Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no.33 June 30, 1991 1) Dictionary query (Nicholas Eshelman) 2) Language query (David Sherman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Jun 91 08:25:40 CST From: Nicholas Eshelman I would like to ask if anyone out there knows if there are any plans to update or expand Weinreich's Modern English-Yiddish Dictionary. It seems to me that this would be an extremely valuable project. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1991 00:39:42 -0400 From: David Sherman Subject: RE: Vol 1.31 Re:queries > As for the meaning of "es geyt im (nisht) in > lebn", I'm hard put to find anything "negative" in > its implications. It seems to me to refer to the > degree of urgency or concern that one has for the > matter in question: "es geyt mir veynik/shtark/nit > shtark/gornit/in gantsn nit in lebn". After all this discussion, I'm afraid I still don't understand what the phrase means, in its various (con- jectured or otherwise) forms! Next topic: How does one say "by accident" (as in, the opposite of "on purpose")? Weinreich translates "accidental" as "tsufelik", but that doesn't sound right to me. We use "ts'l'hukhes" for "on purpose". (Which leads to another question: the Hebrew hiph'il form, "to make [someone] angry", is "le'hakh'is", with a patakh. How did the patakh turn into a kometz? My dialect is adopted Stashiv (Poland).) This question (how to say "by accident") isn't theoret- ical. Since we use exclusively Yiddish with our kids, and our oldest two are now aged 7 and 5, the subject comes up a lot... David Sherman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.33