Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 38 July 4, 1991 1) Es geyt mir nit, cont. (Lloyd Gerson) 2) Kasrilevke (David Sherman) 3) RE: Various (Noyekh Miller) 1)----------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1991 09:14:51 -0400 From: gerson@epas.utoronto.CA Subject: RE: Vol 1.35 Usage, responsa, introduction Regarding es geht mir nisht im leben. This is perfect- ly ordinary Yiddish and means roughly "it has no inter- est to me or no effect on me". It is roughly equiva- lent to the German es ist mir ganz Wurst. Regarding af tslokhes. My mother says it just means "out of spite" or "for spite". Who can argue with his mother? 2)----------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1991 10:13:40 -0400 From: David Sherman Subject: RE: Vol 1.34 Introduction; query; response Bob Berk writes: > as for [af] tselokhes, my understanding of that phrase > is more like "for spite"; i think it is stron- ger than > simply "on purpose". its derivation from l'hakhis > supports that impression. Uh, yes. But when you're dealing with a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old, that's the normal situation in which you need to use "on purpose"! Thanks for the al-pi-tues, folks. I think we'll start using that one. -------------------------- Bob Berk recently mailed me a copy of "Kasrilevker Restoranen" as written by Sholem Aleichem, after I mentioned on mail.yiddish how much I enjoyed the skit, which we have on a tape. I was rather startled to see Kasrilevke spelled kaph-saf-resh etc., rather than kuf- alef-samekh-resh etc. Obviously Sholom Aleichem was (humorously?) drawing the name from Hebrew. What's the etymology? Kesser is a crown, right? I suppose the Slavicization of a Hebrew word by putting a typical Russian ending on it is part of the game. Can anyone provide more background on this? David Sherman 3)----------------------------------------------------- Date: Thur, 4 Jul 91 From: nmiller@trincc Subject: RE: Various Mikhl: I'm willing to be led by you in virtually all matters lexical, but draw the line at kapoyer/kapoyre. True, the spelling supports you but what's spelling to a Podolian who cherishes the rhythm of Moyshe Kapoyre? Pronounced either way, the word is spelled with a kof and is as you say in no way related to kapores. Your 'darfn af kapores' has a typically clumsy-sounding back-formation in Hebrew: 'ani tsarikh oto l'kaporot', something I can just hear the children of Ethipian immigrants saying a few years hence. When something fairly valuable was broken or lost there would be (after the hand-wringing, blaming, etc.): Nu, a sheyne, reyne kapore. If the object wasn't very important my family skipped the mourning and cheerfully imitated the Galician-Polish style: A shAyne, rAyne etc. Dept. of Clarification. Shlogn kapores, Mikhl, doesn't involve a _chicken_; it's a rooster. 'Ze tarnegol oyleykh l'miso' (this rooster is going to its death) is a line I'll never forget because when still quite young I understood the words and stopped whirling that hap- less bird in mid-expiation and burst into tears. From that time forward my family made donations to charity. Finally, you're is right about 'taves'. Should I con- fess to a tin ear in matters Litvish? I confess. Yankel Kessler: you're right as well. There is indeed a thin sliver of Bessarabia on the east bank of the Dniester. So says the Times Atlas. I'm afraid that I spent too many hours over a wonderful set of maps of Poland published by Rizzi-Zannoni in 1772, at which time (according to R-Z) the Dniester was the border. My Neue Brockhaus, liberated in 1945, says the same thing, but I won't argue with you or the Times. A small detail even in the light of R-Z's map, the relevant plate of which says: 'Carte des Frontieres de Pologne depuis la Fin des Karpaks en Transylvanie jusques aux Territoire des Tatars-Bessarabes'. Tatars-Bessarabes? You bet. This is where the expression 'optun af Terkish' stems from. And the towns are given in what I suppose are the Turkic names though in Arabic alphabet. So it's a neck of the woods where lots of redefining has gone on. (And will?) In addition to von Rizzori there's Shlomo Bickel (father of Alexander B., a lead- ing constitutionalist at Yale Law School until his untimely death) whose fond memoir 'A Shtot mit Yiden' describes the shift in orientation from Vienna to Bucharest following the first War in places like Bukovina and eastern Galicia. Noyekh ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.38