Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 1 no. 127
December 17, 1991
 
1) Vatnmakher (Ellen Prince)
2) Vatnmakher (Bob Rothstein)
3) Dreydl (David Braun)
4) Dreydl (Mikhl Herzog)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 91 11:55:06 EST
From: Ellen Prince <ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.126

ok, here's *my* wild guess: since vatn is wadding, not
cotton, as mikhl herzog (i think) has pointed out, then
maybe it has to do with horsehair, the traditional material
for stuffing mattresses and upholstered furniture--maybe
tevye is saying the horse should be converted into a
couch...

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 91 23:02:23 -0500
From: ROBERT.ROTHSTEIN@SLAVIC.umass.edu
Subject: Reply to Mendele Vol 1.126

The word _vatnmakher_ and its variants (vatman,
vat(e)lmakher, vatenmakher, baytelmakher) has a literature.
N. Prilutski wrote about it in _Yidishe filologye_ [Warsaw]
2-3 (1924), suggesting that it is derived from _mevatl-
makher_.  Yudel Mark in _Yidishe shprakh_ 25 (1965), 2:63,
in response to a reader's inquiry, suggested that it was a
euphemistic metathesis:  _vatl_ for Polish Yiddish _tavl_
(i.e., _tayvl_).  Judah A. Joffe in vol. 12 (1952) of the
same journal (no. 4, pp. 113-14) writes that the expression
he heard in his childhood in the Ukraine (sorry, in
Ukraine) was _khapt im der vatman_ and later also
_...vatmakher_; all the other variants he had only seen in
print.  He connects Yiddish _vatman_ with Russian dialect
_bataman_ 'household spirit' (_domovoi_).

     Just to confuse things I'll add that Russian _vatman_
is a current shortening of _vatmanskaia bumaga_, the name
for a kind of thick drawing paper (named after the
l8th-century English industrialist James Whatman).

    My secret helper (for you bibliography fans) is vol. 36
(1977) of _Yidishe shprakh_, which contains various indices
(including a lexical one) to the journal for the years
1941-74.

*******************
      Some time ago there was a question about a kind of
bread called _sitnik_.  In Russian that's a term for bread
made from flour sifted through a sieve (_sito_), hence from
finer-than-usual flour.

   Bob

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 91 16:40:22 EST
From: braund@linc.cis.upenn.edu
Subject: more dreydlekh

Yes:  "Mekoyekh Mendele" would probably be better, since
we're talking about the institution MENDELE and not about a
guy named Mendele.  I thought it would be cute to
personalize "him" (the computer, the institution, the
network), so I marked the name for case.  I've heard an
item of American-Jewish folklore: people name their dogs
"Bagel", "Latke", and other Yiddish words.  Maybe this will
be the trend in Yiddish kompyutera'y -- to names one's hard
drive Malkenyu, Zishele, etc...

Two topics we all might want to look at are case-marking of
personal names and names for animals in the Yiddish
speech-community.  I'll bring some info ba a gelegnhayt.

To Bochner:  I've heard of dreyderl.  I think it was
analyzed (perhaps somewhere in the Herzog work, or maybe
elsewhere?) as a fusion of Eastern Yiddish dreydl with
Western Yiddish trenderl --> dreyderl.  Does Khshanev have
other vestiges of Western Yiddish?  Is it in the area of
"East meets West"?

And Meylekh:  wouldn't you first assume that dreydl comes
from dreyen (me dreyt a dreydl)?  That's why the analysis
_di reydl_ iz a khidesh.  It's good that _ someone_
associates Yugntruf with yugnt ('youth') + ruf ('call').
The most common analysis/mishearing/misunderstanding that
I've come across is:  yudn (!!) + truf (!!!!).

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 91  18:35 EST
From: ZOGUR@CUVMB
To: mendele@trincc
 
To: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET
Subject: "dreydl"
 
reydl/redl, the diminutive of rod/rud 'wheel' does NOT come
from a reading of dreydl as di reydl. Rather, the emergence
of reydl as a regional variant of dreydl meaning 'spinning
top' probably DOES come from such a reading; i.e., from a
folk-etymological interpretation of dreydl the sequence "de
reydl".
 
Yugntruf DOES have something to do with ruf (call), but
that says nothing about your assumptions about dreydl,
which certainly SEEMS to derive from the verb dreyen. Check
a German etymological dictionary to see if rod/redl is
similarly related to dreyen. If yes, your "subconscious"
assumptions happen to be well founded. If, no, your
assumptions are evcidence of how folk-etymology works.
____________
 
To: bochner@das.harvard.edu
 
Your variant  "drayderl/dreyderl" is typical of western
Poland. Call it a "compromise" form: To the West, the words
are "trender, trendl, trenderl"; to the East, they're
"draydl/dreydl". Add one to the other "trend(er)l + dreydl"
and what do you get? Surprise! DREYDERL.

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End of Mendele Vol 1.127