Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.254 December 30, 1994 1) Zmarstynov/Zamarstynow (Arn Abramson) 2) Zmarstynov/Zamarstynow (Gaston L. Schmir) 3) Zmarstynov/Zamarstynow (Bob Rothstein) 4) Lern, davn and no epenthesis (Dovid Braun) 5) Nasidale (Bob Rothstein) 6) Tam yak tut (Bob Rothstein) 7) Khoge (Harvey Spiro) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 28 Dec 94 15:45:39 EST From: abramson@uconnvm.uconn.edu Subject: Zmarstynov/Zamarstynow To: Rita Falbel Using the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex Coding Ssystem, I have found that your town is entered as Zamarstynow on p. 405 of _Where Once We Walked_ by Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack. No latitude and longitude can be given because this town was not found in the gazetteers of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. It is described in _The Black Book of Localities Whose Jewish Popuilation Was Destroyed by the Nazis_ as being in the Lwow region of Poland. It is mentioned in the _Encyclopedia of Galician Rabbis and Scholars_. It had a Jewish population of 2914 before the Holocaust. Arn Abramson 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 19:30:59 -0500 (EST) From: glschm@minerva.cis.yale.edu Subject: Zamarstynov In the memoirs of Leon Wells ("The Janowska Road", Macmillan, New York, 1963), there appears a map of Lwow indicating the location of a section called Zamarstynowska. The ghetto seems to have been located near this area and one of the streets forming the boundary of the ghetto was Zamarstynowska Street. Gaston L. Schmir 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 21:01:31 -0500 (EST) From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Zamarstynow In 4.252 Rita Falbel asked about Zamarstynov. It was established in 1422 by the Lemberg burgher Jan Sommerstein on the northern border of that city and called Sommersteinhof, later Polonized to Zamarstyno'w. (Lemberg is of course the Yiddish and German [Austro-Hungarian] name for the city that is usually known in English by its Russian name, Lvov [L'vov]; the Ukrainians call it Lviv [L'viv].) By 1930 Zamarstyno'w was officially part of Greater Lwo'w (as the Poles called it). It was an industrial and working-class area. During the Nazi occupation it constituted part of the Jewish ghetto. Bob Rothstein 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 18:20:20 EST From: dovid@MIT.EDU Subject: lern, davn and no epenthesis In the words _tseykhn, ordn, latkhn_ and many, many others, an /e/ is inserted before the final /n/ of the stem when the inflectional ending /-en/ of the infinitive or of the 1st/3rd persons plural is added. So _mir tseykhEnen, zey latkhEnen_ etc. etc., although _ikh tseykhn, er latkhnt, du ordnst_. (Without linguistic analysis of the phenomenon,) the generalization is that when the stem of the verb ends in /n/, add /e/ before it when inflecting with /-en/. But _lern, davn_ seem to be exceptions, since in their inflected form they are: _lernen, davnen_. (Yes, there are those who say _davEnen, lerEnen_, so they have regularized these two stems. But I'm interested in those who have maintained the exception.) My question: can you think of any other stems ending in /n/ in which /e/ is _not_ added? My thanks in advance. Dovid Braun 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 20:43:17 -0500 (EST) From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Nasidale In 4.251 Howard Freedman asked about the word _nasidale_ in the context: "Zey geyen kayn Rakhmanov oyf der nasidale." He had been correctly informed that the word involved a Slavic root meaning "sit," but that's only part of the story. In Ukrainian _sidalo_ can mean "perch" or "roost" (e.g., for a chicken); _na sidale_ (prepositional case) would be "on the perch/roost" and _na sidalo_ (accusative case) would be "(on)to the perch/roost." So the Yiddish _oyf_ duplicates the Ukrainian preposition. The joke presumably comes from the fact that _sidalo_ can also mean "buttocks." Bob Rothstein 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 20:50:57 -0500 (EST) From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Tam yak tut In 4.251 Zev Bar-Lev correctly pointed out that while _tam_ could be either Polish or Russian, _yak_ could only be Polish and _tut_ could only be Russian. He suggested that the whole expression might work in Ukrainian, "which does mix Russian and Polish." He's right that all three words are good Ukrainian, but saying that that language "mixes Russian and Polish" shows the same lack of respect that we complain about when its object is Yiddish. It might be more appropriate to say that Ukrainian shares (through common inheritance or borrowing) some words with its two linguistic neighbors. Bob Rothstein 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri Dec 30 09:38:04 1994 From: hjs@nrc.gov Subject: Khoge With his characteristic wink of an eye, Rick Gildemeister in Mendele 4-247 wished us all "a gute khoge". Abe Bloom in Mendele 4.248 asks about the word "khoge," wondering "Efsher iz es nit Yiddish?" Rick Gildemeister (a gezunt af dayn kop!) answered in Mendele 4.252 that "the word is used to mean 'gentile holiday.' I'm assuming there's a connection to the Hebrew word 'khag' which means holiday." I've also seen the word used in Yiddish as Rick Gildemeister describes, in as neutral a sense as Yiddish can have in speaking of days that often were fraught with terror for the Yiddish-speaking community. Although obviously related to the Hebrew word "khag," I guessed that Aramaic was the more likely direct source, because of the final "alef" instead of a more Hebraic "he." So I hit the books. Jastrow's 1903 "Sefer milim," a dictionary of Talmudic and Midrashic Hebrew and Aramaic, lists the word, citing several midrashic sources (in Aramaic), with an apparent definition of "feast" or "festival." I'm not a scholar, and the dictionary's annotations are (to me) cryptic, with no key provided. Going to a more recent reference, Even-Shoshan's dictionary of modern Hebrew, "Hamilon haivri hamerukaz," defines "khoga" as a medieval Hebrew expression for a "gentile holiday, or non-Jewish "khag." Weinreich confirms the Yiddish definition of "gentile holiday." I'll leave it to others to discuss whether the use of "khoge" in Yiddish was generally neutral or otherwise. A gut gezunt khoge, un a zis nay yor, tsu ale Mendelyaner. Harvey Spiro ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.254 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu