Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.055 July 17, 1995 1) Oysdrucken (Yankl Gerger) 2) Children's rhymes (Ronald Florence) 3) Sholem-Aleykhem's rage (Leybl Fridhandler) 4) Komets alef (Dovid Braun) 5) Yiddish nowadays (David Herskovic) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 11:57:42 EDT From: hrmv59a@prodigy.com Subject: Oysdrucken Having recently returned from a great week at Mt. Holyoke College in Mass. with 170 or so fellow "Yiddishite" from around the world, at the Nation Yiddish Book Center "camp", I have a deeper appreciation and understanding of Mendele. This is not the format to tell you all about that most memorable week, however, it was a week I will always remember. The faculty, the staff and the participants were the finest! Now to the biz. at hand. Yiddishe oysdrucken (expressions), when translated to English verbatim generally don't make good sense. (Hak mir nisht a tchaynik, etc.) I think that they are ment to indicate a mood, a feeling, an endorsement, a curse, etc. in the stongest manner possible. Their origins are steeped in things like religious ritual, fear of or respect for Gd, local custom, local events, play on words, and other sometimes irrational reasons. It is therefore better, I think to translate them, and then accept them for what they mean and leave the "analysis" alone. Yankel (or Yankl) Lantz, I feel had the best explaination in,"in spite of everything you do, it still comes out wrong". Now, can anyone give me the translation as well as the "where used" of the work khotch" There is a song called '"Papirosn" (cigarette in Russian) in which that is used. Yankl Gerger 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 15:11:24 -0400 From: ron@mlfarm.com Subject: Children's rhymes In a recent posting, Zellig Bach offered several examples of children's rhymes as mild verbal aggression: "Beylke, host dayn fatsheylke?" ... "Ma'le, Ma'le, ven verstu a ka'le?" ... "Zay nit kayn Meyer der dreyer" ... "AvrEml, vos hostu in dayn kreml?" Sholom Aleichem offers other examples in _The Great Fair_, saying the city children didn't know how to do these: "Leibel-Kapeibel sits on a table, lives in a stable in the land of Kababel. Jake Kapake is a fake, always eats cake in the land of Kabake. Moses-Kaposes snores when he doses, sitting on roses in the land of Kaboses...." They all bring back memories of stories my grandfather made up for me, and many years later, stories I made up for my son with some of the same names. Ronald Florence 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 19:49:12 -0400 From: lfridhan@aol.com Subject: Sholem-Aleykhem's rage Aribergeklibn zenen mir fun dorem keyn tsofn Kalifornie un nokh nisht in gantsn farendikt. Ober pavolinke, nisht gekhapt, khapn mir dem otem. Tsayt nemen zikh tsu arbet. Aroysnemen etlekhe bikher fun di peklekh hob ikh bamerkt epes a notits ikh hob ongeshribn af a zaytl vegn Sholem-Aleykhemen: tsebaysndik di negl biz blut (Undzere Rishoynim fun Berkovitsh, Band Alef: zayt 72). Azoy fil grimtsorn hot er gelitn? Nu, a yid in Rusland hot gehat genug farvos. Ober fun vanen hot er genumen azoy fil humor? Amol hot er ibergemakht zayn emesn, zayn groysn tsorn. Fun dem hot er geshafn emeser, tifer humor. A nes. Louis (Leybl) Fridhandler Emeryville, CA. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 23:15:43 EDT From: dovid@mit.edu Subject: Komets alef Not too long ago, I was present at a wonderful event in which some adorable children performed the song "Afn pripetshik" (variously pronounced [ofn] and [pripetshok]). Being too young to understand what the song narrates and what many of the words mean, what was heard in their versions of the song was: zogt zhe kinderlekh, gedenkt zhe tayere vos ir lernt do zogt zhe nkh a mol un take nokh a mol komets alef beys [sic] and zolt ir fun di oysyes koyekh shlepn [sic] kukt in zey arayn. (As if it were necessary, I placed the symbol "[sic]" by the mistakes the kids made. As things look, I wouldn't be surprised if Mendele were to get a correspondence to the effect that these versions are indeed the ones sung in _somebody's_ neighborhood.) As for *adults* who are **fluent, native speakers of Yiddish**, the expression is _shepn nakhes_. Those who come from "di zelber gegend" are obviously not reliable sources for *Yiddish* (although they may be reliable sources for passive Yiddish or memories of Yiddish) -- in fact, anybody who utters the *feminine* definite article followed by an adjective inflected for the *masculine* is obviously not a reliable speaker of the language. Those of us who are native speakers of English would immediately deem the utterer of the following sentence non-native and not reliable as a source for learning Engllish: "John no go home." Speaking Yiddish in this way qualifies you as *familiar* with the language, but not a reliable speaker or native speaker of the language. It is not your fault if this is the case; it's just a fact about the language you grew up to be proficient in -- which is apparently not Yiddish. Dovid Braun 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Jul 95 11:56:20 EDT From: 100114.750@compuserve.com Subject: Yiddish nowadays Noyekh Miller writes that "bad Yiddish abounds and in surprising places". He then gave some examples of a 'Boro Parknik' he had encountered on the Net. May I add my own insight. Chasidic and Chareidi Jews are nowadays the largest group of users of the Yiddish language. There are thousands of children in these communities whose first and sometimes only language is Yiddish. This has allowed the language to evolve and to adapt to all its modern usages. They have maintained the warmth and personal nature of the language and new phrases and idioms are constantly being creatd. Their grammar may not be up to Sholem Aleichem's yiddish but they have nevertheless preserved the language not merely in a historical sense but as a live ongoing tongue. Whilst lists like these discuss the finer points of the language and revolve around literature and arts one constantly gets the feeling that it is all in a rather nostalgic, historical and aesethic way. All the scholarly discussions of the language do not make up for a few weeks of buying, selling, loving, hating, laughing, crying, phoning, faxing, blessing, cursing all in mameloshn. In England people are not expected to use Jane Austen's English so why should a kheder boy be reqiuired to use Peretz's Yiddish. May I finish with this. If this world is ever to see again the likes of Sholem Aleichem or Peretz I think he is more likely to be kheder/yeshiva educated than high school/university. David Herskovic ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.055 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. 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