Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 61 September 10, 1992 1) A frage (Hershel Basser) 2) Hob...geveyn (David Sherman) 3) T > th > s (David Sherman) 4) Shmuck and putz (Hershel Bershady) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 16:03:39 -0400 From: fishbane@epas.utoronto.CA Subject: A frage I have been asked by a colleague, she is a very serious scholar, (who probably overestimates the usefulness of nets) to see if anyone here has ever found the term taharas hamishpoocha before 1940 or even ever heard it then. The alternate "familien reinheit" or "reinheit des familien lebens" will also qualify for first prize. for my money, if anyone here ever heard it even after 1940 I think they should get a prize too. Hershel Bolshiviker 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 2:50:26 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 2.59 > From: jfinger@mv.us.adobe.COM > I can take a stab at answering my own question (after > consultation with a native speaker, Rabbi Yosef Levin in > Palo Alto, who immediately said, "When you are moyhl, you > are being moyhl on someone else!") > > >> Why is "Ikh bin moykhl" in the past tense "Ikh hob > >> moyhkl geven" instead of "Ikh bin moykhl geven"? > > "Moyhkl zayn" is acting as a transitive verb here, in which > case it makes some sense to say "Ikh hob dir moykhl geven". > The aberration is in taking a Hebrew and using it as a > predicate adjective in the present tense, but using "moyhkl > geven" as the past participle in the past tense. I don't think that's the answer. My understanding of the footnote in Weinreich (p. 322) that you called "incomprehensible" is that the rule is simply thus: for any verb constructed from + zayn, the past tense is . It's not because it's a transitive verb. Ikh bin matzliakh; ikh hob matzliakh geven. The reason is presumably that + zayn is considered a verb of its own, despite the obvious derivation, and it is explicitly NOT the verb zayn plus the original Hebrew adjective. ikh bin ge-XXX, as opposed to ikh hob ge-XXX, is only used for certain verbs that are not only intransitive but that relate to the status of the person (the list seems to be very much in sync with the parallel "je suis" instead of "j'ai" in French. Thus, ikh bin gelofn, geforn, gezesn, gevezn, but ikh hob gearbet un geshklaft (the words of mayn yidishe mame come to mind here). Am I on track here? David Sherman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 2:59:39 EDT From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.CA Subject: Re: t > th > s, and how to pronounce it That reminds me of an anecdote that H.A. Gleason, who taught me linguistics at U of Toronto, once told me. He, a non-Jew, became quite a specialist in biblical Hebrew. (In fact, he designed an ingenious way of constructing a Hebrew dictionary, based not on alphabetical order but on looking up words by their "strong" consonants that would be least likely to disappear as the root took on various forms. But I digress.) He knew about the "th" issue, of course. However, when he first saw the name of the Toronto synagogue "Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda", he was completely puzzled as to its meaning. (Of course, it's simply the result of the merger of two shuls, which used different transliterations of the same word.) (Al Gleason also told me my favourite linguistics anecdote, which is about the class of words in Swahili that begin ki-, and whose plural is vi-. Thus, "kitu", plural "vitu". The word for a traffic roundabout in Swahili, due to the signs posted by the colonial British, is "kiplefti". So the plural is "viplefti". But I digress further, though perhaps not very far for the linguists like Ellen Prince who explore how borrowed Yiddish words in English take on English suffixes.) David Sherman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 10 Sep 92 09:42:39 EST From: "Dr. Harold Bershady" Subject: Shmuck vs Putz I've just re-entered Mendele after a couple of months and am catching up with what may be by now "old news." Since this has never stopped me in the past, here goes: Ellen Prince writes of an informant who uses "shmuck" in the double sense of "fool" and "bastard" (or prick, as the the case may be). I've always thought there was a distinction, shmuck for fool, putz for bastard. No shmuck is ever a mamser, although many putzes are. Since the two terms are equivalent in their literal meanings, some equivalence seems to have occurred in their con notations. In any case, I think Yiddish is rich in some part because of the precision in which shades of meaning are captured by different words. This seems to be thinning out in the dispersion. "Tush" is another word whose vari- ations are fast disappearing. E.G. When somebody did something particularly stupid, my father would point to his head and say "tukhus." A coarse person, male or female, would sometimes be referred to as "grubber tukhus." A shaynem tukhus, a tukhusl, etc. (The etc. is something else!) Hershel ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.61 If your message is intended for MENDELE, please write to: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu If you want to discuss personal business or have a shmues with the shames, please write to: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles.