Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 6.070
September 26, 1996

1) The auxiliary verb for past tense (Joachim Neugroschel)
2) Yitskhok Goldkorn (Norbert Reinhartz)
3) Yitskhok Goldkorn (Cheryl Jaffee)
4) Curses (Albert Braunstein)
5) Khatskl Lemkhen (Zellig Bach)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 18:11:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: achim1@cris.com
Subject: The auxiliary verb for past tense

The statement that "iz" implies "perished at the hands of others" is not
quite accurate.  As we know, the Yiddish past tense is formed by using a
past participle with an auxiliary "zayn" or "hobn"--depending on the
given verb and the dialect.  Unlike German, Yiddish has no consistent
pattern of when to use which auxiliary.  In German "sein" is used for
nearly every verb that is intransitive and implies a change (with three
exceptions in Southern German and Austrian :   stehen, sitzen, liegen).
In Yiddish, you unfortunately  have to learn  the auxiliary for each
individual verb.  the only consistency seems to be that a compound verb
takes the same auxiliary as the basic verb:  "Er iz gegangn" and "er iz
selbstmord bagangn" vs. German "Er ist gegangen" (intransitive) but "Er
_hat_ Selbstmord begangen" (because the verb is transitive).  To confuse
Yiddish matters further:  a string of verbs can have an elliptical
auxiliary after the use of the auxiliary for the first participle:  "Er
iz geloifn un gezungn"--even though "gezungen" normally takes "hoben."
That construction would be impossible in German:  you'd have to say: "Er
ist gelaufen und _hat_ dabei gesungen." In regard to the three German
verbs that take "sein" by way of exception, most German grammars,
including the Duden are misleading.  They claim that the "sein" usage is
medieval. Not quite.  In Middle High German you could say "er ist
gestanden" = "He stood up"  and "er hat gestanden" meaning "he was
standing."  Modern German and Yiddish  both keep the form of one and the
meaning of the other.

In regard to Zellig Bach's claim that "iz" implies "at the hands of
others" he may have been thinking of the Yiddish passive voice, which
uses the appropriate form of "vern" with the past participle of a
transitive verb. You might want to check out the brief description of
the passive in Weinreich's College Yiddish, which also offers a brief
outline of the past tense with "zayn" and "hobn".

Joachim Neugroschel

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 02:59:32 -0700
From: b1phmv50@sympatico.ca
Subject: Yitskhok Goldkorn

Yitskhok Goldkorn died in Toronto July 18, 1988.

Norbert Reinhartz

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 09:54:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: chj@psb.nlc-bnc.ca
Subject: Yitskhok  Goldkorn

Yitskhok Goldkorn's widow informs me that her husband died on July 18,
1988.

Cheryl Jaffee

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 07:55:38 -1000
From: sbr@ausom.net.au
Subject: Curses

Someone claimed in a magazine article that the phrase "May you live in
interesting times" is a yiddish curse. I had always thought it was
Chinese. Did they borrow it from us? Has anyone heard a yiddish version
of this curse?

Have their been previous discussions of yiddish curses on Mendele? I
would also be interested to know everyone's favorite curse - for
research purposes only!

Albert Braunstein
Melbourne, Australia

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 18:14:34 -0400
From: zellig@aol.com
Subject: Khatskl Lemkhen

There were several queries recently in_Mendele_ about the work of the
linguist Hackelis Lemchenas.

His Jewish name was Khatskl Lemkhen.  If memory serves me, he was
employed in a bank in Kovne (Kaunas), Lithuania.  By profession a
trained philologist, he published a book, in Lithuanian, on the
influence of the Lithuanian language on the _litvishn_ Yiddish.

As author of the book his name, in Lithuanian, is Haskelis Lemchenas.
This spelling, with the addition of "-is" at the end of his first name
and of "-as" at he end of his last name is a curiosity of the post-World
War I when the new republic of Lithuania was carved out from the old
Russian empire with _Vilne_ (Vilnius), famous Jewish town of the _vilner
go'en and, later,  seat of YIVO, as its capitol.

The new government authorities soon decreed that all non-Lithuanian
names be changed to conform with the rules of Lithuanian grammar.

Since the population of the new Lithuania was very small, the motivation
beyond this decree, besides its nationalistic-political reasons, may
also have been for the purpose of giving an exaggerated, bloated,
demographic picture.

Thus, last male names gained at the end an added "-as," for example,
[Lemchenas], or an extra "-us" [Rabinovitshus], and so on.  First names
also underwent similar, Lithuanized, changes.

Yudl Mark, Lithuanian by birth, (author of the _gramatik fun der
yidisher klal-shprakh [Grammar of Standard Yiddish], became in his
official government papers Yudelis Markas.  And the last name of the
Yiddish writer Uri Katsenelenbogen, who then lived in my hometown
Ponyevezh, became the seven-syllabic Katsenelenbogenas.

Zellig Bach
Lakehurst, NJ

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 6.070