Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 88 October 21, 1991 1) Poor people's food (Ruvn-Mendl Turkel) 2) Reply to Bob Goldberg (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Vi azoy zogt men af Idish...(David Sherman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 16:46:33 -0400 From: rmt51@cas.bitnet (Rick Turkel, Ext. 2214, Room 5304B bs"d) Subject: Forwarded: Poor-folks foods My wife's aunt, a Galitzyanerke, also used to make nunt. It seemed to me like tayglach, but with nuts instead of balls of dough. The litvak part of the family makes retach un shmaltz, sliced red (or better, diced black) radish, diced onion and chicken fat, salted and peppered to taste and eaten with challah as forshpeis for shabbos lunch. We generally referred to it as 'instant heartburn.' It does wonders for the coronary arteries! Talk about poor-folks food! The correlation of geography with dialects and cooking style allows a convenient shorthand. Lokshen kugel is seasoned with salt and pepper, and is best made with added sauteed onions; the stuff made with sugar and raisins we call "kigel". Rick (Ruvn-Mendl) Turkel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Oct 91 01:34 EDT From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.87 Bob, you sound angry. Sorry! The onus in such matters, though, is really on the claimant. There are a number of ways in which one can demonstraste with some degree of certainty that features in different languages are related, either as a result of common origin or borrowing. Requiring (sic!) proof that there is no relationship is not very reasonable. In fact we can't prove that ANY two languages are NOT related. If we believe in the monogenesis of man, we might also assume the monopgenesis of language, but the evidence for such relationships doesn't lie in accidental sound-meaning relationships of the sort we've been discussing. Native Yiddish speakers, almost by definition bi/multlingual have always been prone to the kind of word-play that yields such tantalizing pairs as Heirat/harey at. I see that there is room for several more "sics" in this message so I'd best sign off. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Oct 91 8:49:35 EDT From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: Mashed potatoes What do MENDELE readers call mashed potatoes? The kids asked us yesterday. Weinreich calls them "kartofl-kashe", ober s'klingt uns nisht gut. Weinreich also says "mash" is "tsekvetshn", but "tsekveshte kartofl" past oikhet nisht. There must be a good answer here. This is one word where the standard line "in der heim hot men dus nisht gehat" surely doesn't apply. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.88