______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.273 March 9, 1994 1) Feygele again (Harold L. Orbach) 2) Prudery (Anatole Beck) 3) Yiddish Pen Pals (Daniella HarPaz) 4) Purim lid (Dvosye Bilik) 5) S. Anski (Harry Katz) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 7 14:42:58 1994 From: Subject: 'Feygele' again Mikhl Herzog writes: > In my long message of March 2, I said I'd be content to accept Yosl > Mlotek's word that "feygele" was used in Yiddish in Poland to mean > 'gay' Heybt zikh nisht on! Having just spoken to him ... He denies > any knowledge of the word having been used in Yiddish, certainly not > in Poland (though he > did know one or more gays). I consider us back > at square one on the subject, ready to go to battle for my "seductive" > theory that "feygele" in English is a Yiddishoid extension of "fag" > (or, how about "fey"?). In the absence of specific evidence of 'feygele' in Poland, what word did/does Yosl Mlotek recall being used?? Surely the Polish Jews did not lack for a word for a condition that existed, even if repressed. My relatives all came to North America as young persons -- before or right after WW I. [My mother spent almost two years in Paris and some months in Montreal en route.] I think Noyek Miller's point about age when coming to the US is important in explaining their vocabulary. At the same time, as the recent point about Moshe Kapoyek illustrates, American Yiddish did not exist in a vacuum and fed back to European communities. 'Fag[g]ot' (and 'fag' as derivative) are credited as American by the OED (and Partridge) to refer to male homosexuals. They don't appear in the original OED, but in the supplement where they have examples that date no earlier than 1916 for the first and then become widespread in the '20's and '30's in underworld and literary contexts. There even is a 1966 cite from the New Statesman complaining about how the American 'fag' is ousting the British 'queer.' I would like to see Mikhl Herzog's argument for the derivation of 'feygele' from 'fag' [or 'fey'] I don't understand (and this may be my ignorance of Yiddish linguistics) why 'feygele' as a woman's name bothered him as plural "birds." I recall very clearly that my mother (and other relatives) used a 'le' as a form of pesonalizing diminutive, usually implying "little" -- especially with names for young children (Mindel, Mindele ... Hershel, He[r]shele, etc.). Harold L. Orbach 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 7 16:08:58 1994 From: Anatole Beck Subject: Prudery I have been struck by the prudery in Ashkenazic life. As an example, there are not native slang words for the sex organs. there are of course shmuk (jewel) and putz (decoration) for the penis, and I do not know of any vaginal references at all, besides the indescribably filthy lokh . The place where I have been trying to piece together something is in the folk song Tumbalalaika . To the three questions, we are told that a stone can grow without rain, love can burn and never stop, and a heart can cry without tears. The last two are the sort of thing one expects in a love song, but what is meant by a stone can grow without rain? It is possible to make up far-fetched explanations, but they are really out of it compared with the simplicity of the other two answers. What I find more convincing is that the song has been bowdlerized. If I were to answer the questions, I would find it natural that love can grow without rain. In that case, what can burn and never stop? That, of course, is desire, not love. However, in my own experience, I never heard a Yiddish word for desire, as opposed to love, but I could conjecture that the word, whatever it is, was censored from the song early on, to make if fit for the ears of children. There are subtleties here. The word love, as Eros, did not mean devotion and commitment. That was not the emotion over which Aphrodite had her domain. It was indeed desire, as manifested in her feeling for Ares, or Paris' for Helen. Is it possible that liebe had this meaning originally in Yiddish, and another for the less torrid emotion? In that case, what is the original Yiddish word for that which can grow without rain? And if there has always been a Yiddish word for Eros, what is it? Anatole Beck 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 7 15:38:56 1994 From: Daniella.HarPaz@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Yiddish Pen Pals Since my comment some time ago about Yiddish students "Pen Palling" I have gotten approx. 5 inquiries...Is anyone out there who teaches at the University level, or comparable level, interested in organizing something with me for next year...for this year whoever has contacted me will just "wing" it.... Daniella HarPaz P.S. Please e-mail me off Mendele so we don't clog up the conference with this business: Internet:Daniella.HarPaz@um.cc.umich.edu Bitnet: userggv7@umichum 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 7 16:20:57 1994 From: Dorothy_BILIK@umail.umd.edu (db28) Subject: Purim lid Let me repeat my request with your indulgence: Mir zukhn di verter fun text un nit fun tsuzung vos is zeyer bakant. A gitn Purim, malakh Vu ikh gay fall ikh Di burd iz mir lang Di vab iz mir krank -------------------- -------------------- Hant iz Purim, morgn iz aus Gib mir a grushn un varf mir araus. My transcription of mer tsi veyniker "sw Yiddish" iz an approximation to say the least, but this is the closest Miriam Isaacs and I could get. Has anyone heard something like this ? Dvosye Bilik 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Mar 7 17:40:12 1994 From: harry@csc.cxo.dec.com Subject: S. Anski Aside from "The Dybbuk" I am having a hard time finding any works by S. Anski in Yiddish. The National Yiddish Book Center had a 15 volume collection of Anski's collected writings available for a short while, but it has been sold out. It occurred to me that the reason it is so difficult to find Anski's works in Yiddish may be that it is not all written in Yiddish originally. The collected writings that the National Yiddish Book Center had offered may have been made up largely of translations of his work from some other language into Yiddish. I have not been able to confirm this theory from any scholarly sources, but I thought that some Mendelnike might know the answer. Harry Katz ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.273 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. 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 Mendele: Yiddish literature and language