Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.242
December 19, 1994

1) Introduction (Sari and Paul Shifrin)
2) Introduction (Harriet Kasow)
3) Introduction (Larry Schiamberg)
4) Malorusish (Rick Turkel)
5) Malorusish (Jack Falk)
6) Malorusish (Louis Fridhandler)
7) A personal request (Zellig Bach)
8) Usage of "zhe" (Anno Siegel)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 1994 10:14:29 -0500
From: sashifrin@aol.com
Subject: Introduction

My husband, Paul Shifrin, is a proud graduate of the Workman's Circle
shule in Detroit.  I heard Yiddish spoken by my great-grandmother and
grew to love it, though I am far from fluent.  Yiddish songs are part of
our Chanukah and Pesach celebrations as we attempt to pass on some of its
richness to our four children in Ann Arbor.  We are new to the internet
and are thrilled with finding so many enriching Jewish resources.  We
look forward to learning with you.

Sari Wolgel Shifrin
Paul Shifrin

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 94 8:17 +0300
From: kasow@har1.huji.ac.il
Subject: Introduction

I'm Harriet Kasow originally born in Brooklyn of Russian yiddish speaking
immigrants. In my quest as the youngest of 3 to be American I never paid
much attention to the language spoken at home. I did apparently learn
more than I realized when I see a film like _Mamele_ and I can understand a
great deal of it.

Here in Israel there are efforts being made to revivify the language vis
a vis courses in schools and theater productions. Among our friends more
and more Yddish is surfacing in our social gatherings. I joined this list
hoping I could learn and recapture some of my past Yiddish- wise that is.

Harriet Kasow

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 94 13:10 EST
From: 22966lbs@msu.edu
Subject: Introduction

My name is Larry Schiamberg. I was born and raised on the south side of
Chicago, in the South Shore community. The neighborhood was replete with
delightful relatives and friends of parents who all spoke yiddish. As the
oldest of three,now all somewhere in middle age, I was fondly referred to
with the code word--"Der Groisser," particularly when the discussion
turned on matters not intended for my ears(although I did a pretty good
job of cracking the code, while feigning innocence).In short yiddish
was--and still is--a part of my life that I wish to rekindle and expand.
I note, with interest,that the Mendele list address is at Yale, where my
youngest son is a junior, and from whence he returned for the summer with
a tape of yiddish music which he borrowed, and copied, from a classmate,
with the admonition---"I must get this for my father!"

I did my Ph.D. in psychology, with a focus on human development, at the
University  of Illinois--Urbana/Champaign in 1970, with a subsequent stop
at the U.of Wisconsin/Madison. I have been at Michigan State University
in East Lansing since 1973. My wife, three children (two in college, one
a senior in high school) and basset hound (registered as "Spartan Spirit
Schiamberg")all reside in Okemos.

Larry Schiamberg

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 94 09:44:44 EST
From: rturkel@cas.org
Subject: Malorusish

Meyshe-Yankl Sweet asked in mendele 4.241 about the Yiddish word "malorusish,"
meaning Ukrainian.  "Malorusskii" is an old Russian name for Ukrainian
(contrasted with "velikorusskii" for Russian).  The slavic "-skii" adjectival
ending appears to have been replaced with the Yiddish "-ish.

Rick Turkel

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 1994 16:26:37 -0800
From: jackfalk@teleport.com
Subject: Malorusish

Although I've never heard this word, my mother occasionally uses the term
"Malapolska" (little Poland) to refer to our home region in Galicia,
specifically Kolomeya and surrounding villages.  Perhaps "Malorus"
(little Russia) also refers to Russian borderlands.

Yankl Falk

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: 19 Dec 94 12:28:08 EST
From: 74064.1661@compuserve.com
Subject: Malorusish in a Peretz story

Meyshe-Yankl Sweet asks about Malorusish (4.241).

I have a slide of a map that may give some relevant information as to
Malorusish used by Peretz to refer to Ukrainian.  Malo means little in
Russian.  Malorusish must refer to the language of Little Russia.  In a
Rand McNally Atlas of 1886 (within Peretz's career) Little Russia is an
area that includes Kiev, plus Chernigov to the north, Kharkov to the
east, Poltava and Kremenchug to the southeast, Skvira and Tarashtcha to
the southwest.  Bratslav is not included, it is in Volhynia.  Zhitomir is
just across the border in Volhynia.  All of these places figure in the
history of Yiddish-speaking Jews.  I expect that the border drawn in the
atlas hardly delimits the use of Ukrainian.  It's only a portion of the
Ukraine.

