Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 186 April 29, 1993 1) Skirt (Rosa Lehmann) 2) Diminutives and plurals (Malkah Winters) 3) Wolf Younin's dictionary (Zachary M. Baker) 4) Nit/nisht/nicht; orthography (Arnold Kuzmack) 5) Ya-tebe-dam (Yankl Matisoff) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Apr 27 16:03:28 1993 From: DAVIDN@SARA.NL Subject: Re: Skirt = ASPUDNICHE I never thought that I would have anything interesting to say about an ordinary word such as "skirt". I already noted in an earlier contribution that I am not particulary a Yiddish expert. So I have no idea whether Leo Goldstein has found the most appropriate Yiddish word for skirt. What I do know is that he is right about the Polish origins of the word "ASPUDNICHE" that he suggests for skirt. The Polish word for skirt or petticoat is "SPODNICA" with an "accent aigu" on the O. The O with accentis pronounced as the English "oo" in for instance "roof", while the C is pronounced as "ts". Rosa Lehmann, Amsterdam. (c/o David Niemeijer, DavidN@sara.nl) 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Apr 28 16:51:21 1993 From: "Margaret E. Winters" Subject: Diminutives and Plurals I recently returned from a conference on language typology and historical reconstruction where a paper on German dialects brought up the subject of the relative order at the end of words of diminutive and plural markers. I was able to provide the speaker with the somewhat interesting example: Chasid sg. Chasidim pl. Chasidl sg. w/diminutive Chasidimlekh pl. w/diminutive Is this an isolated case in Yiddish? - I doubt it. Where can I find anything written on the subject of the order of these morphemes? More examples? Thanks for any help. I'll collect it and pass it on to Carol Chapman of Manchester University (UK) who is doing the research. Malkah Winters 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Apr 28 14:16:09 1993 From: Zachary M. Baker (bm.yib@rlg.bitnet) Subject: Wolf Younin's dictionary of Hebraisms In MENDELE 2.185 Robert Rothstein mentions the "Kurtser verterbukh fun hebreishe verter in idish," by Wolf Younin, which was serialized in the "Forverts" in 1978. While this dictionary apparently was not released as a book, it was meant to be published as such. YIVO has a photocopy of what I imagine to be page proofs of this dictionary (probably prepared as a "cut-and-paste" job from the "Forverts" columns themselves, with a small amount of additional matter, e.g., the occasional footnote). It has been paginated as a book: 193 pages, total. Younin died in 1984; I do not know the fate of the book project. Zachary M. Baker 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Apr 25 19:01:01 1993 From: lkuzmack@sytex.com Subject: Nit/nisht/nicht; orthography nit, nisht, un nikht ==================== I always assumed that, when people wrote nikht around the turn of the century, it was part of the fashion to imitate German spelling. They also threw in extra he's, which standard German has now dropped, etc. Did anyone actually SAY nikht? Even the Germans didn't! The great orthography wars ========================== In Mendele 2.181, Stephen Dowling suggests that the alef-yud spelling for yid, yidish, etc. resulted from religious scruples over writing yud-yud. I had never heard that before. Is there confirmation of this? If it's true, how can they bear to write the thousands of other words that contain two yud together, such as eyns, tsvey, dray, etc.? Arnold Kuzmack 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Apr 24 20:20:16 1993 From: matisoff@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Query The other day my mother used the expression YA-TEBE-DAM for 'bigshot', and sure enough it's in Weinreich's Dictionary, p. 203. Can anybody tell me the etymology? Yankl Matisoff ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.186