Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 176 February 18, 1992 1) Yiddish accents (Ellen Prince) 2) Jew/bimkhile/klafte (David Braun) 3) Excuse me/klafte (Moishe-Nussen Eytan) 4) Klafte/excuse me (Mikhl Herzog) 5) Excuse me (Raphael Finkel) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 20:45:01 EST From: Ellen Prince Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.175 re the use of foreign accents in (american) movies: i really don't think you can invoke any anti-yiddish sentiment here. what they did with enemies, a love story and yentl is what is GENERALLY done in (american?) movies--characters who would, if it were real-life, be speaking a foreign lg typically speak in the accent that speakers of that lg would have in english. just think back to any ww2 movie at how the germans and japanese speak (among themselves) in the movies. or zorba the greek. or the king and i. or dr. zhivago. or cleopatra. or just about any movie not set in middle america... (one big exception was the recent dances with wolves, where the lakhotas speak their own language, with subtitles. you cannot imagine how the linguistic society of america was khalishing from sheer joy...) (of course, this reminds me of another counter- example--blazing saddles, where mel brooks and the other indians speak...yiddish!) Ellen Prince 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 21:31:17 EST From: David Braun Subject: farshidns 1) _jew_ is a dirty word in many languages, indeed. but the point is: when it is _not_ a dirty word (i.e., for those to whom it should be OK, and at times and places in society and history when it _is_ OK) it still is marked, as (perhaps) evidenced by Jews' discomfort with it even in contexts where nobody's shouting it in a derogatory manner. 2) bimkhile, kh'bet iber ayer koved, ir zolt mir moykhl zayn di reyd, ir zolt mikh antshuldikn. these are some of the equivalents for 'excuse the expression', 'pardon my 'French"'. when we quit the computer tonight, let's look in Stutshkov's _oytser_ under _grobkayt_ or something of that nature. under the column "frazeologye" he'll probably have some answers. 3) _klafte_ has a "light" l [klyafte] in the speech of one tshernovitser i know (whose family comes from podolye). in those parts: also [a klyal] 'a klal', [klyopn] 'klopn/klapn'. this doesn't address the question of why the vowel, tho'. David Braun 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 09:23:16 GMT From: me@SUZUKA.U-STRASBG.FR Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.175, 5&| [David Sherman says:] ... And, to digress somwehat, where does the interpolation of "excuse me" *before* a reference to a "dirty" subject come from? I've heard it in English, from Yiddish speakers, but not in Yiddish. What's the Yiddish form?" It seems to me quite standard, in the form 'zayt mir moykhl' (hope transcription is ok!!!) or 'a mekhile' [Yude-Layb Proger says:] but where does /klafte/ come from? the /f/ before /t/ is no problem, but where is the pasach from. in 1910 Golumb (p. 188) suggested the word is from H. _kalba_ (which is 'bitch' in the straight and figurative senses) or _kalvito_ which I don't know. " The 'real' form of 'kelev' is 'kalb' with a pata`h; you can see it eg in the possessive forms: 'kalbi', etc. This is standard in Hebrew. Moishe-Nussen Eytan 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 07:29 EST From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.175 1) Nothing in the Atlas about klafte; my guess would have been that it was somehow derived from the plural "klavim". Is that too simple? 2) "You should excuse me" is very much the Yiddish "zayt mir moykhl/ir zolt mir moykhl zayn/ikh bet iber ayer koved" at the point of saying something off- color. You should read James Matisoff's wonderful study "Blessings, curses, hopes, and fears:psycho-ostensives in Yiddisdh". Published by ISHI, Phil.1979. 3) Is it "to welsh on a bet or to welch"? I never thought to look, BUT, look up the strange history of "Welsh" as it enters into German as Rotwelsch 'thieves' cant', I think, also "Kauderwelsch" (exact meaning escapes me). Welsh, cognate with Gaul, (cf. "walnut"--Yiddish "velishe nis", etc.) in one form or another occurs in European languages, originally as a reference to the Romance and! the Celtic languages and generally meaning"strange", "unintelligible" (cf. It's Greek to me" and the like). Did I say all that? So early in the morning? Mikhl. 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1992 08:43:51 EST From: Raphael Finkel Subject: excuse me In Sholem Aleykhem's work, you often find the interposed 'hot keyn faribl nit' where in yinglish we would say 'you should excuse my saying it'. For example, 'er iz gegangn, hot keyn faribl nit, mitn pupik in droysn'. I have never seen 'faribl' in a positive sentence. Does it exist in that form? Raphael Finkel ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.176