Louis Fridhandler

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 1994 21:34:59 -0500
From: zellig@aol.com
Subject: A personal request

For about a week, to be exact for five consecutive days, I received from
Mendele colleagues requests to review their Yiddish, and one to check the
accuracy of a translation from Yiddish into English.

I naturally  felt  flattered   at the  show of  confidence,  and
E-mailed back what I thought were, to the best of my ability and
knowledge, the necessary changes and suggestions.

I trace the sudden influx of such requests to the fact that at the end of
my posting (2.224, p. 7) I volunteered to help Dr. Jeff Zucker with his
exercises from Uriel Weinreich's *College Yiddish.*  I did so publicly
because I thought it fitting in the context of my paper dealing with the
advisability of tagging on, at the beginning of one's posting to Mendele,
the symbol [RR], for Review Requested, and because Dr. Zucker himself, in
his Introduction in Mendele, publicly asked for help.

Public Plea:  I regret that for reasons of age and health I cannot see
myself as a one-man "Bureau of Corrections."

May I respectfully suggest that such requests, to the extent that they
have to do with or for Mendele, be forwarded to the moderator, and Noyekh
will equitably distribute them among the volunteers who already stepped
forward, as well as among those he may still recruit.

More personal reasons:  I am a very poor typist, and make many, many
errors.  I even bought, --af der elter --, a software program that
teaches typing, but to no avail.  My fingers continue to hunt and peck,
as before, but more often than not they miss their targets.

Before I snail mail or E-mail a communication, personal or for
publication, I usually read, re-read, and re-reread -- yes, three times
-- to make the necessary corrections, but even then some typographical
errors remain.

Our Noyekh can attest to the fact that after I E-mailed a posting I have
often followed it up with an urgent plea to correct some spelling errors.
(One Mendele khaver sent me some critical comments, among them that I
once misspelled  "message" with only one /s/, although the very same
word, in the same posting, in another paragraph was spelled correctly.)

To proofread one's own typed work is apparently not enough because the
mind is presumably so familiar already with the contents that the eyes
simply glide over the words without seeing any errors.  It is for this
reason, if I am not mistaken, that *The Chicago Manual of Style* suggests
that authors refrain from themselves proofreading their work, and leave
it, when possible, to someone else.

Several years ago I published in *Verbatim* an article called "The
Gremlins of E.T."  This was not a reference to the Extra Terrestrial, but
to Errors Typograpical.  This was a treatise, so to speak, about typos,
as they are called in the profession, for example, when inadvertently
transposing just two letters in the innocuous word "unclear" transforms
it into the dreadful "nuclear."

Anyone interested in a reprint, please send me a No. 10 self-addressed
stamped envelope.  My address is: 731-B Chatham Lane, Lakehurst, NJ 08733.

And one more personal note:  I recently heard a radio announcer say,
while introducing a pianist about to play a Beethoven piece:  "By the
way, our guest pianist has the same birthday as Beethoven."

It made me wonder:  What is it psychologically that makes people look for
"connections"?  Did this fact make the musician a better Beethoven
player? Did he feel some mysterious connection to the composer?

Well, I am a member of Mendele and, as many of you know, a frequent
contributor.  But, just between us, I also have an additional special
connection:  Mendele Moykher Sforim's birthday and my birthday fall on
the same date.

Zellig Bach

8)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 94 11:03:48 +0100
From: anno4000@w172zrz.zrz.tu-berlin.de
Subject: Usage of "zhe"

Thanks to Zellig Bach for his elaborate comments on "Zayt ir ale gezunt",
pointing out that "ir" is redundant.  Point taken.  He also mentions a
variant "Zayt zhe mir gezunt", stating that this

>may occasionally connote -- but not necessarily and not always-- a
>minute but unarticulated touch of annoyance.

Now this word "zhe" has often riddled me.  Weinreich gives it variously
as "so, then (particle)" (in the dictionary) and as "then (adv)" (in
_College Yiddish_).  It seems it is a very common augmentation of
imperative sentences (others?) which is usually optional in that it
doesn't change the basic meaning.  Still, I often felt that it does give
a sentence a slight twist in connotation, sometimes making a request a
little politer.  "Zog mir..." sounds slightly harsher than "Zog zhe
mir...", right?  But I'd never have guessed it can convey a sense of
annoyance.  What else can it do?  Would someone care to comment?

Zayt zhe gezund (no annoyance implied :),

Anno Siegel

______________________________________________________
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