Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.077 August 4, 1994 1) Introduction (Robert Klein) 2) Introduction (Johnny Mangaard) 3) Diminutive Plurals (Ellen Prince) 4) Diminutive Plurals (Rick Gildemeister) 5) Diminutive Plurals (Alexis Manaster Ramer) 6) To Catch a Typographical Error (Zellig Bach) 7) Dov Noy (Bob Werman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 02 Aug 1994 10:58:21 +0100 From: ROKLEIN@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE Subject: Introduction Hi all, it's time to introduce myself after reading Mendele for more than a half year. I'm a 22 year old goyishe student of math and computer sciences. I'm interested in Jewish culture and history (amatorial) and therefore subscribed to Mendele to learn some yiddish. (Some people told me that I'm getting a strong accent, maybe that's from Mendele :-). I'll try to be a more active member of this very intriguing list from now on. Robert Klein 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 09:01:08 +0300 (EET DST) From: mangaard@cc.helsinki.fi Subject: Introduction Shole ale! Mayn nome iz Johnny Mangaard un ich bin a lingvist (shtudent) who's interested about Yiddish studies (I feel a bit insecure writing more in Yiddish). I've been working about ten years as a nursery school teacher but recently have concentrated myself on linguistics. Yiddish is known to me solely from Yidishe lider which I've heard some twenty years. The only person I have spoken Mame-loshn with is librarian at the Synagogue of Helsinki. My parents don't speak it (my dad speaks nothing because he's dead). Now a hopefully not too big request: if any one could aid me advising to any Yiddish corpuses so I would welcome any help I can get. Sheynen Dank! Johan George Mangard 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 Aug 1994 16:21:51 EDT From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: diminutive plurals to: jules levin david perlmutter, who i believe is lurking out there, has a very nice paper on the subject: Perlmutter, D. 1986. The split morphology hypothesis: evidence from Yiddish. Papers from the Milwaukee Morphology Meeting, April. ellen prince 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 Aug 94 16:09:40 EDT From: EEGLC%CUNYVM.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Diminutives/plurals in -ekh I have no special knowledge of Yiddish or older German to solve the question of diminutive plurals. First of all, I'd like to address the question of -lekh vs. -lakh. These are regional variants; in Western Yiddish you get -likh, with the kh pronounced close to sh. I have seen criticisms of "YIVO Yiddish" as being too unrepresentative in its choice of pronunciation. For example, if you totaled all living speakers of Yiddish, the word meshuge would more commonly be pronounced meshige. I believe that the language of culture developed by YIVO had a large base in certain Lithuanian Yiddish (and Belorussian Yiddish, too) pronun- ciations. But this is not the point of this posting, just an aside. This kh plural exists in Yiddish today with diminutives, but not in German. There are a group of collective nouns in both German and Yiddish that end in this suffix. In German the guttural consonant has dropped and there is only an "h". Unfortunately, the only one that comes to mind is Vieh, which corresponds to the Yiddish Fikh; these words mean cattle, beasts, etc. The other ones that I know of but can't remember also have this same correspondence. It is a phoneme that is felt as plural. Many German, mostly South German dialects have the -el, -le, -li, -lein diminutive, but I am not aware of any guttural plural? The question I raise is, if the kh in Fikh dropped out, could the -lekh/-lakh form be a remnant of something plural that dropped out completely in German but remained as a remnant in the diminutive plurals and the anomalous collective nouns? Rick Gildemeister 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Aug 94 17:55:31 EDT From: amr@zeus.cs.wayne.edu Subject: Diminutive plurals In response to the questions about the vowel in forms like kneydlax, kneydlex, I can only say that both are certainly attested, depending (I THINK) on the dialect one speaks. I am sorry if I offended anyone by using the form my informants use, which is from the Rzeszow area of Poland. Alexis Manaster Ramer 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 02 Aug 94 21:40:04 EDT From: Zellig@aol.com Subject: To Catch a Typographical Error A. As soon as I E-mailed my posting "Without Malice, but With Goodwill Aforethought" (4.076,6) I realized that a typo slipped through (satyrized for satirized) and promptly dispatched a plea to our Mendele administrator to correct it. In my message I added that he has carte blanche to correct in the future any obvious spelling errors, and that I shall be grateful. In this case it was apparently too late, or it is technically not possible to make any changes in an already E-mailed missive. B. I hastily composed in my mind the following doggerel (probably as a self-administered consolation): When /y/ crept in In place of /i/, A glaring typo, For all to eye, I cried silently to my aching "I"-- Ay... Ay... Ay... C. Thanks to my Mendele sister Ellen F. Prince and to my Mendele brother Seymour Axelrod for their timely pointing out my oversight. D. David-Neal Miller improves my spelling "khaveirim" to the standard khaveyrim, for which I thank him, but he erroneously titles his subject "Khaveyrish." The adjective is formed from the singular, not from the plural. It must therefore be "kha'verish" (Uriel Weinreich) or "kha'verlikh" (Alexander Harkavy, l988 reprint of the l928 edition). Zellig Bach 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Aug 94 2:12 +0300 From:RWERMAN@vms.huji.ac.il Subject: Dov Noy Harvey Spiro in Mendele Vol. 4.072 asks whether Dov Noy has published in English. He did his Ph.D. at Indiana U. (where once I taught), in 1954, if I am not mistaken. I would be surprised if he has no English publications. Try a library search, Aleph for example. The Hebrew University Library lists 40 items, more than half in English, with some French and Hebrew. Sorry for the delay in response; hospital time interfered with any hope of promptness. __Bob Werman _____________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.077 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu