Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.002 May 16, 1993 1) Initial consonants (Arn Abramson) 2) Nar/shtumer alef (Arnie Kuzmack) 3) Nar/naronim (Isabelle Kreindler) 4) Yiddish theater and Klezmer music in New York (David Niemeijer) 5) Irregular plurals (Khaim Bochner) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat May 15 20:26:21 1993 From: "Arthur S. Abramson" Subject: Initial consonants Ellen Prince is right in saying that the letters 'alef and I wonder if the plural of nar, which is, after all, a >fairly expressive noun, might not be influenced more >directly by expressive forms of Hebrew origin which >have the derivational suffixal -n, e.g.,kabtsn/ >kabtsonim, batlen/batlonim, perhaps shdkhn/shadkhonim, >etc. It further seems that perhaps with the exception >of dokter/doktoyrim, the use of the -im plural with >non-Hebrew-Aramaic stems is expressive: tayvl/tayvolim, >poyer/poyerim. Whether fakter/faktoyrim 'agent' is >expressive or not, I have no idea. Also, Yitzhak Kertesz writes: >Didn't the expression "hazonim - naronim" help the >spread of this irregular plural? Or even originate it? >and what about the meaning of the word? namely, isn't a >word with the meaning "narr" allowed to show a little >"narrishkeyt"? So far, the discussion has established that "nar" is of Germanic origin but has not explained the -on- in the plural. The examples of Hebrew words ending in -n (including hazn/hazonim) don't do it, since these follow the regular rules for plurals of Hebrew nouns in Yiddish. And the other examples of -im plural endings for non-Hebrew words don't insert an additional consonant. Yitzhak Kertesz' suggestion, however, leads me to a different speculation. There is one example of inserting -on-, namely rav/rabonim. Was there a parallel expression "rabonim -- naronim"? Alternatively, might the pair rabonim/naronim humorously suggest that a fool is puffed up with his own importance and considers himself as having the dignity of a rav? Shtumer alef ============ Ellen Prince describes the consonantal values of alef and ayin in Semitic languages and points out that the Greeks also converted them to vowels. I agree. My point, perhaps poorly expressed, was that this would not have meant much to those originally devising what was to become the Yiddish writing system in the Middle Ages. Yitzhak Kertesz writes: >You conclude by claiming that yid is written with a >shtumer aleph because it was pronounced by many as >"id". But couldn't the writing precede and influence >the pronunciation? Namely, written with an aleph for >some mysterious reason, and that would cause people to >start pronouncing it as "id"? Sure. I was simply reacting to a number of contributors who cited dialects that use [id]. The original alternative hypothesis was that the alef-yud spelling developed because of religious scruples over writing yud-yud. Arnie Kuzmack 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun May 16 15:51:11 1993 From: Isabelle Kreindler Subject: nar/naronim I am rather puzzled by the nar/naronim since I've always thought it was nar/naroyim???? Is that perhaps unique to Riga Yiddish? Isabelle Kreindler 4)---------------------------------------------------- 0Date: Sun May 16 17:37:35 1993 From: DAVIDN@SARA.NL Subject: Yiddish theater and Klezmer music in New York We will be visiting New York from May 27 until June 16 and are very much interested in Yiddish theater and Klezmer music. What places should we go to? Where can we find out what shows are on? Are there things we should not miss? Any suggestions are welcome! David Niemeijer 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun May 16 19:08:44 1993 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Re: Irregular plurals davism@turing.cs.nyu.edu (Martin Davis) asks: > Is it a coincidence that the words of non-hebraic > origin with Hebraic plurals (nar, por, doktor) end in a reysh? I think it's a coincidence; offhand I can find one counterexample: tayvl "devil" - tayvolim or tayvlonim. Perhaps also kundes-kundeysim, but I don't know the etymology of kundes. By the way, what Mikhl Herzog says about dialectal confusion between -n & -im makes a lot of sense for examples like poyerim. And then we can account for doktoyrim as assimilation to a common pattern for loshn koydesh nouns, as he says. BUT X-Xonim, as in nar-naronim, is _not_ a common pattern. Offhand I know of only two cases where it occurs in real loshn koydesh verter: rov-rabonim, and lets-leytsonim (or leytsim). Since it isn't a common pattern, I think we have to appeal to old-fashioned analogy here. I've always guessed that the form originated with the desire to have a humorous parallelism in the phrase "rabonim un naronim". -- Khaim ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.002