Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 131 January 3, 1992 1) Ober/oder (David Sherman) 2) Tshuve v'shayles (Borok Berk) 3) Introduction (Dovid Hirsch) 4) Folk etymology (Melekh Viswanath) 5) Phonetics (Berl Hoberman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Jan 92 13:41:17 EST From: dave@lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.129 > From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET > As for ober/oder. There's no > confusion. The usage is regionally consistent: ober do ober > dort: 'either here or there'. Standard Yiddish, of course: > oder....oder. Consistent to what region or regions, Mikhl? Also, do people who use "ober" for "or" use "oder" for but? If not, why does "or" get used in English in place of "but"? 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1992 16:01 EST From: BERK@ZODIAC.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.129 dave - i think dollar comes from 'thaler' - which was a (germanic?) currency. tat makes the step to 'tuler' a bit less mysterious. moishe nussen: what kind of yiddish DO you speak? not being very fluent in the language, unusual (to me) accents can play havoc with my comprehension. in particular, the two words below stumped me. also, i understand the words of the third expression, but not its meaning in your context. can you help me out? *Akaide* [Noie`h mit ziben] *grazen*. be`hol doir vudoir borok [bob berk@zodiac.rutgers.edu] 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 02 Jan 92 20:52 PST From: "David Hirsch, Bibliographers Group" Subject: Introduction Ikh heys Dovid Hirsch un ikh bin a bibliotekar inem bibliotek fun UCLA. Ikh hob zikh gelernt Yiddish fun di bobe un in University of Pennsylvania ober yetst ikh hob alts fargesen. Ikh hob gevoynt 3 yor in Mitsrayim vo ikh hob geredt a sakh yidish mit a gevezene aktrize fun der Keniglikhe Yidishe Teater in Kairo. Oyb ir vilt, ikh ken epes shraybn vegn di Yidishe khile in Mitsraim. dovid 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1992 10:27 EDT From: VISWANATH@DRACO.BITNET Subject: folk etymology Regarding folk-etymology: Ellen Prince writes: 'sparrow grass' is a nonstandard variant of 'asparagus', which was 'folk-etymologized' into 'sparrow grass'. in case the problem is the term 'folk etymology', that's when speakers hypothesize that some word comes from something on the basis of its sound (or spelling) but are wrong. Mikhl Herzog writes: 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. **************** Thoughts on 'how folk etymology works': Twice recently in Mendele, assertions have been made that a wrong etymology is folk-etymology (per evidence adduced above). I don't quite understand this. Let us look at Herzog's statement. If my "subconscious" assumptions (regarding the origin of dreydl) are indeed evidence of how folk-etymology works, then they should be evidence whether or not they are well-founded. Rather, I would like to suggest that my hypothesizing is, in fact, closer to scientific hypothesis generation. The difference between this and folk-etymology probably lies in the fact that a folk-etymology is typically asserted to be true, without any attempt at testing it. Consistent with my suggestion is the following characterization of folk-etymology: (if read with stress on 'a tout prix') Vendryes: l'etymologie populaire est une reaction contre l'arbitraire du signe. On veut a tout prix expliquer ce dont la langue est bien incapable de fournir l'explication. Other viewpoints on folk-etymology: Ramon Anttila defines folk-etymology as a process of replacing unfamiliar shapes with more familiar ones. This would not seem to be true in my case. dreydl is certainly not an unfamiliar construct to me, or indeed to anybody on mendele. This definition would, however, justify the classification of sparrowgrass/asparagus as folk-etymology. Except on grounds such as I have suggested, it would seem difficult to qualitatively distinguish between scientific hypothesis generation and folk-etymology. In fact, Orr, revue de linguistique romane, writes: l'etymologie populaire ne differe pas essentiellement de sa soeur savante, l'etymologie des philologues. Plus vivante, plus 'operative' que cette derniere, elle fait instinctivement, intuitivement et du premier jet ce que fait l'autre intentionellement a grand renfort de bouquins et de fiches. In any case, I submit, a hypothesis being wrong cannot make it an example of folk-etymology. On the other hand, perhaps there is some other technical definition of folk-etymology that would make the uses of Herzog and Ellen correct. Comments? melekh 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1992 12:03 EST From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.129 As Mikhl Herzog requested in Mendele 1.129, I've retransmitted to him the comments I had made about ayin and the shift to n or nasalization in Yiddish. I'll take this opportunity to mention farn tsiber that the critique of my suggestion by Arn Abramson (in 1.113) convinces me I was wrong. He pointed out that the muscular gestures to produce an /n/ and a Middle Eastern ayin are quite different, and that a change from ayin to /n/ in Arabic is unknown. So are we back to square one for Yankev, ma:nse? Berl ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.131