Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.289 January 22, 1995 1) Hometowns (Howard Gershen) 2) Bakent, derkent, bakant (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Der/bakenen, pronouns, "component consciousness" (Dovid Braun) 4) Apikoyres (Mikhl Herzog) 5) Goethe and Yiddish (Ruben Frankenstein) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 1995 17:03:44 -0500 From: howard@boxhill.com Subject: Hometowns While most Mendelniks are from the U.S., the list has also received or is receiving messages people in: Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Britain Canada Finland France Germany Israel Italy Netherlands New Zealand Poland South Africa ex-Soviet Union There may be more. This covers the period during which I've been a subscriber (since June 1993). Country of origin can usually be determined from an email address by inspecting the last two characters: e.g., "il"=IsraeL; "ca"=CAnada; "de"=DEutschland; etc. Howard Gershen 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 95 17:41 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Bakent, derkent, bakant Perhaps the distinction that Arre Komar suggests can be expressed more accurately as follows: _mir hobn zikh (in his dialect _undz_) bakent_ 'We got to know one another' _mir hobn zikh derkent_ 'We recognized one another' _zey zaynen mir/undz bakant_ 'They are familiar to me/us' Mikhl Herzog 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 1995 20:40:32 EST From: dovid@mit.edu Subject: der/bakenen, possessive & refl. pronouns, "component consciousness" To Arre Komar: a) _bakenen_ and its variants means 'to acquaint'. It does not mean 'recognize'. 'Recognize' is _derkenen_. The distinction you mention is probably misremembered. (Which Yiddish dictionary do you consult, by the way?) b) I surmise that Reb Arre studied German at some point in his life (is this right?) and perhaps used/s it actively. Your proficiency in that language seems to have interfered with the Yiddish spoken to you at home. How can I tell? i. in Yiddish, the possessive pronoun (mayn, dayn, zayn, ir, undzer, ayer, zeyer) is not inflected for agreement when it precedes a singular noun (or noun phrase), so _MAYN eygene mame_, not *mayne eygene mame. (A star next to an example in this context means 'ungrammatical'.) In German, however, this would be correct. [To the specialist: I'm ignoring "mass nouns" in "Lithuanian Yiddish", e.g. mayne gelt, dayne vaser.] The possessive pronoun is only inflected for plural agreement, so _mayne eygene kroyvim_ but *mayn eygene/eygn kroyvim. ii. in German, _wir waschen uns_, but in Yiddish: _mir vashn zikh_ or in the dialects that haven't made it into written Yiddish: undz vash(t)'mir zikh, mir vash(t)'mir zikh. I think these are the correct facts. In all of these, however, the reflexive pronoun is _zikh_ in both 1st person singular ('I') *AND* 1st person plural ('we'). Your example, *mir hobn undz bakent/ bakant is _mir hobn zikh bakent/bakant_ in Yiddish. c) M. Weinreich's point was actually that what he called "komponentn-visikayt" (there's no letter "g" in the word) was a problem for the status of the language. It seems that Ashkenazic Jews, throughout their thousand years of Yiddish use, have usually had some (or a lot of) knowledge of one or more other languages at the same time -- languages which contributed to their Yiddish lexicon/morphology/ phonology/syntax. Thus, individual speakers and the group as a whole have been more aware of the origin of the forms of their language than speakers of other languages usually are. The English speaker might not know or ever pay attention to the fact that the English words _book_ and _table_ are (respectively) Germanic and Romance in origin; but the Yiddish speaker is more aware of the languages from which his/her language is derived since chances are great that s/he might know, say, (some of) a Slavic language and (some) Hebrew. E.g., s/he might know that the Yiddish word _zhabe_ 'frog' is _z.aba_ in Polish and the Yiddish word _shabes_ is _shabos_ in (Ashkenazic) Hebrew. While the English-speaker goes about his business of speaking what s/he calls the *English* *language*, the Yiddish speaker has often questioned the languagehood of Yiddish since it might look to him/her that it uses the words of other languages or "has no words of its own" for certain concepts -- or even that all of its words belong to different languages. (At the recent YIVO gathering in honor of Max Weinreich's 100th birthday, Prof. Benjamin Harshav -- formerly Hrushovski -- seems not to have understood that _table_ is the English word for 'table' as well as the French word for 'table'; for him, the Yiddish word _tish_ is "German" and, in fact, the Yiddish word _promine'nt_ is German. Leaves you wonder how to say 'table' in English and 'table' in Yiddish. Leaves you wondering whether English is a language, whether Yiddish is a language, or whether any language is a language. A strange conception,indeed.) Dovid Braun 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 95 17:41 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: _Apikoyres_ Sam Juni glosses the word _apikoyres_ as 'heathen', 'atheist'. It's neither. It's more accurately glossed 'heretic', one who holds opinions contrary to established religious beliefs. Not the same thing at all. I once made the mistake of referring to myself as an _apikoyres_ and was quickly upbraided for my presumptuousness. One must first be a _talmid-khokhem_ before one becomes an _apikoyres_. Mikhl Herzog 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 15:26:26 +0100 (MEZ) From: frankens@mibm.ruf.uni-freiburg.de Subject: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Yiddish Some of you may be surprised to hear that the young Goethe was an ardent scholar of Yiddish and Hebrew. One result of his studies is his "Judenpredigt", a droshe written in the west-yiddish he learned in Frankfurt (he had private teachers coming to his home). Here it is: "Sagen de Goyen wer haetten kae Koenig, kae Kaeser, kae Zepter, kae Kron; do will ich aech aber beweise dass geschrieben staeht: dass wer haben aeh Koenig, aeh Kaesr, aeh Zepter aeh Kron. Aber wo haben wer denn unsern Kaeser? das will aech och sage. Do drueben ueber de grosse grause rote Meer. Und do waere dreimalhunerttausend Johr vergange sei, do werd aeh grosser Mann, mit Stiefle und Spore grad aus, sporenstrechs gegange komme uebers grosse grause rote Meer, und werd in der Hand habe aeh Horn, und was denn ver aeh Horn? aeh Duet-Horn. Und wenn der werd ins Horn duete, do waeren alle Juedlich die in hunerttausend Johren gepoeckert sind, die waeren alle gegange komme ans grosse grause rote Meer. No was sogt ehr dozu? Un was aeh gross Wonner sei werd, das will ich aech och sage: Er werd geritte komme of aeh grosse schneeweisse Schimmel; un was aeh Wonner wenn dreimalhunertunneununneunzigtausend Juedlich waere of den Schimmel sitze, do waeren se alle Platz habe; un wenn aeh enziger Goye sich werd ach drof setze wolle, do werd aeh kenen Platz finne. No was sogt ehr dozu? Aber was noch ver aeh greser Wonner sei werd, das well ich aech och sage: Un wenn de Juedlich alle waere of de Schim- mel sitze, do werd der Schimmel Kerze gerode seine grosse grosse Waetel ausstrecke, do waeren de Goye denke: kennen mer nich of de Schimmel setze wer uns of de Waetel. Und denn waere sich alle of de Waetel nuf hocke; Un wenn se alle traf setzen, un der grosse schnee weisse Schimmel werd gegange komme dorchs grause rote Meer zorick, do werd aeh de Waetel falle lasse, un de Goye werde alle ronder falle ins grosse grause rote Meer. No was sogt ehr dozu?" Nu, un vos zogt ir Mendelniks zudem? Ruben Frankenstein ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.289 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) 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 Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu