Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.251
December 28, 1994

1) Introduction/ nasidale (Howard Freedman)
2) Zhe (Zellig Bach)
3) Zhe (Ellen Prince)
4) Zhe, tam yak tut (Zev bar-Lev)
5) Aphorisms (Zev Kesselman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 12:53:16 -0800 (PST)
From: hfreedm@sierra.fwl.edu
Subject: Introduction/nasidale

I have waited until I had a worthwhile query before introducing myself.
I live in San Francisco, am 28, and was so deprived of the Yiddish
language in my youth that I did not fully comprehend that it was spoken
as a first language until I was out of college.  Since that time, I have
spent much of my life trying to learn Yiddish and make it a part of me.
I coordinate the Yiddish Song Circle in the Bay Area, which has met
monthly for the past 3 1/2 years to maintain a heymish environment for
people of all backgrounds to share in the language and culture.

My query emerges from a translation I am doing of a "souvenir journal"
from a dinner given in America (at Garfein's Restaurant--does anyone know
the location?)in 1946 by the Shumsker Relief Society to benefit survivors
from Shumsk, the Ukrainian shtetl in which my great-grandparents were
born.  The word in question is "nasidale" and it occurs in the following
context in the discussion of those laborers who worked in Shumsk and
lived in nearby Rachmanov:

File vos hobn gevoynt in Rakhmanov, gemuzt kumen tzu der arbeyt un aheym
geyen farnakht shlofn, fun vos me hot geshpast:  "Zey geyen kayn
Rakhmanov oyf der nasidale."  Dos vertel geyt an in Shumsk biz hayntign
tog: "Gey kayn Rakhmanov oyf der nasidale."

The meaning (and humor) is lost on me without understanding the term "oyf
der nasidale."  The closest I've come is learning that "nasidale"
probably comes out of a Slavic root meaning "to sit."  Can any mendelniks
enlighten me further?  A dank!

Howard Freedman

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 17:39:16 -0500
From: zellig@aol.com
Subject: Zhe

Ten Mendelyaner have so far commented on the _zhe_ phenomenon (Dovid Braun
/twice/, Rick Gildemeister, Peter Kluehs, Arre Komar, Ellen Prince, Yude
Rozof, Anno Siegel, Harvey Spiro, Rick Turkel, and myself).  Herewith a
few more observations:

_Zhe_ is not a word in its own right, nor is it a suffix.  It can not
begin or end a sentence.  Nor can it stand alone.  Unlike marine
barnacles that attach themselves permanently to ship bottoms or floating
timber, _zhe_ is a "floater,"  and is usually tacked on to one word or
another, according to a speaker's choice, occasion, and mood.

Its effect and subtle meanings depend on the circumstances of the moment
and tone of voice.

Siegel (4.242,8) stated:  "I'd never have guessed that [zhe] can convey a
sense of annoyance," referring to my statement (4.240,2) which he quotes:
"...may occasionally connote-- but not neccesarily and not always -- a
minute unarticulated touch of annoyance."   Note the supercautionary
'occasionally,' 'not necessarily,' 'not always.'

Harvey Spiro too stated (4.247,6) that "paradoxically... I heard zhe used
both to indicate compassion [as well as] impatience and frustration."

Maurice Samuel (_In Praise of Yiddish_, p. 119) wrote:  "At times _zhe_
presupposes a conversation that is being terminated not discourteously
but onesidedly...  It can have the slightly hurried effect of < Well, be
seeing you >."

As I said at the end of my analysis of Siegel's sign-of phrase and its
possible two variants "zay (or zayt) mir gezunt" and "zay (or zayt) zhe
gezunt" _it all depends_.

_Zhe_ has a varicolored, multi-purpose quality:  It colors and, if I may
say, flavors the utterance with a certain special kind of spice.  And it
can play chords of different shadings, depending on the conversational
context, speakers' temperament, and, ultimately, on inflection.

Zellig Bach

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 11:22:25 EST
From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu
Subject: Zhe

to dovid: thanks for adding those possible zhe-contexts but i still don't
see any syntactic generalization (other than imperatives and v-words)
that the child acquiring yiddish could have induced.

ellen prince

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 12:49:50 -0800
From: zbarlev@mail.sdsu.edu
Subject: Zhe, tam yak tut

a couple of dissenting notes, some pretty trivial.

zhe is not from russian uzhe 'already', but is rather a separate particle
in russian and other slavic languages.  my sense is that it has a few
fixed uses, as in to zhe "that zhe" = "the same", but that otherwise it
can be used freely to emphasize just about any part of speech.  on the
other hand, it's not (i think) very ordinary modern spoken russian in
this broader use. of course all of this may be wrong because i'm not a
native speaker anyway.

tam yak tut is very cute; for trivial correctness, let me throw in:

Yiddish tam < Hebrew ta'am "taste"...
tam = there in russian and polish (but not all slavic)
yak = how/as/like in west slavic only (Russian: kak)
tut = here in russian, but tutaj (pron. "tu-tie") in pol.

it might be pure ukrainian, which does mix russian & polish; or it might
be mixed slavic, which does occur.

zev bar-Lev

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 08:15:56 EST
From: zev%hadassah@vms.huji.ac.il
Subject: Aphorisms

I remember my father, alav hashalom, sending 8 year old me to the corner
candy store to pick up a Farvetz.  I returned with a different paper
(they were sold out of Forwards).  His version of the phrase was: "Az mir
shikt a naar af'n yerid, freyen zich di kramer".  That was well over 40
years ago, ubber es klingt mir noch in de oyren.  :-)

Zev Kesselman

______________________________________________________
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