Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.098 September 5, 1993 1) Sluschei and a comment on Mendelnikes (Mottel Lakin) 2) Mayn ershter deposit (Edward Portnoy) 3) Sluschei (Leigh Lisker) 4) Yinglish (Sholom Glouberman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Sep 3 13:00:36 1993 From: MLAKIN@DUKEMVS.AC.DUKE.EDU Subject: Sluschei and a comment on Mendelnikes It seems likely that your grandfather's poem was written in Slavic -maybe Russian- where the term Scuschei means "listen here". But even as I write this, I note that Chaver Berman's response saying the word is Polish in origin was quicker off the mark - perhaps even the following day. Computer "kalyikes" like me cannot hope to get their comments in fast enuff because, I conclude, most of the "posters' to Mendele zeinen fun die richtige lingvistiker, und zei chaapen zich tzu tzu a frage azoie vie tzu heise lokshen tzi a gut shtik herring oder a Shabbesdige tzcholent. I have an image of Mendelnikes lying in wait for the questions. Nu, abi gezunt! Mir zollen alle hoben a gut yor! Mottel Lakin 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Sep 3 18:16:59 1993 From: Edward Portnoy Subject: Mayn ershter deposit I just completed Columbia/Yivo's summer Yiddish program and since I recently gained possession of a modem, I thought it would be interesting to take part in Mendele. Though I'm no mayven, my Yiddish is pretty good and most importantly, I enjoy it immensely. Additionally, I'm hoping to continue my Yiddish education in grad study. At the moment I'm working at a small publishing firm. Exciting, it's not. Anyhow, I'll begin with a tayne: Has William SafireUs annoying Germanicization of Yiddish ever bothered anyone else? Surely it must. He did it yesterday, spelling shtarker "starker" in his Op-ed column, and about a month and a half ago in a Sunday Magazine piece in reference to Connie Chung's Yiddish prowess. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce what he wrote since I immediately threw it in the recycling bin after reading it. The gist was that Ms. Chung knows a few Yiddish words and was able to employ them correctly. However, Safire mentioned that the words (I don't recall exactly what they were) were from German. In doing this he perpetuates the commonly held notion that Yiddish is not quite its own language, that it's simply a zhargon. Obviously this is not true and someone with linguistic yikhes ought to set him straight. This is my beef. Perhaps it's too pitslekh a complaint. But then again, my name is Portnoy. A gut yor. E. Portnoy 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Sep 3 20:51:44 1993 From: llisker@babel.ling.upenn.edu (Leigh Lisker) Subject: sluschei The form sluschei is suspiciously close to Russian slushay "listen!" (informal). The Polish form, I would think, is better rendered as swuxay. Not being by any stretch of the imagination a slavicist, I have no idea but that there may a convincing Czech form lurking somewhere. Leigh Lisker 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Sep 4 10:24:54 1993 From: GLOUBERMAN@medac.med.utoronto.ca Subject: Yinglish I am Sholom Glouberman. I work as an organisational advisor on health care in Toronto. Mendele sparked a new interest in the relation between english and yiddish. This is especially true for those of us who have only begun to read yiddish in transliteration because of Mendele and the Internet. We found that our old game of finding english words which sound Yiddish e.g. "Farfetched", (slightly mad) "gazette" (seen by an illiterate) expanded to include words which though they sound the same in english and yiddish, have very different meanings in the two languages. An evening with friends and relatives produced the following list. bench bless The rabbi-manager benched the star quarter back. bet ask fell pelt foil lazy fort nevertheless framed foreign frayed happiness get divorce gift poison gleed limb grapes burp grate ready grease greet guns goose held hero hemmed shirt hock chop (hawk, hack,) ken know languor more lengthy lash(out) extinguish lead song light people mead tired men one rain clean shit pour sigh in any case (sigh vee sigh) tire dear zest see! Some of these may contribute to the current controversies raging in Mendele about transliteration into Yiddish. Some of the above english words are not pronounced exactly the same way in yiddish as in proper English. A good example is "tire." This word is pronounced as "Tyehr" by some native speakers of yiddish who come to speak English. (E.g. Me.) The illusion that English words have only one syllable when native speakers of yiddish can clearly find several suggests that there are "invisible vowels" (the opposite of silent consonants)...in yiddish nothing is silent. Others may ask is the Yiddish "HAK" pronounced "Hock", "Hawk", "Hack" or in some other way. This comparison to english pronunciations tends to be useless however and to issue in family quarrels. My brother in law left home after his father presented him with the following family disagreement. "Your mother and I disagree about how "W" "A" "S" "H" is pronounced. She says its "vahsh" and I say its "vosh". You're a professor, who's right?" Some are just at the edge of a connection, but I bet that in some areas in the backwoods of galicia "guns" is the correct pronunciation of "goose". "Gleed" is not an englsh word but is placed on the list because it sounds like the past tense of some verb or other. Others display their etymology in the yiddish word e.g. "gift", where the english word is related to the germanic word for poison. Some issue in confusions for native speakers. We often speak of doing things like lashing out the fyehr. If the rabbi benches the hockey player what is he really doing? We have also found it significantly easier to find words of one syllable than ones with two or three. "Languor" is particularly pleasing to me because I found it. So send in your examples and we can have a sibehr space yinglish game.. Sholom ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.098