Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.105 November 25, 1996 1) Helfn vi a toytn bankes (Rick Turkel) 2) Helfn vi a toytn bankes (Chaim Rosemarin) 3) A tikn toes (Mark David) 4) Yiddish e-mail (Morrie Feller) 5) Saying "please" in Yiddish (Joachim Neugroschel) 6) "Collar button" af yidish (Mel Rogow) 7) To tell on (David Goldberg) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 02:25:10 -0500 From: rturkel@cas.org Subject: Helfn vi a toytn bankes Re: Walter Golman's query [6.102]: the original understanding is correct; a banke is indeed a cup for cupping. (I still have an old cigar box containing the bankes my grandmother, a"h, brought with her from Poland in 1913.) See Weinreich for further verification. To call something "dead" implies that it once was alive. Besides, the grammar of the phrase is clear; "teytn/toytn" is objective, not nominative, and cannot modify "bankes" in this phrase. That said, I remember many years ago that a friend tried to tell me that "bankes" were leeches, and that the espression refers to the fact that dead leeches were ineffective for bloodletting. However, the word "bankes" comes from Polish/Ukrainian "ban'ki," which are, in fact, cups. Hope this helps. Rick Turkel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 09:36:18 -0700 From: astroj@astro.washington.edu Subject: Helfn vi a toytn bankes Re Walter Golman's query on bankes, in our family the phrase was always: "helft vi _kalte_ bankes." Since bankes are hot cups, obviously cold cups would be useless. Does anyone else remember it this way? Chaim Rosemarin 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 12:05:17 -0500 (EST) From: mhd@world.std.com Subject: Correction for "Interview with Mordkhe Tsanin" Please note that due to a typographical error, my last post [6.103] erroneously stated that Mordkhe Tsanin's most recent book was published in 1986; in fact it was published in 1996 (this year). Sorry about that. Mark David 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 10:57:55 -1000 From: feller@indirect.com Subject: Yiddish e-mail For those who are intrigued by the possibility of communicating with e-mail in real Yiddish, I would recommend that they open up Netscape, or whatever browser they might have, and search for . There you will find instructions for downloading programs for either Macintosh or IBM which allow you to send and receive Hebrew by e-mail. I have successfully used the program with my Macintosh. Although one cannot send standard Yiddish orthography with this program, this is certainly a big step in the right direction. If any Mendelyaners succeed in accessing these programs, I would be interested in exchanging e-mail messages with them. The creators of these programs maintain that they are "cross-platform" which, I assume, means that a Macintosh can communicate with an IBM. I plan to test this by having my 11-year old grandson, Avi, download the program for the IBM. I know he can do this because he is the one who downloaded it for me on my Macintosh. Morrie Feller 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 12:52:57 -0500 (EST) From: achim1@cris.com Subject: Saying "please" in Yiddish The issue of how to say "please" in Yiddish [6.103] is fairly simple, there are a number of ways, including: zay(t) azoy gut tu(t) mir a toyve ikh bet dikh (aykh) bite (from German "bitte"); it was already borrowed in Eastern Europe during the 19th century and has nothing to do with Belgium's proximity to Germany, as David Herskovic suggests [6.103]. Zay(t) (zhe) moykhl has more the meaning of "excuse me." I also feel uncomfortable with David Herskovic's suggestion that Yiddish should take over the English word "please" for being shorter. If Yiddish already has a few ways of expressing a concept, then an additional borrowing would be gilding the lily. Brevity is not necessarily the soul of wit or efficiency: I certainly wouldn't tell a French speaker to replace "s'il te (vous) plait" or a Spanish speaker "por favor" for the shorter "please." Nor do I share the feeling that "please" somehow sounds "Yiddish." To my American ears it sounds like what it is: English. whereas all the Yiddish versions, even "bitte," sound like Yiddish--because I've not only heard them constantly from Yiddish speakers, but encountered them endlessly in Yiddish literature. Also: I believe his model sentence should read: gib mir (not geb mikh). Is there any Yiddish dialect in which "gebn" takes the accusative of person rather than the dative? By the same token, a Yiddish speaker would say "oyszogn _dem_ (not "der") rebn, _dem_ tatn, _der_ mamn," etc. The accusative case is used only for the subject of a verb, not for the object. Incidentally, another Mendelyaner used "veg" to translate "way" in the sense of "manner." The normal Yiddish word for that notion would be "oyfen/ofanim": e.g. "af a sheynem oyfen," etc. Joachim Neugroschel 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 10:02:38 -0800 From: mrogow@loop.com Subject: "Collar button" af yidish I am an avid and loyal lurker, and a student of Yiddish for the last few years. My wife insists that when she was younger, she heard in the New York area a Yiddish language expression which translated literally as "no further than the collar button". This inferred that one shouldn't internalize personal stress or unhappiness. It is hoped that a Mendelyaner can tell me what was used as the Yiddish word for "collar button", or perhaps even the expression itself. Mel Rogow 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Nov 96 09:34:58 EST From: david.goldberg@smtpgwy.mla.org Subject: To tell on One expression for "telling on someone" is "tsushteln a benkl". Thus, I'm gonna tell on you = Ikh'l dir tsushteln a benkl. David Goldberg ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.105