Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 199 March 29, 1992 1) Entfers (Dovid Braun) 2) Bialik (Mikhl Herzog) 3) "Ost und West" (Martin Davis) 4) Seyfer and bukh (Mikhl Herzog) 5) Kh'hob zikh barekhnt 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Mar 92 14:12:47 EST From: David Braun Subject: entfers [David Sherman says:] >I once heard Sam Norich telling the anectode of some Jews >in Russia who needed to communicate with the local >authority (police officer, whatever) about some crime that >had been committed. But they didn't speak Russian, so they >found a Russian who spoke German. Then one of the Jews >begins telling the story of what happened -- and (as Norich >told it) it came out with a wonderful collection of >Hebrew-based words that would make it totally >incomprehensible to a German-speaker. If I understood correctly your narration of Norich's narration of this joke, the code which Proger, Herzog, and I were talking about probably doesn't come into play here. What (might've) happened in this anecdote was that the Jews said: "es iz geven a geneyve in shtot", etc. and the German-understanding Russian had no clue what geneyve, gazlen, etc. were. This wasn't in code, though, naturally, for the Jews had no other way of expressing geneyve. The issue of _Jew_ is really interesting, no matter what the answer (as if there really were an answer). ******************* [David Sherman cites:] > homen hot gevolt di yidn umbrengn > hot er zikh aleyn ofgehongn > aleyn is er geven a kapore > oy, iz dos a gesrukhe! > >[gesrukhe = bad smell] Judging by the meter (and lack of rhyme), your melody is probably different from mine. Dovid Braun 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Mar 92 22:14 EST From: ZOGUR%CUVMB.BITNET@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.197 Dan Breslauer, As an authority on Bialik, will you take it amiss if someone suggests that you run right out and really learn Yiddish? Bialik was, after all one of the very few who wrote his own poetry, ORIGINALLY, in both languages; i.e., he didn't simply translate from one to the other. And then there are the jokes. Ah, the jokes! WELCOME! Mikhl Herzog 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 28 Mar 92 10:09:29 -0500 From: davism%turing.cs.nyu.edu@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: "Ost und West" David Brenner inquires about the journal "Ost und West". I have no information about that, but he may be interested in a Yiddish (silent) film made in Vienna in the 1920s with that title. It was Molly Picon's first and was later reissued in the US with the title strangely mutated to "Mazel Tov"! The film was in the context of the "Ost Juden" mainly from Galicia who had come to Vienna seeking refuge from the war of 1914-18. These were not always appreciated by the prosperous semi-assimilated Viennese Jews. The film shows the development of a young Galizianer "rube", rejected by the American Molly, despite being formally married to him (because the "Haray at" had been said at what was meant to be a mock wedding). Helped by his clean shaven Viennese uncle, the lad becomes a success as a secular scholar, writing a book called "Ost und West" (and of course wins Molly). This likely is little use to David Brenner, but it was a really interesting film. Martin Davis 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 28 Mar 92 10:42 EST From: ZOGUR%CUVMB.BITNET@YALEVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.198 David Sherman: No, in Yiddish, seyfer DOES NOT belong to a subset of bukh. If you can't identify the object's contents from a distance, you might call a khumesh, but that would be your only excuse. David Braun, A propos of your "dautsh" joke, fill in the blank in the following "A Varshove izikimin kan Ameyrike; nu:kh tsvay vokhn ote gizukt: 'az yakh binikimin kan Ameyrike obox shoynikent redn dra:tsn shprakhn; ha:nt, azexobzox shoyn o:sgileyrnt Engelish, kenox shoyn ------'. Mikhl Herzog 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 28 Mar 92 14:31:12 EST From: David Braun Subject: kh'hob zikh barekhnt Probably the 'other' Ben-Ami is the' right' Ben-Ami. Yankev Ben-Ami (playwright, director) was much too recent. But once again, don't have dates at hand. ***** Mikhl Herzog urged me to mention to Mendele that the Yiddish of Immanuel Olsvanger's [imonuel olshvanger] _Royte Pomerantsn_ is not of the Kurland dialect, but is probably litvish Yiddish of the Grodne/Byalistok area (specifically Grayvi [Polish: Grajewo], if I remember Olsvanger's birthplace correctly). There are umlauts on some of the o's in the book, as in the title: Ro"yte Pomerantsen, and there are some cases of au where Standard Yiddish has oy (araus/aroys), but these should be taken with a grain of salt because he was trying (sometimes succeeded, sometimes didn't) to present the Yiddish phonology in such a way that it would be understandable to German readers. His original of Royte Pom.. was published in the 20's or early 30's by the Schweizer Gesellschaft fu"r Volkskunde. The reader is supposed to be able to understand "everything" in the book because glosses of many of the words are given. This is actually false advertising to the reader of the American Schocken edition: the English reader has no way of understanding the Yiddish unless... (s)he understands a lot of Yiddish. The reader of the original publication was supposed to be a German-reader/speaker, so all the items of Slavic/Semitic/Romance extraction in the Yiddish of Royte Pom.. are glossed in footnotes, since the German is expected to be able to understand most of the materials from the Germanic component. Dovid Braun ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.199 Submissions: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu Business: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles.