Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.150 October 24, 1995 1) Khapn (David Sherman) 2) Khapn (Eli Katz) 3) Hob un bin (Khayem Bochner) 4) Hob un bin (Judith Nadler) 5) A second letter to Philologus (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Oct 95 22:51:25 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.ca Subject: khapn / lak'khenen The song "Avreml der marvikher" has a line "arayn in tfise far lak'khenen a broyt" (i.e., sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread). David Sherman, Toronto 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 10:06:34 -0700 (PDT) From: katz@sonoma.edu2 Subject: khapn At the risk of repeating something that someone may already have posted and that I may have missed, here are a couple of additions to the "khapn" discussion: 1. "khap nit!" in the sense "Don't anticipate; let me finish speaking; you really don't know what I intend to say." 2. "zikh khapn" to remember abruptly something one should have been aware of, e.g. "er hot zikh gekhapt az er hot ibergelozt dem shlisl in der heym." Eli Katz 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Oct 95 23:09:22 -0400 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: hob, bin David Herskovic asks about the difference between hobn and zayn in forming the past-tense. The brief answer is: you've summarized the facts pretty well, and there is no simple answer. But, since it's not much fun to leave it at that, here's some more detail. Most verbs use hobn 'have' to form the past tense. The ones that use zayn 'be' are a limited list, but that list includes some of the most important every day verbs, so verbs that use zayn aren't rare at all, even though the list is limited. (It's usually that way with the hard, irregular parts of grammar ;-) Here are the most common ones, broken down into some categories of meaning: motion: geyn, loyfn, faln, flien, forn, kumen, shvimen, shpringen position: blaybn, zitsn, lign, shteyn other: zayn, vern, vaksn, shtarbn, geshen, shlofn As you can see, they mostly fall into a couple of meaning-classes, but still you can't really predict which ones will take zayn, you just have to know it (or learn it;-). The list is pretty short, but then you have to add all the prefixed forms of these verbs, like avekgeyn, araynloyfn, onkumen, etc, and that makes it much longer. And then of course there's the question of dialect. Most dialects agree pretty well on most of this, but still, some people say "iz geshlofn" and others say "hot geshlofn". This means that while it's easy to list the common ones, since almost everybody agrees on those, it's harder to nail down a complete list, since there's disagreement. And then we have some dialects have simplified the whole system, and use hobn for everything: "hob geven", "hob gegangen". I just met some one (from Grodne?) who talks that way. David writes: "I am not sure if every 'bin' becomes a 'zenen' when pluralised." This is one complication you don't have to worry about, I don't think. Some people say "zaynen" instead of "zenen", of course, but whatever forms your dialect has for 'to be', those should be the forms you use in making the past tense. Unless of course it's a verb that uses "hobn"! I haven't heard of any complications in this respect. So far, anyway! Khayem Bochner 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 14:17:53 -0500 From: judi@midway.uchicago.edu Subject: hob, bin I think it depends on whether the associated verb is "transitive" (can have a direct object) or "intransitive" (cannot have a direct object). Bin", "is", "zenen", is used with intransitive verbs (geshtanen/gekimen); "hob", "hot", "hobn" is used with transitive verbs (gegeyben/genimen/gezokt). Judith Nadler 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 23 Oct 95 18:33 EDT From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Philologus: Mea culpa but you still don't get it! [Mikhl Herzog's letter to Philologus (5.131) was answered in the Forward (10/20/95) though the letter's provenance is not mentioned. nm] Dear Phil (is it OK if I call you Phil?): 1. _You_ were right! _I_ was wrong! _I_ should apologize! Sholem Aleykhem _didn't_ call himself _a zhargonisher shrayber_ in his epithet, and he _didn't_ say it in his will. Did I just make that up? I don't think so. I'm somewhat constrained in conducting a full search now, but I'm looking for my source. 2. _You_ were right? _I_ was wrong? _I_ should apologize? _Nowhere_ did I say that the Yiddish term (_zhargon_) "originally had no such pejorative sense". _You_ made that up. _You_ should apologize! Do you? 3. Your interpolation into the citation in my letter is a) _wrong_ and b) apt to be attributed to me. The Czernowitz Conference of 1908 _did not_ "proclaim Yiddish to be the 'national language of the Jewish people, supreme even over Hebrew". You missed the point. The Conference proclaimed Yiddish to be "_A_ national language of the Jewish people". Say you're sorry! 4. What does your term "Yiddish lovers" mean? It sounds disparaging. Are you a "Yiddish lover"? 'fess up! There are many kinds of Yiddish lovers, often of different ideological bent, and not all of them have trouble with the fact that Sholem Aleykhem raised his own children in Russian. By the way, do you really _know_ his children couldn't read him in Yiddish? (Have you checked with Bel Kaufman?) After all, I _knew_ that he called himself _a zhargonisher shrayber_, and I may just have been wrong. 5. I'm only a linguist and lay no claim to a literary sensibility. Yet, I can't believe that you interpret the opening lines of Sholem Aleichem's _Ayznban Geshikhtes_ as a reflection of his disparagement of Yiddish, rather than as a satirical acknowledgment of the "received" intellectual climate of his time (about which there is no dispute). All the Yiddish writers of the 19th century had to struggle to overcome these intellectual barriers when they turned to writing in Yiddish. Reading their apologias is instructive. But turn they did. Incidentally, do you count Mendele and Sholem Aleykhem among the "lovers of Yiddish"? What about Bialik? 6. Finally, you suggest of Sholem Aleykhem that Yiddish "was not considered by him to be quite on a par with the great culture-bearing languages of Europe". It would be instructive to know what you think. Was it? Is it? There's more but who's got the time? I'm still a loyal reader, but I have to get back to finishing Volume III of the Atlas. (Volume II is off the press!) Soon, we'll be able to spar some more. Mikhl Herzog ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.150