Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 2 no. 169
March 29, 1993
 
1) Du and ir (Zev Bar-Lev)
2) Polite/familiar (Martin Davis)
3) Dutsn and irtsn (Khaim Bochner)
4) Etymology of names (Berl Hoberman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed Mar 24 14:55:38 1993
From zbarlev@sciences.sdsu.edu 
Subject: Du and ir

the comments on /du/ & /ir/ (especially that of Pe'rets
Mett) certainly imply Q although somewhat indirectly, so
i'm checking back Q that my choice of /ir/ as the first
(and, for the short term, only) expression of "you" is
best.

traditionalists may resent my forcing a choice, but given
this assumption, /ir/ is best, yes?

i fear no patsh, since i always follow my Mini-Course after
i write it! i will happily attribute my never having heard
it to my lack of exposure to gedekht yiddish.

also, can anyone comment on the pronunciation /ish/ for
/ich/?  is it "substandard"?  i'm sure it's how my
grandmother used to say it Q altho i never understood
anything, so i could probably be convinced that it doesn't
even exist.  but it does, doesn't it?

with thanks to Pe'rets Mett and Ellen Prince, and any
future commentators.

zev bar-lev, sdsu

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed Mar 24 15:54:10 1993
From: davism@TURING.CS.NYU.EDU
Subject: polite/familiar


> I hope you take some protection with you when you speak
> yidish. In some circles if you address a complete stranger
> 'du' you are likely to be rewarded with a patsh in ponem.
> However the abolition of the polite form -has- become more
> prevalent, very likely (as others have suggested) by
> analogy with English.
>
> Pe'rets Mett

Of course it's the familiar form that has been abolished in
English.

I take it that the "patsh in ponem" is not to be taken
literally, at least not nowadays.

In my travels in Europe over the last 30 years I've
received the impression that the familiar is being used
much more readily and casually than it used to be among
French/German/Italian speakers, especially among younger
people. Isn't the observed situation in Yiddish just part
of a more general phenomenon?

We used a conversation manual called "Wie Geht's?" when I
studied German in school. The three characters, all
students, used the polite forms in all the dialogues until
the very end, when occurred:

FRITZ: Darf ich Ihnen Hilda anrufen?
HILDA: ... Fritz ...

I think that scene would be unimaginable in today's Europe.

Martin Davis

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu Mar 25 18:27:02 1993
From: bochner@DAS.HARVARD.EDU
Subject: dutsn un irtsn

Nokh a "data-point" vegn 'du' un 'ir':

Yinglvayz hob ikh zikh oft tsugehert vi tate-mame redn
yidish mit andere metshn fun zeyer svive, ale
sheyres-hapleyte fun poyln, un kimat ale geboyrene
yidish-reders.

Oyf vifl ikh gedenk, hob ikh keyn mol nisht gehert, az me
zol irtsn emetsn in der svive. Ikh volt kimat gemeynt, az
s'iz nishto aza zakh bay undz.

OBER, ikh hob shpeter gehat a gelegnheyt tsu hern vi
tate-mame redn yidish mit a mentsh vos zey kenen nisht. Mit
im hobn zey dafke gezogt 'ir'. Heyst es az mir hobn yo aza
forem, nor me nutst es nisht bay undz tsvishn gut bakante
khaveyrim.

Khaim

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon Mar 29 12:30:26 1993
From: RHOBERMAN@CCMAIL.SUNYSB.EDU
Subject: Etymology of names

I'd like to know the etymologies of two women's names:
Rayke and Peshe (that is how they were pronounced in my
Belorussian Litvak family).  There are a few bits of
information in Weinreich's HISTORY OF THE YIDDISH LANGUAGE:

On p. 20 we learn that Peshe is a hypercorrection for
"Pes(y)e" in the "sabesdiker losn" area, where the basilect
(least standardized local variety) had no "sh" sound.  But
what is the origin of Pes(y)e?

And on p. 513 he mentions the name Raykhl from raykh
'rich'.  Is Rayke somehow another variant of Raykhl?  If
so, why not *Raykhe with a "kh"?  Modern Hebrew has the
female name Raaya (reysh-ayin-yud-hey), a word meaning
'female companion, wife, beloved'.  Is this connected
somehow with Rayke?  Rayke could conceivably be a
diminutive of Raaya, but it seems to me that Raaya as a
personal name is modern, and if so, where did the modern
Hebrews get the idea of using it as a name; maybe from the
familiar name Rayke, as a back-formation via
folk-etymology.  (To those who've objected to the
condescension implicit in the term folk-etymology, what I
mean is: early modern Hebrew users knew the Yiddish name
Rayke, analyzed it as a diminutive [which it may or may not
have been], looked for its un-diminutive base, guessed
[correctly or incorrectly] that it was the common noun
raaya, and  therefore felt justified in using Raaya as a
personal name.  In fact nowadays no justification is
required; Israelis freely use all kinds of common nouns as
proper names, but some Raaya's are elderly by now and I
have a feeling that that freedom didn't exist in the early
part of the century.  Besides, there's no parallel
masculine name Rea or Re'e!

Does anyone have any real information?  Am I wrong about
any of this mess of guesses?

Berl (Bob) Hoberman

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End of Mendele Vol 2.169