Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.247
December 24, 1994

1) Introduction (Leon Lipson)
2) Bopkes (Meyshe-Yankl Sweet)
3) Bopkes (Rick Gildemeister)
4) Bopkes (Rick Turkel)
5) More on zhe (Dovid Braun)
6) To vuzhe vilst du? (Harvey Spiro)
7) A real Yup! (Allan Fineberg)
8) Translation help requested (Yankel Lantz)
9) A heymishe khasene (Andrew Cassel)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 1994 17:59:35 -0500
From: llipson@mail.law.yale.edu
Subject: Introduction

Though born in the United States, as the eldest grandchild on both sides
of unassimilated immigrants I picked up the usual scraps.  They were
spiced a bit by the collision of regional flavors (Lithuanian on one
side, Volhynian on the other): differences in pronunciation (zog'n/zug'n,
kum'n/kim'n), occasional lexical differences (shulter/pleitzes,
bitokh'n/gloib'n, bezukhn/vizityv'n), differences in nig'n and
temperament (the relatives from Birz thought the relatives from Koretz
too wet; vice versa, too dry).  I hope that Mendele will help me a little
'a lad tsi makh'n' of my Yiddish scraps and deepen my knowledge of a
great culture in which I should like to feel at home.

Leon Lipson

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 94 11:59:35 CST
From: msweet@facstaff.wisc.edu
Subject: Bupkes

Re: Dan Leeson's query. Bupkes (or "bubkes") means  "beans", in Yiddish
as in English a thing of little value.  In my shtetl (E. Flatbush, mid
'50s) it was vulgarly used to mean "snot", and it wasn't till I actually
studied Yiddish that I learned the primary meaning of this word.  Don't
think it had any connotation of "goat shit"--what did we know from goats
in B'klyn.

Meyshe-Yankl Sweet

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 94 12:45:36 EST
From: eeglc%cunyvm.bitnet@yalevm.cis.yale.edu
Subject: Bobkes

To Dan Leeson:

My understanding of the origin of Bupkes is that "bob" is a Slavic word
for bean. One diminutive form, bobkes, has been narrowed in meaning so
that the word is used only in its abstract sense, which you accurately
described as "something of little or no value; cheap". A former companion
of mine used it to mean the little balls of lint and pieces of candy
wrappers he would find in his pants pockets; each individual piece was
called a bupkes, and when there were lots of them, he'd refer to them as
"bupkeses". That is definitely NOT real Yiddish; I mention it as one of
countless developments that take place with Yiddish words when passed
down from a native speaker (his worrying, nagging mother) to a son who
had almost no knowledge of the language.

Anyway, many (most?) Yiddish words ending in a voiced consonant lose the
voice when a suffix beginning with a hard consonant is added. The
opposite is also true. I heard the actress/singer Miriam Kressyn say on a
WEVD program Hirzhbm for Hirschbein. The word to calculate, to reckon,
romanized as kheshbenen is pronounced khezhbenen. To get back to
"bupkes", if you want to talk about real small beans, you call them
beblekh. There's an analogy in German, where the word Waffen, derived
from High German, means weapons, and its doublet from Low German, Wappen,
is used for a more abstract word, coat-of-arms. I realize that's not an
exact analogy, but I think you get the picture.

Ir must mir moykhl zayn; s'iz kimat erev nitl, un bay undz goyim frest
men kolerley zise zakhn. Mayn kerper hot tsores mit tsuker, un mit eyn
sho tsurik hob ikh arayngeshlungen gantsene kest shokolade. Es zhumet mir
der kop!

Vintsht mir ale a gute khoge!

Rick Gildemeister

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 94 14:47:19 EST
From: rturkel@cas.org
Subject: Bopkes

As far as I know, a "bopke" is a turd.  As children we used the term
"bopkes" to refer to a hand of poker containing not even one pair. On no
authority whatsoever, it looks to me as though it comes from the Polish
"bobek" (pl. "bobki"), sheep or goat dropping(s), which, I think, derives
from "bo'b" bean.

