Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 138 January 17, 1993 1) Bernstein's "Yiddish Proverbs" (David Sherman) 2) Making a mess of things (David Sherman) 3) Sneezes (David Sherman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 Jan 93 23:03:08 EST From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 2.80 > Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 07:40:15 PDT > From: Yitzhak Kertesz > This is how it appears in Bernstein's collection (#668), > the source for Ayalti, as well as for all other > collections. Ayalti, in his usual sloppy style dropped the > -t. Bernstein's collection of Yiddish proverbs, the most > comprehensive such work, will be reviewed soon by Dave > Sherman. I've been swamped with work for quite a while and have let MENDELE pile up. I've just caught up the last 4 months of issues and discovered the above. I didn't know I was supposed to be reviewing Bernstein! Yitzhak recommended it to me in email some time ago, and I got it from the NYBC. It's pretty impressive, though I haven't tried using it for much "real" research. Fun browsing, though. The official title is "Yiddish Proverbs", compiled and edited by Ignacy Bernstein. Reprinted 1983 by the Congress for Jewish Culture, NYC. It's organized alphabetically by topic, much like a Bartlett's Quotations or similar work in English. I recently wrote a paper on the new definition of "spouse" (now includes common-law spouses) for Canadian tax purposes, and needed an opening quote; unfortunately, none of the 5 entries under Khassene or the 50 entries under Vayb were appropriate, though many were interesting. I ended up using something from Shakespeare. But it was a good test of the book. There's a lot in there. It's 228 pages chock-full of proverbs. So, if you ever have occasion to want to look up Yiddish proverbs by topic, I recommend it. I think the NYBC charged US$27 for it. David Sherman Toronto 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 Jan 93 23:28:39 EST From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.CA Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 2.90 > Date: Tue, 3 Nov 92 18:05:11 EST > Subject: Mess > > How do you say "mess"? The definitions of Mess in > Weinreich's MEYYED, Harkavy's EYYED, and Schaechter's > "Trogn, Hobn, un Friike Kinderyorn" all differ. How do you > native speakers/parents say > > 1. The child made a mess. > 2. Don't make a mess! > 3. What a mess?! > 4. Your face is a mess! > > Is there one universal "mess" in Yiddish, or do you have to > specify whether it's a liquid mess vs. a dry mess (cf. Eng. > pour: ongisn [pour liquid] vs. farshitn [pour dry stuff, > e.g., sand]) vs. a mess that's just chaos or disarray vs. a > mess that's like a screwup? > > Mark (Meyer) David mhd@gensym.com This, of course, is a Fundamental Vocabulary Word for those of us who speak Yiddish to young kids on a daily basis. We've pretty much settled on "hegdish" (that's phonetic -- etymologically it's hekdish). Based on the derivation of hekdish (Hebrew "set apart" for kodesh = holy purposes, but actually meaning precisely the opposite), we may be "wrong" in our usage, but the main thing is that we have a word that works. We tend to use it for all of Mark's examples -- liquid, dry and chaos. I've also heard "tel" (in the sense of "screwup", I think), and "khurve" (in the sense of chaos or destruction), though we don't use them ourselves. Schaechter's Trogn/Hobn dictionary lists hekdish, among other words; I don't remember whether we got it from there, from Mordkhe personally at yidish-vokh, or from somewhere else. An interesting anecdote: we started using hegdish in the absence of my wife's parents, who live in the same city but aren't physically around our kids' messes that often. (They are our "original" source of Yiddish; my parents speak no Yiddish whatsoever, while Simone grew up with it.) A few months ago we were visiting them, and one of the kids (who use exclusively Yiddish with each other and with my in-laws) made a passing comment about the baby having gemakht a hegdish. My mother-in-law obviously found it an amusing choice of word -- as best I can tell, because it suggests much more destruction or chaos than the simple spilling of orange juice or whatever had happened. When she repeated it to me (to recount the amusement) a few minutes later, however, she used the word "khurve" -- i.e., that is how she "remembered" what the child said, the two words evidently being synonyms in her mind. (I know the child didn't say khurve because it's not in our family vocabulary, and our kids have no source of Yiddish vocabulary other than us.) So the connotation of hekdish, to at least some native Yiddish speakers, is identical to khurve -- ruin or destruction. (My in-laws are from Stashiv (Staszow) in Poland.) On to Mark's examples: 1. Dos kind hot gemakht a hegdish. 2. Makh nisht ka hegdish. (I'm being phonetic here; it's really "keyn") 3. Oy, vus far a hegdish! 4. Da punim iz bridik. (or, "mis") (I don't think hegdish goes with a punim, but I think my wife does say "...iz a hegdish".) David Sherman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 Jan 93 23:40:57 EST From: dave@cai.lsuc.on.CA Subject: Sneezes Another topic that has come and gone while I was letting MENDELE pile up, but I'll put my contribution in anyway. What we say is (after beign normalized into klal-yidish): "Tzum gezunt, tzum lebn, an alte[r] {zayde/bube} zolstu vern." However, we don't wait for the 2nd or 3rd sneeze -- the entire expression comes after the first sneeze. David Sherman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2. 138