Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.132 November 15, 1993 1) Ufruf (Jeremy Stern) 2) Oy, hobn mir getanzt (Sheldon Benjamin) 3) Kasha varnishkes (Bob Rothstein) 4) Etemologye (Khaim Bochner) 5) Question (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Nov 12 15:46:27 1993 From: Jeremy Stern Subject: _ufruf_ I wrote > >One question I have is why Orthodox people generally call the > >pre-marriage calling to the Torah an "ufruf". I would have expected > >the more common "oyf" prefix (more common in America). By the way, > >Yekkified Jews do say "Aufruf." Perets Mett responded > The pronunciation =ufruf= is not "Orthodox". It is the litvishe > pronunciation. In poylishe yidish 'oyfruf' is pronounced =awfreef= > as it is spelt (=aw= being one of the ways of pronouncing khoylem). > One would therefore "expect" the pronunciation =oyfruf= [as spelt] > by litvaks. Since litvaks pronounce 'oyf' as =af= it is perhaps not > surprising that 'oyfruf' undergoes a change in pronunciation. I > believe it is a frequent phenomenon for common words to have an > irregular pronunciation. (No doubt we shall hear from the linguists > on this.) All this I know. In fact, at Oxford, they teach the forms "uf" and "aruf." When I encountered the Soviet orthography this past summer in Oxford, I saw that it had alef-vov-fey and alef-reysh-vov-fe for the two words. My original question was, why did Orthodox Jews take up "uf". I cannot think of another instance of wide-spread Orthodox usage of a NE Yiddish form. Jeremy Stern 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Nov 13 14:22:54 1993 From: sbenj@MIT.EDU Subject: Oy, hobn mir getanzt My parents once heard Jan Peerce sing Al Joelson's Anniversar Waltz in Yiddish and have asked me if I had any idea where one could find it (the words, not the recording). Well, said I, I could always ask Mendele. And so I have. Sheldon Benjamin 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat Nov 13 16:12:28 1993 From: ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN Subject: Kasha varnishkes In his November 12 column in the English _Forward_ Philologus considers the possible origins of the culinary term "kasha varnishkes." He ultimately connects it with the Russian word _vareniki_ for a kind of filled dumpling. He suggests that the Yiddish (Yinglish?) term originally referred to a dumpling stuffed with kasha (buckwheat groats), later perhaps to kasha stuffed into tubular pasta, and finally to what we know today, i.e., kasha served with flat (often bow-tie noodles). Although _vareniki_ are a fairly standard part of Russian cooking, it's in Ukraine that they're really a kind of national dish, known as _varenyky_. More interestingly, the 1907 Hrynchenko dictionary of the Ukrainian language, which I have cited before on this list, includes a word _varenytsia_ (pl. _varenytsi_), defined as "round or rectangular pieces of rolled out dough that have been boiled in water; often these are the pieces that were prepared for _varenyky_, but were left over due to a lack of filling; they are then boiled together with the _varenyky_." This could be a more direct source for "kasha varnishkes," if the kasha was originally served, not with bow ties, but with left over pieces of boiled pasta. Bob Rothstein 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Nov 14 18:06:36 1993 From: bochner@das.harvard.edu Subject: Re: etemologye Arthur Komar fregt: > Gibt es an untershied tsvishen "leyzen" un "leynen"? "leyzen" iz > bashtimt fun daytch. Vuhin kumt dos vort "leynen"? Darf men dos nor > banutsen ven men zogt "leynen toyre", un farvos? Ershtns: "es gibt" iz nisht keyn yidisher oysdruk; s'iz reyn daytsh. "Gibt" iz afile nisht keyn vort oyf yidish: me zogt "er git", nisht "er gibt", vi oyf daytsh. Ir vilt mistome fregn: "Tsi iz faran an untershid in taytsh ...". Tsveytns: oyf der klal-shprakh iz nishto keyn untersheyd in taytsh. "Leyenen" iz dos eltere vort, punkt vi "bentshn", un "tsholnt", shtamt es fun der romanisher shprakh vos yidn hobn geredt eyder zey hobn zikh ibergetsoygn in di daytshe lender. farglaykh "leggere" oyf italyenish. Dritns: ir zent ober gerekht, az es zenen do dialektn in velkhe s'iz take do an untersheyd in taytsh tsvishn di tsvey verter. Oyf mayn (galitsiyaner) heym-dialekt nutst men take leyenen nor oyf sforim, vi ir zogt. "Baa ints laynt men a sayfer, ober a biikhl leyzt men." (Dos heyst oyf klal-yidish: "Bay undz leyent men a seyfer, ober a bikhl lezt men.") Biz itst hob ikh gehert dem untersheyd nor in mayn mishpokhe. Vu hot ir es gehert? Khaim 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Nov 14 22:14:51 1993 From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: question this isn't a question about yiddish, but i bet someone out there knows the answer. how would 666 be represented in hebrew alphabetic numerals? a dank. Ellen Prince ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.132 Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files