Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 75 September 30, 1992 1) Taharas hamishpokhe (Shulamith Berger) 2) Es (Ellen Prince) 3) Es (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 24 Sep 92 08:41:50 PDT From: Shulamith Berger Subject: Taharas hamishpokhe The phrase "taharas hamishpokhe" was used as the title of a book on the topic by Rabbi Mordecai Aaron Kaplan. Kaplan was the rabbi of the Bnai Yehudah shul in Boro Park, Brooklyn, for many years. The book was published in New York in 1923. It's mainly in Yiddish, but there is also an English section with an English title page, which reads as follows: "Family Purity (Taarath Hamishpocho) from a Jewish Religious and Hygienic Standpoint." I just happened to come across this reference, I haven't done a survey of the topic, but I thought this might help the person who was trying to trace usage of the term in the US (if that was indeed the question!) Shulamith Berger 2)--------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 25 Sep 92 23:46:28 -0400 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 2.73 [Eli Katz writes:] > ver flit es in nakht arum? > es flit a moskitele arum, zum, zum, zum. >Now the "es" in line (2) is an unproblematic non- >referential (filler) "es". But the "es" in line (1) looks >like one of Mikhl's. In this example it almost seems as >though there was an interrogative transformation without >application of a deletion rule. A typical pair would >look like this: > > Es shteyt a mentsh in gas. > Ver shteyt in gas? > >i.e., wi th the "es" deleted in the question. The >particular "es" in the song is thus reminiscent of the >optional retention of the subject in a Yiddish relative >clause: "Der yid, vos (er) redt mit mayn froy, iz mayn >shvoger." Any ideas on this? well, nice try, but it doesn't quite work. what's deleted is 'a mentsh', not 'es'. the 'es' disappears if anything precedes the verb, as in : in gas shteyt a mentsh it seems as tho this 'es' is very superficial, just being inserted if it's a canonical declarative sentence and there's nothing preceding the (tensed) verb. as for 'der yid, vos er redt mit mayn froy,...', that seems to be something else again--the 'er' actually refers to something, to the yid in this example, whereas the 'es' in the previous example doesn't refer to anything. note that the 'er' changes depending on what it refers to, while the 'es' is invariant: a yid, vos er redt mit... a froy, vos zi redt mit... a bukh, vos es iz aroyskumen... vs.: es ligt a yid/a froy/a bukh oyfn tish so, whatever this 'es' is, it doesn't seem to be the same as the 'er/zi/...' in the relative clause. >In "Zetst zikh avek un rut zikh opet." where does the >clitic "-et" come from? I haven't done any serious >looking, but my first thought is that it occurs only on the >separable prefixes "op-(arop-)" and "on-" (possibly also >"oyf-") when they are in fact separated. It strikes me as >less formal or more casual than the standard form, and it's >surely rare in literature. would this be related to the -et in 'oykhet' as a variant of 'oykh'? ellen prince 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 17:21 EDT From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.Columbia.edu Subject: Es To Eli Katz: Eli, let me give you the actual sentences again. 1. The "es" group, in which "es" is unstressed: i) alemen hot men "es" oysgeharget ii) vos hostu "es" nekhtn azoy geveynt? iii) es hobn zey "es" zikh azoy geshlogn (Stress ZEY!) iv) efsher vet "es" di mame trinken tey 2. The "a" sentence: ver es hot "anor" farshtanen un ver es hot "anor" gevust I think your recollection may have been a bit off in both cases. The "es" sentences don't seem to "transform" in the manner of your example. The "anor" form doesn't appear to belong to the words that are marked for "directionality". 3. Concerning the "-et" words: kum(t) araynet; gey(t) aveket; krikh(t) aropet; tu(t) zikh onet; shtey(t) ufet; any other?. Very "Litvish", right? I don't know its origin but I do know that it overlaps another phenomenon which overlaps still a third. I do know the origin of the last of these. I'll try to link them, thus: 1) Words like "avek" have a verbal quality: AVEK(ET)! 'beat it!'. Similarly verbalized: SHA! '(be) quiet!'; NA! 'here' (i.e. 'take it!'). 2) Note, plural NAT AYKH! with regional variant NATS (AYKH). Similarly, regional plural variants of such verbalized forms: SHATS! 'be quiet', and AVEKTS (a favorite way of driving off dogs, by the way). 3) The regional (much of Poland) form of the second person plural and plural imperative, GAYTS, KIMTS, VAYNTS NISHT, which, historically, go along with the regional forms of the pronouns ETS and ENK (derived from an old dual, as I recall). The features of the system, have diverged from one another in Yiddish so that the distribution of the imperative with -TS extends eastward far beyond the stigmatized ETS/ENK pronouns. KUMTS, GEYTS, VEYNTS NISHT are also the rule in otherwise "Litvish"-sounding speech in northeastern Poland. So, what's the connection? Vos hot eyns tsu ton mitn dritn? Eyns tsum dritn iz nisht keyn mekhitn, they say. Or is it? I'm not sure I know. Finally, the ec/-ts forms provide (even a Litvak) the clue to the mystery of the following conversation: tsOtsidikI? mOtsidikI! nu, abI tsOtsi. Hot mir ale a gut un gezunt yor! Mikhl Herzog _____________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.75 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.