Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 97 November 12, 1991 1) Retzeptn (Isabelle Kreindler) 2) Schwa endings and other things (Ellen Prince) 3) Introduction (Frederick VanDoren) 4) Introduction (Elliot Wolk) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 91 16:20:49 IST From: Isabelle Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.95 Re vol. 88 How about kartofel purei for mashed potatoes? That' what we called it in Riga. Re vol. 84 (gogel mogel) In my family it's still a staple for sore throats. To make it one needs a sturdy glass, an egg yolk, lots of sugar (a diabetes special!) and a strong teaspoon with which one grinds the sugar down until the whole thing becomes a smooth, creamy, lemon-colored mixture. Wash it down with some hot milk or tea and sore throat is almost farshwunden (gone). 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 91 13:27:27 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.96 >RE: Bostoner Yiddish-- > >Yes Noyekh, brace yourself.... > >Challah is pronounced "chollie" by a lot of Boston types. >When I hear people refer to challah in this way, I hear >strands of "Lassie, come home" in the distance. for some reason which escapes me (but which i'm sure mikhl herzog knows), a bunch of schwa endings become /i/ in american (not just boston) yiddish--khali, bobi/bubi, zeydi, i think suki (the thing you sit in on sukes), feygi (the girl's name), maki (plague), pulki (especially for the human thigh, for some reason--in my house at least, the drumstick on a fowl was always pulke)...--but not shmate (*shmati), tante (*tanti), tshatshke (*tshatshki) (but maybe tsatski, meaning 'bimbo'?), tate (*tati), moyshe (*moyshi), shikse (*shiksi)... what's the story, mikhl? (or anyone else who knows!) re challah as khali, at christmas time we used to sing: deck the halls with loaves of khali... possibly the same thing?: the morning prayer was the moydi-ani. (stress on the first syllable, of course.) and two yinglish words that may be influenced by the same phenomenon: tushy and canary ('evil eye'). on another subject, i just remembered what we called ptsha, in addition to fisl: farglivets. (i don't think anyone came up with that one, but i may have missed it.) 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 91 20:16:34 est From: "Van Doren, Frederick L." Subject: Introduction Noyekh, I'm a Russian linguist by training. My research is in the area of colloquial language and conversational analysis. I teach Russian at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. I've only recently begun to study Hebrew and was struck by the way its rebirth has effected Yiddish. If one can believe Cynthia Ozick, though Yiddish held the Ashkenazic world together for centuries, once Hebrew became a living language again in Israel, Israelis looked down on Yiddish as old-fashioned, tainted with the Diaspora, obsolete. In this country too, Yiddish was considered the language of immigrants, slightly embarrassing. I'm fascinated at how Yiddish has survived and what will become of it without a generation of native speakers, without a vital Yiddish press, without a writer of the stature of Isaac Bashevis Singer. As I look at the Soviet Union and see Yeshivas opening up, anything seems possible. Even a Yiddish revival. Fred VanDoren VANDOREN@DICKINSN.BITNET 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Nov 91 11:11:45 EST From: Elliot Wolk Subject: An introduction By way of introduction, I am Elliot (Eliyahu) Wolk, a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Connecticut. I have no scholarly qualifications in Yiddish, but I have some knowledge of the language from speaking with my grandparents many years ago. My interest in Yiddishkeit has revived in recent years, and in 1990 I attended the Yiddish week at Mount Holyoke College, together with our esteemed shames Noyekh. Let me make a comment (for what it is worth) about "sissel bread". In my native town of Springfield, Massachusetts, it seems to have been called "shissel bread". When I asked our local baker why it was so designated, he replied that it was because it was baked in a "shissel", a large pan. Eliyahu ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.12