Rick Turkel

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 1994 13:35:13 EST
From: dovid@mit.edu
Subject: more on zhe

To Ellen Prince:

Some more thoughts.  Besides placing _zhe_ after the second of two
consecutive imperatives, I felt all your examples were *.  So _kumt est
zhe_ and the like may be utterable.  (I don't think _gey veys_ is a good
one to test on: it's perhaps an idiom and nonanalytic.  You can't command
someone to know something, whereas _zhe_ adds that coaxing dimension
specifically to a command which can be carried out -- otherwise you
wouldn't be trying to coax the person.

Another point of interest: I think _zhe_ can come after _den_, .e.g.
_vo(s) den zhe?, vi den zhe?_ etc. (although it comes after the wh-word
more commonly:  _vo(s) zhe den?, vi zhe den_, etc.).  This is not very
exceptional to any of the (I think) correct generalizations you made,
because _den_ has some wh-ness of its own (its only use in Yiddish is in
rhetorical QUESTIONS).  It's a particle but not a clitic in the classic
sense, since it does receive stress (whereas _zhe_ doesn't).  In fact, it
receives stronger stress than the wh-word.  [By the way, as always, an
E.Eur.-born native speaker or a text written by one should be consulted,
just to make fully sure that _vi den zhe_ and the like are OK.]

There's also _akegn zhe_ and _zhe vider_.  These are probably listed in
U. Weinreich's dictionary.  If not, I'll explain or supply examples
another time.

Dovid Braun

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri Dec 23 14:24:14 1994
From: hjs@nrc.gov
Subject: "To vuzhe vilst du?"

Just an addendum to the "zhe" discussion.  The Yiddish I heard often used
the untranslatable particle "to" together with "zhe." For example, the
phrase "to vuzhe vilst du?" -- which I would translate "So, what do you
want already?"  I assume that "to" is also Slavic in origin, but would
appreciate any additional generic information on how the particle "to" is
used in Yiddish, and whether it is typical of only certain regions or
dialects.

Paradoxically, it seems to me that I have heard "zhe" used both to
indicate both compassion (e.g., "vuzhe veynst du, yingele?") and
impatience and frustration ("zayt zhe mir gezunt").

Harvey Spiro

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 94 14:15:21 EST
From: fineber@pilot.njin.net
Subject: A real Yup!

Years ago, when I was young and lived in Jersey City's Greenville
section, where many Jewish people lived, there was an expression that my
mother used: "He's a real Yup!"  Anybody ever hear that before?  Know
what it means? Emes, it's a long time ago, and language changes, but it
wasn't THAT long ago.

Allan Fineberg

8)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 1994 18:57:52 -0500
From: rlantz@globalcom.net
Subject: Translation help requested

I have two lines of German which I would like to translate into
better Yiddish than I can manage.  Anyone want to give me a hand?
If so, drop me a line at rlantz@globalcom.net.

Yankel Lantz

9)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 94 12:14 edt
From: acassel@philly.cerf.fred.org
Subject: A heymishe khasene

I'm trying to translate zikhroines that contains the following passage:

"A simkhe iz a simkhe un gloybt mir, ven ikh volt yetzt geshtanen in
shidukhim, un Keidan volt geven di amolige Keidan, volt ikh zikh
ayngeshpart mit mayne hintershte fis un zikh nit gerirt fun ort, biz
vanen men volt gemuzt maskem zayn tzu foren azh keyn Keidan un gemakht a
khasene ale Keidan, mit alle piptishklekh, a dobrizhen, a rumfel afile
droshe geshank, nit gefonfet, vi do in amerika, in fier shtunden vert a
bokher mit a meydel transportirt in man un vayb un oyf morgen darf men
loyfn zukhen, zorgen far kheynue, nit bay moten. By undz in der heym gayt
nit azoy. 'Net brat' -- bay undz nemt men transformatzie dray teg tzum
veynigsten mit tzeremonien, paraden un far kheyune zol der shver un der
raboyne-shel-oylem zorgen."

"Dobridzen"? "Piptishklekh"? "Rumfel"? "Net brat"? "Gefonfet"? Can anyone
help with these?

A sheynem dank in faroys.

Andrew Cassel

______________________________________________________
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