 50s. The curriculum was almost the same as it had been for my mother, and all instruction was in Yiddish. I learned very little other than the alphabet and the songs. I guess mine was the first generation where Yiddish was not the language of the home, and I just didn't understand it well enough--and still don't. In fifth grade we began to learn Hebrew also, and that was taught from a standard language text, so I could handle it better. Yiddish we were supposed to know just by osmosis, I guess--no teaching of language structure, etc. I didn't understand any- thing about nouns, verbs, participles etc. until the Hebrew text and then when I took Latin in High School, and didn't understand Yiddish's until I took German in college. My point is that it has to be taught as a foreign language, because it is. Patty Becker 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 09 Jul 1995 22:28:26 EDT From: kass@umbsky.cc.umb.edu Subject: School song to melody of the Internationale In the Dovid Pinsky Folk Schule in Brighton Beach, which I attended in the 1930's, the school song had the melody of The Internationale, but the following opening line: Mir zaynen kinder ale glaykher Does anyone know the remaining lines? Shimen Kass 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 23:09:26 -0400 (EDT) From: kuzmack@umbc.edu Subject: A sentence of Sholem Aleikhem's In my intermediate Yiddish class, we encountered a sentence in a Sholem Aleikhem story that I could not explain. Since the term is over and two of my three students read Mendele, we agreed that I would ask for help from the chevre here. The story is "Vos vet zayn fun mir?", one of the Motl Peysi dem Khazns series. Motl is discussing different concepts of Gan Eydn, in preparation for the story of how he got caught stealing fruit from his neighbor's garden when he was supposed to be saying Kaddish for his father. The fourth paragraph of the story reads as follows: Kumt tsu geyn a yid an aynbinder un tut a zog, az der emeser gan-eydn iz gor fraytik in bod. ikh hob es aleyn gehert fun moyshe dem aynbinder, ikh zol azoy hern al dos guts! Haynt geyt dergeyt an ek! Question: what is the meaning of the last sentence: haynt geyt dergeyt an ek? B'sholem, Arnie Kuzmack 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 10:03:40 +0200 From: ng-ci@ping.ch Subject: Yiddish speakers wanted I'm looking for people speaking yiddish as their mother tongue and who would agreed to be interviewed about their use of this language. I'm doing a study about yiddish for my university. Nicolas Grossfeld 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 12:53:22 -0400 (EDT) From: komar@yu1.yu.edu Subject: Af tselokhes vs dafka It has been my impression that both oyf tselokhes and dafka have been in Yiddish ever since I can remember (i.e. 1930's). More over, it has always seemed to me that both expressions have the same full range of meanings; that is , from "for spite" to "just my luck". The only difference I sensed was purely the region from where the speakers' dialect stemmed. I seemed to sense dafka more common among speakers from Lodz region and points north and west, while oyf tselokhes seemed more prevalent in Belarus and Ukraine. I don't recall ever hearing the same person using both expressions even in different contexts. It is true however that I don't seem to find dafka in my turn-of-the-century edition of Harkavy. Mikhl Herzog to the rescue, please! Arre Komar 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Jul 95 12:39:59 +0300 From: mash@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il Subject: Af tselokhes (the end?) A dank to all the many Mendelniks who replied to my "af tselokhes" query, some in private and some in Mendele. Harry Katz in Mendele Vol. 5.041 added to his reply that he had thought that the phrase was connected to laughing (lakhen). I, who am more at home with Hebrew, could not understand what the meaning had to do with "plates" that are called in Hebrew Tsalahot (tsadi lamed het vav tav) and could have been pronounced in Yiddish tsalokhes... Well, imagination is something wonderful. Michael Shimshoni 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 From: nmiller@trincoll.edu Subject: Fun shames a bakoshe Dear friends: owing no doubt to the narrow constricted world-view (Yude-Leyb Proger iz mayn eydes) of the elementary school teachers who taught us English more than 60 years ago I have developed in recent months a positive allergy to the way, thanks to the sloth-generating properties of e-mail software, direct quotes have replaced the simple summarizing phrase. Not just direct quotes, but lengthy rambling direct quotes that Mendele's readers will have already read. There have even been _nested_ quotes submitted to Mendele. No need to bore you with a sermon. I'll simply urge that direct quotes be used _only_ when the exact wording of a phrase or sentence is critical to the discussion. Even in such a case the direct quote should be limited. That's the way our literary and scholarly models have communicated for ages. If for no other reason, maybe you could just do it as a favor for the shames? Noyekh Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.044 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. 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