Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 46 July 20, 1991 1) Response (Ellen Prince) 2) Skotsl kumt (Mikhl Herzog and Noyekh Miller) 3) Various (Mikhl Herzog) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 19 Jul 91 12:31:59 -0400 From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Vol 1 .44 query i'm sure other readers will have answers, some no doubt more authoritative, but here's my two cents: david hendler writes: >1. Is _yenta_ truly from Latin _gentilis_? If so, >how did it become feminine, why does it mean what it >does (rather than 'Gentile woman'), and how come >people don't use it instead of _shiksa_, which I >consider offensive? following max weinreich, among others, yente is from judeo-french (which is from latin), where it was a woman's name, spelled in modern french 'gentille', meaning 'nice, gentle, kind'. it was and i would say still is typical to give females non-biblical--even non-jewish--names, at least much more so than to give males such names. it did not mean 'gentile'. 'gentile', by the way, originally meant simply 'of the people', whence it came to be 'of the OTHER people', whence it came to mean 'non-jewish'. mormons use the term to denote non-mormon. (ultimately, the word for 'gentille/gentle/yente/...' and the word for 'gentile' came from the same latin word, gens, gentis, 'people', i think. but this was way back, before judeo-french.) >2. Is there an equivalent word for men? _Yentl_ is >different, surely, but why? since males typically (necessarily?) get jewish names, and since yente was judeo-french, with no jewish sig- nificance, there would not have been a cognate name for males. yentl is simply yente + -l, -l being a diminutive suffix. >3. Are there other words for matchmakers in Yiddish, >of the informal or formal kind? my understanding of your original comment is that you've never heard shadkhn used for the informal kind. certainly, it was used this way where i grew up (brook- lyn). yente, in my native yinglish, meant 'busybody/gossip', not 'matchmaker'. i never heard any yiddish/yinglish word other than shadkhn(te) for some- one who matches people up, whether for a fee or for fun. in fact, if memory serves me, in yinglish, female matchmakers were usually called by the yiddish mascu- line form, shadkhn (as opposed to shadkhnte, as in yiddish). but i wouldn't swear to this. re shikse, i've heard that it's considered pejorative, but this was not my experience. certainly, one of the most puzzling social situations of my early childhood was when people called me a 'sheyne shikse', meaning i had light hair and skin and a straight nose. (my puz- zlement was knowing whether i should say 'thank you', since it was clearly intended as a compliment. somehow, the sickness of it all was clear to me at a tender age.) in any event, it was certainly not pejorative. whether or not one finds shikse pejorative, i would definitely NOT suggest using 'yente' as a non-pejora- tive substitute! if i may add a free association, i suspect what is pejorative about shikse is the contexts in which you've heard it used, i.e. you heard it used when people had a low opinion of the person in question. the first time i went to france (1962), i was told by a french protes- tant that i shouldn't say i was 'juive' but 'israelite'--'juive', she said, was pejorative. later, i met french jews and learned that they certainly called themselves 'juifs'--it was only non-jews who found it pejorative, from having heard it so often in anti-semitic epithets like 'sale juif' ('dirty jew'). of course, the analog ends there--we can't exactly poll yiddish-speaking shikses to ask what THEY prefer to be called! oh well. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: July 11, 1991 Subject: 'Skotsl komt' and other expressions (Note: this continues an exchange begun in Vol 1.42) MH: I've heard of only one sex determined expression in Yiddish In much of the West (Switzerland, Alsace), only the women say "gotlkum/kotlkum", the western equivalent of "skotsl kumt" or one of its variants. Do you know the expression? How do you say it? When? What does it mean? After you answer, I'll tell you what the men in the West say, instead. You're right on target with "gevo(y)r(e)/gevu(e)r/ gevoyer vern"; interesting that you should have chosen the example that you did: "g.v. vegn emitsns gezunt". It bridges the two regional meanings; 1. 'to find out' anything, tsi er iz gezunt, tsi es regnt in droysn, tsi di bobe kumt haynt, etc. 2. In the Northeast, it means only 'to visit the sick', mevaker-khoyle zayn. "men geyt IM/IR/DEM TATN gevor vern". NM: Skotsl kumt. I never heard it but I _have_ read it 2 or 3 times, I don't know where. I understood it from the context to be a somewhat disrespectful welcome, like the one we _did_ use: 'aha! geyovet!'