Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 112 December 6, 1992 1) Phonology (Moshe Taube) 2) Sheygets/ shkots (Moshe Taube) 3) Tchatchke or tsatske (debra Halperin Biasca) 4) Ts and s (Mikhl Herzog) 5) Ts as phonaestheme; tsatske/chachke; sneezes (Norman Zide) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 04 Dec 92 18:32:18 EST From: Moshe Taube Subject: Phonology For Mikhl With this strong tendency to lower u to o before r, how do you explain the raising of same in psure/psire (Heb. besorah `tidings')? Moshe Taube 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 04 Dec 92 18:40:49 EST From: Moshe Taube Subject: Sheygets/shkots For Ellen Right you are, both on light comlexion and on use of sheygets as compliment. And don't forget the back-formation from the plural, shkots, that can be used only as a compliment. Moshe Taube 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 04 Dec 1992 18:17:27 -0700 (MST) From: DEBRA HALPERIN BIASCA Subject: RE: tchatchke or tsatske > > Question: I would like to hear what the (dialectal, or > whatever) distribution of ts versus ch is in > tsatske/chachke (and elsewhere, - which probably > complicates things considerably ) is for Mendelniks. Is > there semantic specialization for those who use both forms > (distinctively) - in Yiddish , or in Yiddish and English ? A friend from Vienna who is now in his mid-70's always says "tchatchke". I never heard the word used in my family tho both parents and all grandparents spoke Yiddish. My mother used English for "dust catcher" which I equate (correctly?) with tchatchke. At least one set of grandparents was from Byelorussia, near Minsk. Debra Halperin Biasca 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 4 Dec 92 23:11 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.Columbia.edu Subject: Ts/s To N.Zide re "Tsadie" : In fact there is a considerable area in NWPolan as well as in neighboring Western Yiddish where initial "s" is rendered "ts". For example "er hot nisht ken tsaykhl", "Paysekh tsim tsayder", the holiday "Tsikes", the woman's name "Tsluve" (Slava!). These are all non-German-origin words in Yiddish since (with only one or two special exceptions) NO Yiddish words of German origin begin with the "s" sound (zumer, zingen, zogn, etc.). In the area in question, Hebrew origin words beginning with (thus impermissable) "s", were reinterpreted as beginning with permissable "ts". Perhaps this is the origin of the comic "tsadie" types. To Ellen Prince: In my experience, Toronto of the 30's and 40's, I think we might have distinguished an "Anglo" from an "ethnic" as between 'a krist'(a FAYNER krist) and 'a goy'. "shkotsim" were the guys who beat you up if you went into the wrong park. They were probably mainly Irish kids but I don't think we recognized such fine distinctions. Mikhl Herzog 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 4 Dec 92 19:14:26 CST From: n-zide@uchicago.edu Subject: ts as phonaestheme; tsatske/chachke; sneezes My doggerel examples - Vol 2, l03 - I realized after I sent them all contained ts, and Gerald Phillips, in his welcome reply (where can I see the dozens of others he mentions ? who composed them ? who disseminated them ?) gives a nice example of ts where one wouldn't expect it in 'normal, colloquial Yiddish' - 'Tsadie' for 'Sadie' - my mother's name was Sadie, and none of her older - more or less monolingual (as regards English) Yiddish speakers - relatives said anything but 'Sadie'. The ts in tsrolley (with an initial consonant cluster) is even more anomalous. The translation equivalent in Yiddish of English s is s - EXCEPT apparently for certain EXPRESSIVE uses in a conventionalized, comical stage Yiddish dialect of English, where the 'Yiddishness' (and therefore much of the humor) is marked - heavily - by the use of ts and other markers, e.g. Yiddish e for the vowel in English 'pat' as well as 'pet', and, I suppose, most strongly, intonation - which doesn't survive non-technical transcription. The ts in Tsadie is a deliberate, for-comical-purposes, hypercorrection. Question: I would like to hear what the (dialectal, or whatever) distribution of ts versus ch is in tsatske/chachke (and elsewhere, - which probably complicates things considerably ) is for Mendelniks. Is there semantic specialization for those who use both forms (distinctively) - in Yiddish , or in Yiddish and English ? In my (Litvak) dialect the form is always tsatske, which has a secondary meaning (rejected by some) of an affectionate diminutive - term of endearment (tsatskele) - used as a term of address - for little girls. For me chachka is an English word - of Yiddish derivation, with similar meaning, but differences reflecting different cultural attitudes toward the objects in question, e.g. English chachka is more dismissive than Yiddish tsatske.Or is it ? Sneezes: the version I heard - similar in part to Albright's and others' - the second part (after tsu lange yor) is: tsu vaksn, tsu kveln/ a xupele tsu shteln. Norman Zide ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.112