Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.121 December 15, 1997 1) G'VALD! (Walter (Velvl) Golman) 2) "Fonye" (Mottel Lakin) 3) Fonye (Louis Fridhandler) 4) Shteeble (Hershl Bershady) 5) Can anyone help with this phrase? (Nusen (Nelson) Fishman) 6) Farblondzhet af daytsh? Me shmuest vegn yidish (Louis Fridhandler) 7) 'Jews' and dictionaries (David Herskovic) 8) Y. Dobrushin (Lyber Katz) 9) Yiddish linguistics vs. Yiddish amateur linguistics (Rick Turkel) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 09:31:15 -0500 (EST) From: walter golman Subject: G'VALD! raboysaye: I have long doubted the value of the complimentary, often flowery, descriptions that characterize Congressional debates -- "the distinguished Senator," "my very good friend," and so on. It has all seemed like a waste of space and money in the Congressional Record. But now I'm not so sure. The testy tone that sometimes characterizes Mendele postings adds nothing to the value of the messages and tends to detract from the intellectual pleasure offered to readers. Please! Walter (Velvl) Golman, Silver Spring, Maryland 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 21:22:22 -0500 (EST) From: Martin Lakin Subject: "Fonye" Nadia Paladini, Wolf Krakowski and Pamela Parsky have commented or asked aboutthe use of "Fonye" as a designation for Russian soldiers . I heard it was a moderately derrogatory term taken from the Jewish usage of the name common among Russian soldiers, "Ivan" which was given an F sound. Any confirmations? Mottel Lakin 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 14:35:01 EST From: Lfridhan Subject: Fonye About three-and-a-half years ago (May, 1994), there was a lively discussion in Mendele on whence arises _fonye_ or _fonye-ganef_ as a Yiddish term for a non- Jew in Russia. See 4.005, 4.008, 4.010. Suggestions were: 1) Ivan to Vanya to Fonye; 2) Afon (Athenian) to Fonye; 3) Agafon or Afanasii to Fonye; 4) mitrofon/mitrofonia to Fonye. I wonder if this was ever settled. Louis Fridhandler 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 14:48:31 -0500 (EST) From: hbershad@sas.upenn.edu (Harold Bershady) Subject: Shteeble Re: Shteeble. In the song, Afn pripichkl brent a fir'l, in der shteeb s'is hais... etc, is there a significant difference between shteeb and shteeble, other than the one that perhaps connotes size of room? And in either case, isn't the shteeb or shteeble merely a room in a family dwelling? In the song it is little children who are being taught. In my recollection of my grandmother's tales, children so young as be taught the ABCs were visited by a person called a rabbi, sometimes, by the adults a Melamed. But rabbis are also teachers. For waht it's worth, Hershl Bershady 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 15:40:48 EST From: NFishman Subject: Can anyone help with this phrase? In "khaneka (khanuka??) gelt" by sholom aleikhem there is a scene in which two brothers are about to begin a game of checkers (draughts) on a board consisting of black & white squares drawn on a piece of paper using black & white beans for the checkers. Before beginning the game, one says to his brother, benni: "eyn zakh vil ikh dir beten, benni, - b'lo kharote u'blo d'ro'o, - dos heyst: a gang zol zayn a gang." Can anyone help with a translation of the phrase "b'lo kharote u'blo d'ro'o"? we know that 'b'lo kharote' is without regret or without remorse, but are stumped by '"blo d'ro'o" (spelled daled - reysh - eyin - hey). Perhaps it is an aramaic form of "ra'a" with a daled prefix? In any event, is this an idiom and what does the phrase as a whole mean? Looking for elucidation... Nusen (Nelson) Fishman, Baltimore MD 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 16:59:58 EST From: Lfridhan Subject: Farblondzhet af daytsh? Me shmuest vegn yidish. Zenen mir gevorn azoy fartshadet az mir darfn farblondzhet vern af daytsh anshtot afn glaykhn yidishn veg? Have we become so dulled by smoke that we get lost and wander off into discussion of German language as a benchmark, and forget that Mendele is about Yiddish? I dare say, most of us, fortunately, on Mendele keep this well in mind. But not everyone. Lance Garmer (7.118, 6) supports the translation of the German word _widrig_ as repulsive. Nu, iz vos? So what? German may be relevant, but German is _not_ the standard of comparison for Nomberg's use of Yiddish in Tsvishn Berg. The relevant discussion, I vividly remember, was about what Nomberg might have meant by his use of _viderig_ as a _Yiddish_ word. No matter how Germanized, he was writing Yiddish. The _German_ word, widrig, may or may not be relevant. It is inappropriate to claim to settle a discussion about _Yiddish_ usage by pointing to a meaning in _German_ usage (which may not even be a universal usage among German speakers)? Yiddish is not German. Consider this example: Yiddish _unterzogn_ means to prompt. A German word that sounds much the same, _untersagen_ means to