Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 215 April 14, 1992 1) YIVO transcription (Berl Hoberman) 2) Epes/etwas (Ellen Prince) 3) Borrowed insults (Ellen Prince) 4) Russian curses (Vicki Fromkin) 5) Molly Picon (Eleanor Kolchin) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 13:20 EST From: Robert D Hoberman Subject: YIVO transcription The "YIVO transcription" can be found in Uriel Weinreich's dictionary and his COLLEGE YIDDISH and also in Dovid Katz's GRAMMAR OF THE YIDDISH LANGUAGE, with only a few minor changes: Katz uses "j" where Weinreich uses "dzh", and Katz distinguished unstressed inverted "e" (shewa) from stressed "e", where Weinreich uses "e" for both. Weinreich uses capitals, except for the second element in digraphs. Essentially the same system is used by the Library of Congress and the catalogues of most university libraries, except the LOC distinguishes "h" with a dot under it, for khes, from "kh" for khof. (In order to coincide with its transcription of Hebrew the LOC also uses a dot to distinguish the v of tsvey-vovn from the v of veyz, tes from tof, kuf from kof, sin from samekh, and a grave accent for sof.) So, the YIVO system is not only extremely simple and easy to remember (from the English point of view), it's quite standard. Here it is, in alphabetical order: A O B V G D H V U OY Z Zh Kh T Y I EY AY K Kh L M N S E P F Ts K R S Sh T S. By the way, the LOC transcription for Hebrew is also extremely simple and intuitive; I'd urge everyone to use it for most purposes. For an even simpler version, omit the diacritical dots. Here's the central line of my grandfather's version of the "Daytsh in Rusland" joke, in YIVO transcription: "der dayen (or even worse, orl) taynet, az ir hot geganvet a sus." Ah, another Yiddish self-deprecating joke! Berl/Bob Hoberman rhoberman@sbccmail.bitnet rhoberman@ccmail.sunysb.edu 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 16:20:13 -0400 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.214 [Bob Werman asks:] >What is the origin of eppes? And the difference between >eppes and etvas? > i don't know the story but i infer it wasn't an innovation in yiddish since swiss german also has /epis/ meaning 'something'. it must have been a germanic dialectal variant, surviving as the standard in swiss german and yiddish (and perhaps elsewhere). Ellen Prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 16:32:03 -0400 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.212 [Hershel Bershady writes:] > >...Jews certainly have a powerful >incest taboo, but I never heard any Jew insult another by >calling him a mother-fucker. Is there such an expression >in Yiddish? In Hebrew? Or does the insult imply a violation >of such magnitude that it is not permitted to express this >in, as at were, one's mother tongue-- so that one uses a >"heathen" language -- Ukrainian, I assume, in my uncle's >case -- to refer to a barbarous person or act? Any >clarification (and of course examples!) would be apprecia- >ted. > maybe, but you don't have to go to the domain of incest to see borrowed curses in yiddish--consider the venerable (and very frequent, i believe) _kholyera_--it's from polish (and maybe it's also the same in other slavic languages?). perhaps for different reasons, perhaps not, modern hebrew also borrowed important curses--i'm thinking of khara 'shit' and kusumak 'your mother's cunt', both from arabic. the official story that i've heard is that modern hebrew didn't have access to biblical hebrew curses, since they weren't immortalized in the sacred texts. i'm a bit skeptical, tho, since i'm sure the second one at least could have been reconstructed. any thoughts? Ellen Prince 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 16:38 PDT From: Vicki Fromkin Subject: Re: Mendele Vol 1.212 to Hershell Bershady -- I think the expression is a translation from the Russian -- I remember a 'dirty' song that starts 'Tsar Nicholaev, Bit voyu mat' or something like that. vaf You will note that my Russian is as bad as my Yiddish -- both pretty nil except for a few words (probably remembered as malapropisms)./ Vicki Fromkin 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 09:21 EST From: KOLCHIN@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU Subject: Molly Picon Here is my Molly Picon story. In the spring of 1968 I was touring Israel with my husband and cousins. The old city in Jerusalem had just become a part of Israel. While walking in the old city, I saw a familiar face. I couldn't place it immediately, and assumed it was my husband's relative. My cousin and I said hello and kissed Molly Picon. We took pictures and I have them hanging in my home now. Molly was visiting Jerusalem to celebrate her 70th birthday. Am I the only one on this list to have kissed Molly? Eleanor Kolchin ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.215 Submissions: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu Business: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles.