Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 70 September 29, 1991 1) Brokhes un kloles (Rick Turkel) 2) A new journal (Bob Werman) 3) Gotinkes and others (Mikhl Herzog) 4) A query and a reply (Hershel Bershady) 5) A proposal (Hershel Bershady) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Sep 91 13:21:03 -0400 From: rmt51@cas.bitnet (Rick Turkel) Subject: Brokhes un kloles To add to the list: On a second sneeze (after "tzu gezunt" on the first): tzu lebn [to life]; On a third sneeze: tzu lange yorn [to long years]. In the heat of an argument: es zol bay dir vakhsen a trolley car in boykh! [a trolley car should grow in your stomach! - obviously a 20th-century addition to the language] A gut, gezunt yor un a gut yontif tzu alln. Rick (Ruvn-Mendl) Turkel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Sep 91 0:23 +0300 From: RWERMAN@HUJIVMS.HUJI.AC.IL Subject: This might interest Mendele readers. This may interest Mendele readers: From: jolanta brach Subject: Masada quarterly offer ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A new quarterly magazine and publishing house under the name "Masada" has been established in Warsaw, Poland. It is edited in Polish and concerns Judaistic subject. Intelectual and aesthetic profile (literature, philosophy, art,music, sociology and historiography). Editor: Bogdan Wojdowski. Adress: ul. ZWM 20 m 2, 02-786 Warszawa, Poland. Account: PBK III Oddz. w Warszawie,370015-975092-132-3 ul.Jasna 8, 00-950 Warszawa. The first edition of "Masada" quarterly contains among others: Open letter to writers of the Shoah generation;The Warsaw ghetto lexicon; Jews as a Polish theme; "Hymn o perle" by Milosz in the light of gnosis; On L.Kolakowski's philosophy. First books by the publishing house "Masada": Z.Bauman, Nowoczesnosc i zaglada (Modernity and the Holocaust); G.Sholem, Zbawienie przez grzech (Redemption through sin); J.Ficowski, Odczytanie popiolow (Polish and Jewish version) Further information can be obtained through e-mail or from the editor. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Sep 91 14:16 EDT From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.69 gotinkes calls to mind words like "libinke", "kleyntshinke" and, particularly Northeastern Yiddish verbal diminutives when addressing children:"shlofinken", "esinken". 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 27 Sep 91 17:14:19 EST From: "Dr. Harold Bershady" Subject: Query on a distinction; note to Ellen Prince. Between curses, I would appreciate it if anyone could clarify for me the distinction, if there is any, between "baroigiss" and "een kass". For Ellen Prince: A Yiddish version of the sentence "Everyone died in each bat tle" finally percolated into my consciousness: Yeder aner ist gestorben in yed er kamf. If the English were "Everyone was killed in each battle," my sense of the Yiddish would be: Yeder aner ist gerharget gevorn in yeder kamf. Well... it's a version, anyway. Hershel Bershady 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 27 Sep 91 10:14:56 EST From: "Dr. Harold Bershady" Subject: Curses and Character Dear Noyekh, In remembering, reading Mendele's wonderful contributions to, and gleefully using Yiddish curses, it occurred to me that many such -- e.g., "kholehrya" -- were also used, with a few minor shifts, to refer to character types Thus a "kholehrya" (my orthography stinks, but is nevertheless decipherable, I hope) is a bitch, or the equivalent thereof -- in any case, a feminine type. (Just because I write in declarative sentences doesn't mean I know what I'm saying. It's simply easier to write this way.) So too, I would think, are many other "curses" also descrip[tive of undesirable character types. To call some- one a "pferd" is to insult him (although sometimes it can be a her). Not quite a curse, of course, but definitely insulting. In any case, although I'm sure we can keep going for a long time on Yiddish curses, wouldn't it also be fun to begin to enumerate the various personality nuances and types which Jews have been so brilliant and prolific in capturing? Let me suggest a few which I actu- ally silently think of in faculty meetings: 1. A "proste (Yid, Goy, whatever)" 2. Kelbelle or Shafelle (literally little calf or sheep, but in some contexts, referring to an adult, whiner, to a child as "dear child), 3) of course, "bolagoola" 4) chochem 5) shvitser -- i.e., a prevaricator 6) chaim knyack -- big deal, showoff, 7) My bubbeh used to say of one of her landsleit: "A pferd geht ibber die welt und bleibt a pferd," which puzzled but also tickled me as a child. Later I found the same idea in Freud: character is fate. 8) poskudnyack -- I hope this is deciperable 9) poskutsti -- vile female, I think 10) lemmishki, 11) vantz, shvatnz, putz, shmuck are ubiquitous and virtually English (ex cept for some of my demographer colleagues who are semi-literate) 11) luft mensch --- and so on and so on and so on. Something to consider? Mit leib, Hershel. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.70