Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.069 July 28, 1995 1) Yiddish words for Christmas (Ruben Frankenstein) 2) Makh a fayg (Dovid Moishe Goldstein) 3) Shlepn nakhes (Anatole Beck) 4) Simcha-Bunim (Goldie Morgentaler) 5) Simcha-Bunim (Yiddish nowadays ) 6) Yiddish nowadays (Khayem Bochner) 7) Khotsh, again (Dovid Moishe Goldstein) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 14:27:09 +0200 (MESZ) From: frankens@mibm.ruf.uni-freiburg.de Subject: Yiddish words for Christmas [Re: Mikhl Herzog's inquiry 5.068] We always used the word "nitl", which must be the yiddish form of the roman term "natale". Ruben Frankenstein Freiburg 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 27 Jul 95 09:30:34 EDT From: 73051.2257@compuserve.com Subject: Makh a fayg I'm trying to find the source and story about a little child who is advised by a parent to "makh a fayg" whenever he is frightened by a bad person or circumstance. A dank aykh ale. Dorian (Dovid Moishe) Goldstein 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 JUL 95 15:01:00 BST From: becka1@vax.lse.ac.uk Subject: Shlepn nakhes Neyekh Zide (mendele 5.068) asks for an English adult example matching dining needle for darning needle. I have always maintained that the phrase ivy tower for academic seclusion is a corrupted form of ivied tower, such as those which mark Oxford & Cambridge. In the Bronx, half a century ago, the kids who went to Bronx Park or to summer camp were afraid of catching poison ivory, and the Oxford English Dictionary recognizes ivory as a dialectic form of ivy. Ivied tower is almost impossible to say, except by a special effort, because of the juxtaposition of the d and the t. I had also thought that the phrase was shlepn nakhes until I studied German in college and came upon schoepfen .I still don't know which makes more sense. Anatole Beck 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 10:20:35 EDT From: brlv@musicb.mcgill.ca Subject: Simcha-Bunim I have always understood that the name "Bunim" in Simcha-Bunim is a corruption of the French name "Bonhomme," i. e. good man, and is an example of the Romance influence in Yiddish proper names. Simcha-Bunim was a popular name among Yiddish-speaking Jews because it was the name of one of the great rabbis (I think it was the Vurker rebbe, but I could be wrong. Or possibly the Przyscher rebbe.) Goldie Morgentaler Montreal, Canada 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 19:59:39 -0400 (edt) From: lincan@amanda.dorsai.org Subject: Bunim Helen Abeles asked about the derivation of Bunim in a recent post. I had the honor of attending a lecture given by the late Rabbi Shmuel Gorr (author of "Jewish Personal Names: Their Origin, Derivation, and Diminutive Forms", Avotaynu, Inc., 1992) at the Jewish Genealogy Seminar held in Chicago in 1984. At that time, Rabbi Gorr used "Bunim" as the example of the derivation of "typical" Jewish names and I remember the explanation as it is the name of my great-great grandfather. He traced Bunim back to the Hebrew "Shem Tov' or good name. As Jews moved to Spain, they translated the Hebrew into Spanish for "good name" (I can't remember the Spanish). As Jews moved north into France after the Inquisition, they changed the name to French - "Bon Nom" for "good name." In time, as the Jews moved east to Germany, Poland, etc., they began to use Yiddish and with this change in accent, Bon Nom became Bunim. I hope this explanation helps. Linda Cantor 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 95 16:41:43 -0400 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Yiddish nowadays David Herskovic and Marjorie Schonhaut Hirshan have both recently commented on Noyekh Miller's remark that "bad Yiddish abounds and in surprising places", pointing out that the communities where Yiddish is the most vigorous are not necessarily those where it is most conservative. Here's another perspective: As a linguist, with an attempt toward scientific objectivity, I think that it's probably inevitable that Yiddish in the ultra-orthodox community will go through a period of rapid change, given that this community doesn't take purity of language (wrt Yiddish) as a goal in itself. The kinds of change, and the way the new system stabilizes, are very interesting topics to study. No one outside the community has any particular right to interfere with the changes, much less the influence to do so. But I think it's also inevitable that some of those changes will seem appalling to speakers of more conservative forms of Yiddish. This also is part of the nature of language. Why, in English some people have based their whole careers on expressing of dismay at changes in the language ;-) Although I scorn a number of unrealistic prescriptive rules that schoolteachers tried to enforce on my English, nevertheless I shudder when I hear younger people saying things that _I_ wouldn't say. (I could give examples, but will restrain myself.) This horror at the fact that other people say things differently than you do is just as natural in Yiddish as it is in English. For most of us it's a little trickier in Yiddish, since most of us have heard Yiddish only from a narrow circle of speakers; an expression may be very wide-spread, and still be unfamiliar to us. This leads to one of our favorite kinds of discussion on Mendele ;-) "My parents don't/didn't say it that way, therefore no one does (or should)." Oh, well, it happens; sometimes I tell someone some expression is wrong, only to find Sholem Aleykhem using it ;-( But when undzer shames Noyekh calls something "bad Yiddish", I'm inclined to believe him! :-) And I think we can be quietly appalled at some of the Yiddish that comes from one source or another, even though we're delighted at the fact that they're using Yiddish. To quote David Herskovic's lovely way of putting it: "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." As the flyer for Yugntruf's "yidish-vokh" this year says: Beser a tsebrokhn yidish vi a gut english! But that doesn't mean the Yugntrufnikes aren't trying to improve their yiddish. Nu, genug shoyn! mertseshem vel ikh shraybn dos kumedike mol _oyf_ yidish, un nisht nor vegn yidish! Khayem Bochner 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 28 Jul 95 04:30:46 EDT From: 73051.2257@compuserve.com Subject: Khotsh, again Yankel Gerger has asked for examples of usage of "khotsh". Ikh dermon zikh fun a kinderlid vos geyt azoy: Eyns un tsvey un dray un fir Vos mir zaynen, zaynen mir _Khotsh_ mir zaynen yung un kleyn Vi di heldn darf men geyn A fisl, gib her a fisl Un shtayfer, shtayfer - shtayfer a bisl Shpan, shpan shtolts Shpan shtolts un ziker Di keplakh hekher, hekher, hekher. Dorian (Dovid Moishe) Goldstein ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.069