Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 5.248
February 11, 1996

1) Introduction (David Robboy)
2) Khasidish or misnagdish (Hershl Hartman)
3) Khasidish or misnagdish (Anno Siegel)
4) Composite tenses/moods (Dovid Braun)
5) Prefiksen un sufiksn (Keyle Goodman)
6) Adjectives on -lr and -rn (Anno Siegel)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 96 14:23:41 PST
From: robboy@ssd.intel.com
Subject: Introduction

Like many Mendele correspondents, I had grandparents whose native language was
Yiddish, my parents spoke it fluently, and no one taught it to me.  What can
you do, siz Amerika.  So I don't know from pluperfect. I work as a software
engineer at Intel Corp. in Beaverton, Oregon, and it is a pleasure to have the
messages from Mendele coming in among my work mail.  My main connection with
Yiddish right now is that I lead a group that sings show tunes from the
Yiddish theatre. We're finding ourselves surprisingly in demand (it doesn't
hurt we don't charge anything).  We have performed for elderly audiences, and
the outpouring of emotion was overwhelming.  Another interesting phenomenon is
that people spontaneously give me cassettes, copies of things their parents
had, so I am amassing a collection of Yiddish music without trying.  People
seem to have an urge to archive these things.

David Robboy

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:10:16 -0500
From: hershl@aol.com
Subject: Khasidish or misnagdish

Zellig Bach (V 5.246) proposes that the folk song "sha, shtil, makht nit kayn
gerider" is misnagdish (anti-khsidish) in origin.

I have always understood that almost _all_ Yiddish folksongs that refer to the
rebe and/or his khsidim/khsidimlakh are misnagdish satires of khasidism. What
say the musicologists among us?

Hershl Hartman

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 21:36:37 +0100
From: anno4000@lublin.zrz.tu-berlin.de
Subject: Khasidish or misnagdish

In 5.246 Zellig Bach brings up the question whether the song _Sha sthil_ is
indeed a khasidic song, or if it's a misnagdish parody.  Apart from this one,
this question has bothered me about at least two more songs, which have been
handed around as "khasidish music", namely _As der rebe eylimeylekh_ and _As
der rebe zingt_.

In fact, the latter bears the mark of a parody so much, it first made me think
about the other two.  It's gist ist, whatever the rebe does, the khasidim
follow suit. When he sings, they sing, 'lalala lala', when he sleeps, they
sleep, 'khrrr khrrr', when he dances, they dance 'hop hey', and so on, faster
and faster.

As for _As der rebe eylimeylekh_ (iz gevorn zeyer freylekh), I believe it's
genuine (not that a parody isn't genuine in its own right).  The idea for the
tsadik to be very human, able to be freylekh, talking and joking and drinking
with his khasidim, is a frequent topos in khasidic folklore.

_Sha stil_ is the one I am the least decided about.  Its first two verses
(when the rebe dances, the walls, or the table, dance along) work both ways.
The third, however ("az der rebe zingt dem heylikn nign, bleybt der sotn a
toyter lign") feels utterly senecere.  Unless the word "heylik" has a
christian undertone, which I'm not sure about.

I'd like to hear opinions.

Anno Siegel
Berlin

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 09 Feb 1996 15:33:07 EST
From: dovid@mit.edu
Subject: Composite tenses/moods/...

My recent contribution on the pluperfect (which wasn't really on the
pluperfect) had a typo in it which made one piece of information
unintelligible.

The composite conditional I was taking about should be of the form:

	ven ikh zol geven gevust
	ven ikh volt geven gevust

with the reading 'if I knew' and not necessarily 'if I had known'.  _gehat_
cannot be used in this construction, if I've understood it correctly, be it in
the context of _hobn_ verbs or _zayn_ verbs.

If I've made any mistakes, perhaps Reb Noyekh could give us a couple of
examples of the construction in his native Yiddish.

Dovid Braun
Cambridge, MA

[Ven der shames volt geven gevust az in zayne puste reyd gefint zikh aza
onshikenish vi a "pluperfect" volt er shoyn lang gehat oyfgehert.  Er iz nokh
bay der madrege vu men vundert zikh ersht az redn redt men proze. nm]

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 14:38:05 -0800
From: ac939@lafn.org
Subject: Prefiksen un sufiksn

Fraynd Mendelyaner.  S'iz mir naygerik tsu visn vifil prefiksen un sufiksn ken
men tsulegen tsu a verb.  Lmoshl "shteln".  S'ken zayn tsushteln, farshteln,
shtelung, forshtelung, un azoy vayter. Efsher iz do a bukh vos git aroys a
reshime fun verbn un nutsn dos vortsl tsu farbreytn verbn.

A dank foroys.

Keyle (Kay) Goodman

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 96 15:54:56 +0100
From: anno4000@w172zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de
Subject: Adjectives on -lr and -rn

To Dovid Braun:

They are few and far between in the smallish dictionary I checked. I find none
on -rl.  Besides "modern", there is "umgern" (unitentional), but this can only
be used adverbally. The same goes for "farayorn" (last year), which may also
be thought of as derived, albeit in a rather non-standard way.  "Farloyrn" is
clearly derived from "farlirn", though its meaning of "flustered, bewildered"
isn't readily found from the root word.

Finally, there is a small class of adjectives that describe the material of
which something is made: "futern", "gendsern", "hobern", "korn", and
"rindern".  These all derive from a root noun by attaching all or part of
"-ern".  So "modern" remains the only undisputable case.

Anno Siegel
Berlin

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End of Mendele Vol. 5.248