Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.171 November 19, 1995 1) Mendele on Wall Street (Jossi Rabinovich) 2) South African _kitke_ (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Menakhem-Mendl (Mikhl Herzog) 4) Crickets (Ron Robboy) 5) