Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 2 no. 123
December 15, 1992
 
1) Tstatske (Dan Jurafsky)
2) Tsatske/tshatshke (Bob Rothstein)
3) Pronunciation (Payrets Mett)
4) Yiddish Day (Dan Breslauer)
5) Yiddish Day / uxor (Ellen Prince)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 15:56:40 PST
From: jurafsky@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: tsatske

Just a quick note, my Polish informants tell me that the
Polish "cacko" noted by Noyekh, "toy", "trinket", can be
used, with usually a pejorative sense, about women just as
in Yiddish.  (One informant said "it can mean, like you
say, "blond"). It can also have the affectionate sense
noted for Yiddish by Norman Zide ("tsatskele", which my
mother, whose Yiddish is Litvak find very normal).

Dan Jurafsky

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 23:31:58 EST
From: rar@titan.ucc.umass.edu
Subject: tsatske/tshatshke

Polish _cacko_ [tsatsko] is in origin a dialect form
corresponding to an older literary _czaczko_ [chachko].  In
NE and SE Polish dialects the alveolar series of consonants
sh/zh/ch/dzh is replaced by the corresponding dental
consonants s/z/c/dz, as in the Yiddish dialects that show
what is called "sabesdike losn".

If any of our Israeli colleagues have access to the journal
_Folk un tsien_, there is apparently an article by Dov
Sadan on the pair tsatske/tshatshke in Yiddish in number 43
(November/December 1981, pp. 24-28).  (I'm assuming that
the journal is or was published in Israel, but I may be
wrong.)

Bob Rothstein

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 11:26:45 +0000
From: P.Mett@open.ac.uk
Subject: pronunciation

To Mikhl Herzog:

I pronounce my name Payrets as in 'may' being the Central
Polish pronunciation of the Hebrew. I guess people would
prefer me to spell it Peyrets. Be that as it may - mendele
is the only place where I spell it out in Latin characters;
for the goyim (?!) it is Percy.

By comparison with Paysach and Layzer my name should have
undergone a second vowel shift, but then it's a fairly
uncommon name. Do you know anyone else with the same name,
and if so how is it pronounced?

I think Moshe Taube has already covered the Hebrew spelling
of beso(i)roh.

Payrets

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 14 Dec 1992 12:25:19 -0600 (CST)
From: Dan Breslauer <BRESDAN%UKANVAX.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu>
Subject: RE: Yiddish Day

This is a query based on your "Yiddish Day" at the
Kenesset.

I'm working on Hayyim Nahman Bialik and among, other
things, the trouble he got into with Zionists such as
Klausner because he supported the use of Yiddish as well as
Hebrew.

Has Israel reversed this Zionist stand against Yiddish?
Has there been debate about it?  Are the official linguists
no longer worried about corruption from Ashkenazic
influence?

Can you fill me in on the background!!!

Dan Breslauer
University of Kansas

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 21:02:25 EST
From: "Ellen F. Prince" <ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Yiddish Day / uxor

[Daniel Galay writes:]

>On the 4/1/1993 at the Knesset, Israeli parlament, will
>take place, with the auspicies of the Knesset Chairman,
>Prof. Shevach Weiss the YIDDISH DAY .

question: is this april 1 or january 4? i pray the latter--
april 1 is april fool's day in the usa! nokh dos felt undz!

-----------------------------------------------
for jascha kessler:

i did *not* say that _ux._, as in _et ux._, was pejorative.
quite the contrary! my point was that the fact that my
husband is offended by being called my _ux._ does NOT make
the term pejorative.

but please note that _et ux._ is NOT an abbreviation for
_uxorious_. _et ux._ is an abbreviation for _et uxor_,
which means 'and wife'.

ellen prince

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End of Mendele Vol 2.123