Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 5.254
February 14, 1996

1) -axts and -ax (Kalman Weiser)
2) Composite tenses/moods (Khayem Bochner)
3) High school credit course in Yiddish (Sheine Mankovsky)
4) Khsidish or misnagdish (Hershl Hartman)
5) Khsidish or misnagdish (Arnie Kuzmack)
6) Bokser (Hugh Denman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 11:38:04 -0500 (EST)
From: kiw2@columbia.edu
Subject: -axts and -ax

The following query was passed on to me by a linguistics grad student who
found it on a linguistics list:

     Being at the moment in a place where the relevant literature (if any) is
     not available, does anyone out there know anything about the possible
     etymology of the Yiddish deverbal suffix /-axts/ as in /piSaxts/ 'urine'
     (cf. /piSn/ to 'piss'), /brexaxts/ 'vomit' (/brexn/), /Spajaxts/ 'saliva'
     (/Spajen/ 'to spit')?

     I'd also appreciate some information on the curious diminutive plural
     /-ax/, which appears to have no Germanic source and looks like a Slavic
     locative, which would be weird.  Any help appreciated.

     Roger Lass
     Department of Linguistics
     University of Cape Town Rondebosch
     roger@beattie.uct.ac.za

I assume Prof. Lass does not subscribe to Mendele, so it would be appropriate
to respond to him personally.  However, I would certainly like to see a
response on Mendele, as well.

Kalman Weiser
New York, NY

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 12:24:31 -0500
From: bochner@das.harvard.edu
Subject: Composite tenses/moods

Meyer-Leyb Wolf is apparently unfamiliar with the use of "geven" that Dovid
mentioned, and asks for examples. And if he's unfamiliar with it, I would
guess that many others are too. Here's what I can find on hand:

From Yiddish II, chapter 17:
Ven ikh zol geven visn, volt ikh (geven) gekumen.
Had I known, I would have come.

Sholem Aleykhem, cited by Y. Mark:
Ir zolt geven zen zayn retsikhedik ponim.
You should have seen his murderous face.

Zaretski(1929, page 128), in his list of conditional forms, gives:
volt geven makhn
volt geven gemakht
volt gehat gemakht (!)

The last of these is unfamiliar to me (and apparently to Dovid as well);
unfortunately he doesn't give examples.

My understanding is that, just as "gehat" has acquired a use as a particle for
creating the pluperfect & future perfect, "geven" has acquired a use as a
particle for emphasizing that a conditional expression is counterfactual. I
asked Mordkhe Shekhter about this once; he said that while the forms with
"geven" are usually counterfactual, he didn't think they were necessarily
unambiguously counterfactual. Unfortunately, the grammatical literature I have
at hand doesn't clarify matters any further.

My impression is that the forms with "geven" are common in Sholem Aleykhem;
unfortunately I haven't been collecting them as I read.

Khayem Bochner

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 14:47:59 EST
From: sheine_mankovsky@cclink.metrodesk.metrotor.on.ca
Subject: High school credit course in Yiddish

I wrote about the high school credit course being offered by the North York
Board of Education here in Metropolitan Toronto earlier this year.

The eighteen students returned after the winter break, and even survived a
move to another school due to construction at Earl Haig.

I am pleased to inform you that the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto (CHAT)
is looking at the details of how to bring the course into their program in
September, 1996.  So, Yiddish will continue to be part of this community's
Jewish education commitment.

Did I read something about someone saying that Yiddish is dead? Could this
have been an error in fact--as well as in judgment?

Sheine Mankovsky

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:12:11 -0500
From: hershl@aol.com
Subject: Khsidish or misnagdish

Anno Siegel (V 5.248) can rest assured about the origins of the song _der rebe
elimeylekh_. The lyrics were written by the humorist and satirist Moishe Nadir
(Yitskhok Reiss) at a time when he was far closer to Marx and Lenin than to
either the Baal Shem Tov or the Vilner Gaon.

Hershl Hartman

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 22:24:49 -0500 (EST)
From: kuzmack@cpcug.org
Subject: Misnagdishe songs

Eliyahu Juni wrote about the song "az der rebe zingt" as involving different
verbs for the rebbe and the khsidim, such as "un az der rebe est, fresn ale
khsidim."  The version I remember was much harsher in depicting the
relationship:

un az der rebe est, shlingn ale khsidim.
un az der rebe trinkt, gisn ale khsidim.

BTW, I remember a snippet of another anti-khsidish song.  In the gathering, a
Jew does not feel well, so the rebe lays his hands (?) on him.  The result:
der yid iz bald geshtorbn.

Arnie Kuzmack

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 20:53:56 +0000
From: uclhhfd@ucl.ac.uk
Subject: Bokser

Meyer-Leyb Wolf is clearly right [5.252] in deriving 'bokser' from earlier
forms of the NHG 'Bockshorn(baum)', but his gloss, while offering a charming
pun on the name of the original enquirer, is perhaps a little misleading.

The word 'Bock' can indeed mean 'hart', but also refers to the male of any
horned or antlered mammal. Consider, however, the appearance of the realia in
question! The resemblance is more to the flat, twisted horns of a billy-goat
than to the antlers of any kind of deer. And just as Y. 'bok' means 'male
goat', so 'Bock' can denote the same animal in NHG (the more specific form
being 'Ziegenbock').

The word must be directly or indirectly calqued on the Gk. 'aigokeros' with
the unequivocal sense of 'goats-horn'. Incidentally, the Latin botanical name
'ceratonia' is similarly derived from the Gk. The irony of all this is that,
whereas most European languages derive their current term for 'carob' from the
Arabic form (cognate with the H.), if they do not resort to N.T. mythology,
that is, Y. (together with the obsolescent NHG form and the Gk. from which it
ultimately descends) has a form of European origin.

By the way, the topos of the carob as suitable comestible for hermits residing
in deserts is not confined to Christian literature. I believe there are
midrashic counterparts. More intriguing is the question of the route by which
the word got into Gm. & Y. Overlap between the habitat of the tree and either
Gm. or. Y. speech-territory can never have been very great (possibly confined
to the northern littoral of the Adriatic). Could returning crusaders have
brought back the word with the fruit? Or is this potential grist to the mill
of one of our 24-carat Balkan Sprachbund-enthusiasts?

Hugh Denman

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 5.254