forbid. Here, depending on German is no help at all in interpreting Yiddish, and will lead you wildly astray. Bin ikh gerekht, oder neyn, az do shmuesn mir vegn yidish: shprakh un literatur? Sometimes I ask a rhetorical question. Nu, iz vos? Louis Fridhandler 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 20:59:20 +0000 From: David Herskovic Subject: 'Jews' and dictionaries To assuage mendele's esteemed Germanist's bewilderment as to why 'some Jews hate using reference works' (pronounce it 'dzooz', to rhyme with booze, and it becomes even more perplexing; try it, it works), it is all very simple. You see 'some Jews' are very weak and frail and they have nebekh no koyekh. Now, as we all know very well to use a dictionary that can be lifted with one hand is a terrible waste of time and 'some Jews', not having been raised on the basic staple of wurshtbraut and bier so common to Germans (their cousins, it sometimes seems), simply do not have the strength to raise a dictionary with both their hands. So 'some Jews' have to occasionally muster all the khutspe that 'some Jews' are renown for and ask terribly imbecilious questions, thus troubling men of impeccable knowledge, when all they had to do was look it up in some dictionary that they could have raised with a fork lift purchased, of course, with loads of money that 'some Jews' are in possession of. So simple and yet it could have missed so serious a scholar. Perplexing indeed... David Herskovic 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 22:47:05 -0500 (EST) From: Lyber Katz Subject: Y. Dobrushin Diane Rabson asked for information on Y. Dobrushin in her 7.117-9 posting. He was arrested in late January, 1949 along with Itzik Feffer, Dovid Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Leib Kvitko, Der Nister (Pinkhos Kaganovich) and Samuil Galkin, the cream of Soviet Yiddish writers and poets. Although he was not tried and executed along with Feffer, Bergelson, Markish and Kvitko as a member of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee, he was exiled to a Gulag where he dies in 1953. One comment on Diane Rabson's post. Dobrushin should not be identified as a "Russian writer ..." since he was primarily a Yiddish writer, playwright and critic. He directed Sholem Aleikhems "Wandering Stars" for the Byelorussian Jewish Dramatic Theater in Minsk and adopted together with S. Mikhoels Sholem Aleikhem's "Tevye der Milkhiker" for the Moscow State Jewish Theater. The country we, in the USA, call Russia was the Soviet Union, a distinction that the people there are touchy about -- Russians are but one of the close to 200 nationalities, albeit the biggest one. Incidentally, Mikhoels, considered one of the greatest Yiddish and world actors and directors, as head of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee was assassinated 50 years ago, on January 12, 1948 in Minsk on direct orders from Stalin. That murder signalled the opening of the campaign that lead to the virtual destruction of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union. Lyber Katz 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 01:15:25 -0500 From: rturkel@cas.org (Rick Turkel) Subject: Yiddish linguistics vs. Yiddish amateur linguistics Thanks to A. Manaster Ramer for the clear explanation of sound changes and how they work (Mendele Vol. 07.117). I'd been thinking about posting something on this subject, but couldn't have done anywhere near as good a job. My only comment is that he's left out the one possibility that linguists despise - the sporadic sound change. While it's true that sound changes are almost always regular and general throughout a language or dialect, sometimes things just change by analogy with some related word. An example: the word for the number "9" in almost all Indo-European languages has /n/ as its first consonant - Eng. nine, Ger. neun, Lat. novem, Grk. ennea, Skt. nava, etc., etc. However, the Baltic and Slavic languages have /d/ for this /n/ - Lith. devyni, Russ. devyat', Srb./Cro. devet, etc., etc. This doesn't fit any other known, regular sound changes in these languages; it's just an anomaly. I was taught that it was a sporadic sound change by analogy with the number for "10," which begins with /d/, another dental. I mention all of the above to relate it to the etymology of "davenen." None of the explanations I've seen posted to mendele on this subject sounds very convincing to me. However, if I remember correctly, the only objection to OFr. "divinere" as its origin is the source of the /a/; it certainly accounts for the consonants and the other vowels. What's so terrible about saying that the initial /i/ of "divinere" became /a/ by analogy with Heb. daf and/or davav, given the additional fact that -i-i- isn't a particularly common Yiddish vowel pattern? Be me everyone well and strong. Rick Turkel ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.121 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html