Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.352 March 7, 1995 1) Introduction (Norman Fishman) 2) Lomir and lomikh (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Lomir and lomikh (Moyshe Taube) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 15:42:15 -0800 From: normf@ix.netcom.com Subject: Introduction/Plurals ending in "-im" As a new subscriber, I must first apologize for my lack of knowledge of the official transliteration of Yiddish. I read the Hebrew characters with difficulty, but my reading of transliterated Yiddish is improving, thanks to mendele online. I was born and raised in Petaluma, a former farm community in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco. My parents immigrated from the Ukraine (mother, via Palestine) and Belarus (father) in 1915-1916. They met and married in San Francisco and arrived in Petaluma in 1919 along with a large group of Jewish poultry farmers who had settled there during about 1910 - 1920. Half of the 300 Jewish farm families were there presumably to learn the business in preparation for aliyah to Palestine. They founded and were active in all the Zionist organizations . Poale Zion, Farband, Pioneer Women, etc. The other half of the community were the "linke" who supported Birobidjan, and formed the left wing organizations. Petaluma was a vital center of Jewish life. The JCC (and shul) was built in 1925. Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Golda Meyerson and the gamut of Zionist leaders, as well as Yiddish authors, poets, theatrical personalities, and the like, visited the West Coast with lectures/performances/meetings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Petaluma. Our parents were all Yiddish speakers, and all the functions at the Center were held in Yiddish. Several attempts were made to organize Yiddish schools for the children, but few lasted beyond one year. I was too young to attend the classes taught by Berkowich and his wife, Leah, Sholom Aleichem's daughter. We grew up knowing and understanding spoken Yiddish; few young people could read or write Yiddish. My wife, a native of Philadelphia, grew up in a similar environment. We conversed in Yiddish when we didn't want our children to understand us -- our parents did the same in Russian when we were children. During the 1970's and early 1980's, we were able to use our Yiddish when we visited family in Israel. Unfortunately, the generation of our parents has now gone, and the richness of their Yiddish is no longer available to us. I miss the road shows (z.b., Al Harris for the Farband) that came to Petaluma, and I miss the traveling singers and actors who came as refugees to Petaluma from the Polish theater in 1938-1942. We are heartened by the resurgence of Yiddish in the Universities, in the revitalization of YIVO, and by the activities of Aaron Lansky and the National Yiddish Book Center. We enjoy mendele online very much and kvel with each report. Now, as to plurals that end in "-im". I'm certain that someone among you pointed to "goy" and "goyim". But has anyone presented "shaigitz" and "shkutzim"? Norman Fishman Menlo Park, California 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 5 Mar 95 12:58 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Lomir and lomikh Zishe Carlow asks: **Could anyone explain the constructions of "lomikh" and "lomir"? Why does "lomikh" (let me) use the accusative "mikh" (me) and "lomir" (let us/let's) use, what I assume is, the nominative "mir" (we)? And is "lomikh" used only in the familiar? When would one use "loz mikh" and "lozt mikh"? And can "lomir" exclude the one being spoken to? For example, can you say "Lomir aykh helfn."?** Off the top of my head: To begin with, _lomikh_ persists only in those dialects which continue to distinguish historically dative and accusative pronouns. No Litvak does. The Litvak makes no distinction between _ikh hob zi lib_ and _ikh shrayb ir a briv_--he uses _ir_ in both; doesn't distinguish _er hot mikh geshlogn_ from _er git es mir_--uses _mir_ in both; so, _mikh_ generally doesn't occur, except, perhaps, in very local areas in the Northeast where the dative-accusative case merger may have favored its retention at the expense of _mir_. There we'd hear _er hot es mikh gegebn_; _lOmir aykh helfn_ would here seem to be a second plural imperative, Litvish style, in which _mir_ is dative/accusative 'me' (= _lozt mir aykh helfn_). Where _mikh_ does occur, as in Central Yiddish, you could expect such distinctions as a second person singular imperative _lOm@kh up_/_lOm@kh g@makh_ '(you) leave me alone' and a first person plural imperative _lOme(r ints) gayn_ 'let's (us) go'. I've also heard a third singular imperative _lOm@n gayn_. I think that _lOm@kh_ can be also be considered a kind of first person imperative--addressed to oneself: _lom@kh z@kh a bisl avekzetsn_ 'lemme sit me down a bit'. I'd add a second singular imperative _lOd@kh_, as in _lOd@kh nish Upnarn_ 'Don't be fooled'. Of course, historically, _lozn_ is implicated in all of these forms but, in CY, you can also expect it to be explicit in _lOzn (=loz im) gayn_ and as well as _lOze (= loz er!!) gayn_, both of which I would gloss 'let him go', each differently nuanced (how?). For the latter, but not for the former, I think I could also substitute _zOle (= zol er) gayn_. Some of our proficient Central Yiddish speakers could probably offer some additional help here (more reliably than I). (Sam Juni? Michael Wex?) Mikhl Herzog 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 07 Mar 95 10:15:00 PST From: taube@hum.huji.ac.il Subject: Lomir and lomikh The two forms reflect the process of reanalysis that this construction underwent in Yiddish. It started indeed as a construction with an imperative (or Jussive) + object in the accusative, and then (starting in the 15th century, split into two constructions: 1. same as before, e.g. loz mikh lernen, loz im lernen, lozt mikh lernen, lozt im lernen etc. 2. reinterpretation of the object as subject, due, among other reasons, to instances of neutralization, e.g. loz zi (nom.=acc) lernen. We thus obtain loz er lernen, loz ikh lernen, lom ikh lernen, (beside lo mikh lernen) and in the plural, lozn mir lernen, lommir lernen, lozn zey lernen. This means that loz turned from an imperative into an auxiliary, behaving very much like zol and indeed competing with it in most constructions, with some restrictions though: a. unlike zol it does not have a 2nd person sg or pl. b. it always precedes its subject. For the full history of this construction see my paper: Le developpement d'un auxiliaire modal en yiddish: lozn 'laisser' in: J. Fisiak, (ed.) Papers from the 6th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 1985, p.499ff. Series: Amsterdam Studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, IV. Subseries: Currrent issues in linguistic theory vol. 34. Publisher: John Benjamins. Moyshe Taube ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.352 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. 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