Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.026 June 4, 1993 1) Nisht geshtoygn/bankes (Bob Werman) 2) Introduction (Elkeh Williams) 3) Re: lit vs. lx on mendele (Ellen Prince) 4) Farfrorene dativn; idiomen mit "ay" (Shleyme Axelrod) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 4 04:42:28 1993 From: RWERMAN%HUJIVMS.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Nisht geshtoygn/bankes In Mendele Vol 3.019, Shleyme Axelrod offers: >1. "ni(sh)t geshtoygn, ni(sh)t gefloygn" = totally false; nonsense Comment: referring to Jesus, of course, denying that he ever rose or ascended, and by extension to other improbabilities. re: bankas. These are called "cosot ru'aH" in modern Hebrew, meaning cups used by barbers in cupping and also signifying meaningless and useless treatments. Some medical background. The cups were applied, usually to the skin of the back [or front less often] of the chest cavity. A small candle, or match was used under the lip, to use up the oxgyen [about 20% of the volume] and thus produce a seal to the skin. The vacuum would "draw blood" to the skin, presumably by causing the small blood vessels of the skin to dilate. Since a tingling feeling accompanied the application the recipient would feel some "benefit" from the treatment. Bankas were used in my childhood, '30's and '40's in Williamsburg [not Virginia], administered by barbers [descended from surgeons, originally barber-surgeons]. As to being of no use to the dead [a toyten bankas], they probably [other than psychologically] did little for the live either. __Bob Werman rwerman@hujivms.bitnet rwerman@vms.huji.ac.il 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 3 21:23:45 1993 From: Ellen Williams Subject: Introduction Dovid Ber Katz asks about the idiom: Heng zich uf ayf a tsukershtrikl. My parents used that expression when I was a kid. I found it in "Words Like Arrows", in the Curses section, the way I remember my parents using it: Heng dir oyf a tsuker shtrikl vestu hobn a zisn toyt! The translation that accompanies it says "hang yourself with the rope from a sugar bag and you will have a sweet death," but my mother always said that a tsuker shtrikl was a string made of sugar. I'm a relatively new "member" of Mendele who, by virtue of ignorance, hasn't had anything to contribute, at least until I saw Dovid Ber Katz' query. By way of introduction, I grew up in the Bronx, in a home where Yiddish was the language the parents used when they didn't want the kids to know what they were talking about. Naturally, I picked up a fair amount that way, but haven't used it, or even heard it spoken since childhood (yes, that was long enough ago that significant erosion has occurred...). But--Bob Werman please take note--I am avid reader by avocation. I have read many of the great Yiddishists in translation, and finally decided that I wanted to be able to appreciate them fully, to be able to read them in the originals. So I have been learning Yiddish with the goal of being able to read at least Bashevis Singer's children's stories. At the rate I'm going, I have a long long road ahead of me: I'm still at the "Moishele and Gitele gayt in shul" level. However, Mendelnik and linguist and literary adventurer Khaim Bochner has graciously been teaching Yiddish to a small group of us here in the Boston area. While my classmates and I have not yet become fluent, we know lots more than we knew three months ago, so we're all very optimistic. Elkeh 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 4 10:31:15 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: Re: lit vs. lx on mendele i've had a thought as to why there's so much more linguistic stuff on mendele than literary--maybe it's because so many more linguists have email--and therefore access to mendele-- than literature specialists? i was thinking of a woman at penn, katherine hellerstein, who would be great for discussing lit, but she doesn't/won't have an email account... just a thought. (p.s. harry, she'd also be excellent for the translation job and would certainly know what the going rate is--she's done quite a bit of yiddish-to-english translation. i'll ask her, if i can find her.) ellen prince 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Jun 4 14:15:57 1993 From: Seymour Axelrod Subject: farfrorene dativn; idiomen mit "ay" Mark Pinson, identifying "toytn" in "helfn vi a toytn bankes" as a dative (incidentally "cupping" = "SHTELN bankes". At least that's what the signs said in my old Brooklyn neighborhood: mir shteln bankes) asks about other `frozen' datives. I don't know what might qualify as frozen; but when my mother would ask her loudmouthed brother-in-law, "ir vilt efsher a shtikl frukht?", he'd bellow, "a krankn fregt men, a gezuntn git men!" ****************** Idiomatic "ay": 1. "ay [shtumer alef-pasekh tsvey yudn] (...) ?" = "but how would I respond to the objection that (...) ?" U. Weinreich gives the example "er is greyt. ay far vos geyt er nit? vayl ..." This is a curious usage; can someone explain its origin? 2. UW also gives "ay-ay-ay" [emphasis on the last ay] = "wonderful!", and "nit azoy ay-ay-ay" = "not so hot". The latter was the more common bay undz in der heym. --Shleyme Axelrod ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.026