. But why it should only be used to a woman (Harkavy bears you out) is a mystery. Please explain. By the way, Stutchkoff doesn't list it under greetings, or did I miss it? Does the term maybe refer to the European association of cats with (generally female) witches? MH: Skotsl kumt/kimt has nothing to do with cats or witches. Of course, "kats" in Podolia-Bessarabia would be pronounced "kots" but, even so, the diminutive would be "ketsl"; so, we have to look elsewhere. Frankly, I didn't know that Harkavy listed it. (I don't havbe Stutshkoff with me.) As you say, Harkavy glosses it "welcome ! (to a woman)"; "borekhAbe" (about which, more below). I'm surprised. The only constraint I know of is in Western Yiddish, (Switzerland, Alsace) where the local version "gotl/kotlkum" is SAID only by women; the men say "sholem-aleykhem". Why? I've never heard an explanation for this. In the East, the variants are legion because its origin is so opaque. In fact, I've never heard anyone say that it means "welcome" although they can tell you when they use it; generally "az siz gekumen a zeltener gast". To wit: "O, zey nor skotsl kimt" (presumably "dos kotsl" is coming) or "skocl kint (sic!) iz gekimen" (as if it concerned some kind of child). Would you believe "shkotsl" (from "shkotsim") or "gots tsel (God's shad- ow)"? Whence all of this? Zalmen Reyzen, in an article in Yidishe Filologye, I (1924) offers a medieval German greeting as the source: "bis gote (unde mir) willkommen". There's apparently another possibility, but I don't have access to my notes here. As I recall, Herb Paper, Iranist, Judeo-Persian specialist, Yiddishist (formerly at Ann Arbor, now at HUC, Cincinnatti) found a possible alternative source (in Northern German, I think). I will try to reach him when he returns from Israel in the Fall, perhaps to draw him into the network. His repertoire of Yiddish jokes and Yeshivah humor is quite extensive. As for "borekhAbe". A major dictionary of cognates in a number of European languages lists this as the etymolo- gy of a word we know well in English. Three brownie points if you can name the English word. NM: Shkotsl did cross my mind, but gots tsel didn't. And of course the medieval German one avade didn't occur to me. Wonderful. The same holds for the English derivative of borekhAbe. I've tried a lot and believe me I'll try some more, but so far I've broken my head in vain. Readers: What's the answer to Mikhl's retenish? 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 20 Jul 91 14:53 EDT From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: From Mikhl Herzog to various To: melekh (viswanat@draco.rutgers.edu) Truthfully, I guessed much later than I should have that your native language was Tamil. Your name should have been a giveaway but the implication simply eluded me. What year were you in the Columbia-YIVO summer program? Why did I miss you there? I realize, now that we were at KlezKamp together in December 1989, and that I saw you often during a class I took with my favorite folk-dance teacher. Won't you give her my regards? I hope someone is taking careful notes on the features of Tamil-Yiddish bilingualism. Concerning your observations in Amsterdam. I think you're quite right but, by chance, you picked one of the two anomalous forms in Yiddish to illustrate the systematic use of [ay] where Standard Yiddish would have [ey]. Normally, it's Central (more or less "Pol- ish") Yiddish [ay] as against Standard Yiddish (and Easternmost Yiddish; i.e. "Litvish" and "Ukrainian) [ey]. The negative word "keyn" is exceptional: "Polish" AND "Litvish" both say "kayn"; only the Southeast actually says "keyn": Standard Yiddish recommends "keyn" but the confusion is such that Weinreich's dictionary has an entry "kayn" with a cross-reference to "keyn". Interestingly, "keynmol" follows the expect- ed variation. The suffixes "-heyt/-hayt" and "-keyt/- kayt" are similarly anomalous. I'm interested in your observations about the reluc- tance of the khasidim to speak to you in Yiddish. I've had a considerable number of graduate students who didn't "look" like Yiddish speakers and who encountered the same problem. At first, they were often taken for Israelis. Do you find that the khasidim overcome their reluctance? From my observations at a Lubavitsher "farbrengen", they've learned to accept many people who don't "look the part". Or is it different there than in Williamsburg? To: Joseph Galron Is your bibliography of the writings of Prof. Dov Sadan easily available? Who is publishing the supplement? To: To: dave@lsuc.on.CA (Subject forwarded from Usenet) 1.yente 'vulgar/sentimental woman', 'busybody'; not a matchmaker although, as a busybody, she may "mix in", etc. 2. yente is derived from (is a "back-formation" from) yentl, and not the other way round. I don't have the sources at hand, but think that our first record is of the variant "gentl" (perhaps "gentil"); the spelling with "y" appears in the Memorbuch of 1096 (= yizker- bukh) of the community of Nurenburg; The g/y variation is common; see, e.g., Standard Yiddish "dayges" as against the Western Yiddish variant "dayes"; the Berlin German dialect has "yants yut" for Standard German "ganz gut", etc. So... Yent(i)l/Gent(i)l from "gentile" ["hard g" as in "get", and pronounce the final "e"]. The vocalic ending may account for its incorporation as a feminine name. There is no record of a masculine equivalent. Why? That's never an easy question to answer satisfactorily but, contributing factors may be i) the vocalic ending (although that didn't stop us from taking Simkhe (or Yona) as a masculine name--Yiddish feminine equivalent Sime (none for Yona); ii) most Yiddish masculine names are of Hebrew and Aramaic derivation; Latin & Greek contribute a few. Many more feminine names are derived from other sources. 3. There is no other word for "shadkhn" in Yiddish but, I swear that I've seen, with my own eyes, a native Hebrew speaker's translation of Yiddish "shadkn" into Ivrit as "ose gafrurim". How's your Hebrew? Do you follow the route the translator took? To: A.MM@AppleLink.Apple.COM Unless it's the same one you know, there is a second (non-orthodox) native Yiddish speaker in Vienna. Check the office of the Helsinki Watch Committee. Are you referring to Harkavy's 1898 dictionary? $100???? Don't buy it!!! ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.046