Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 4.334
February 23, 1995

1) Plural -im (Barry Walfish)
2) Mertsol fun tokhes (Shleyme Axelrod)
3) Tokhes (Nokhum Rosenblatt)
4) The modern Hebrew kabtsn and tokhes (Michael Shimshoni)
5) Tokhes, tekheser, -im (Khayem Bochner)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 13:45:55 EST
From: walfish@vax.library.utoronto.ca
Subject: Plural -im

A few other examples which come to mind are kabtsonim, dalfonim, and
klezmorim.

And speaking of klezmorim, I have a question for the linguists. This word
(klezmer, klezmorim) is an example of the name of an object being
transferred to the person who does something with the object, in this
case, a musician being called an instrument. Does this phenomenon have a
name? Are there other examples?

Barry Walfish
Toronto

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 21:35:35 -0500 (EST)
From: ptyaxel@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: Mertsol fun tokhes

Harkavy appears also to give _te'kheser_ (he doesn't provide
pronunciations) as the plural of _tokhes_.  In the bilingual 1898
dictionary, he has (Yid.-Eng. p. 343)

tof-khes-sof [m.] (pl. tof-khes-sof-ayen-reysh) 'arse'.

In the 1928 trilingual version (p. 521) he translates the singular as
'hind quarters, arse', with the same plural as in '98.

Shleyme Axelrod
Buffalo, NY

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 95 22:48:06 PST
From: nrosenbl@interserv.com
Subject: Tokhes

> In re the question of Alan Shuchat (4.330) about not finding "tokhes
> "in his Vaynraykh ,the same is true for my Harkavy 1910.

Harkavy's Yiddish, English, Hebraish Verterbukh of 1928 includes tokhes
(tof, khes, sof) as does also Harkavy's English-Yiddish, Yiddish-English
dictionary of 1898.

Nokhum Rosenblatt

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 95 12:35:50 +0200
From: mash@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il
Subject: The modern Hebrew kabtsn and tokhes

There have been several contributions about two Yiddish words and their
possible connection with Hebrew: _kabtsn_ and _tokhes_.   There is no
doubt that in present day Hebrew the equivalents of these words, and with
the same respective meanings, are qabtzan (qof, bet, tzadi, nun) and
tahat (tav, het, tav).  I have looked for these rather common Hebrew
words in my Even Shoshan dictionary, and from the example given for
qabtzan it seems to me that it is a relatively new word (the root is old
as is well known, just its use for a shnorer seems to be new).  Tahat,
the proper Even Shoshan does not bring at all in the tokhes sense.

Would it be correct to deduce from that the two words words were
introduced into modern Hebrew from the Yiddish, which in turn made up
these words from Hebrew *roots* but not words?

Michael Shimshoni
Rehovot, Israel

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 95 10:42:54 -0500
From: bochner@das.harvard.edu
Subject: Tokhes, tekheser, -im

Hershel Stillman shraybt:
> In re the question of Alan Shuchat (4.330) about not finding "tokhes
> "in his Vaynraykh ,the same is true for my Harkavy 1910.

S'iz yo do in Harkavy 1928/1988. Tsum badoyern iz Vaynraykh geven a bisl
ibertsniesdik ;-)

Tof, khes, tof; mertsol tekheser, vi Shleyme Axelrod shraybt. Nor efsher
ken men take zogn tokheysim, vi a vits?

Derekh agev, frier hot men gezukht loshn-koydeshdike verter vos zeyer
mertsol iz oyf "-im". Ikh hob gedenkt az mir hobn dos arumgeredt oyf
Mendele mit a shtik tsayt tsurik, un sof-kl-sof hob ikh gehat a
gelegnhayt arumtsuzukhn in mayne arkhivn. In May, 1993, hot Moshe Taube
geshribn:

> 1. Let me add two more non-hebraic names with a hebrew
> plural suffix. They are used in the synagogue, at the
> summoning to Torah reading, indicating the pledge of
> the summoned. karboynim from karb/n kerbl, and
> gildoynim from gildn.

Khayem Bochner

______________________________________________________
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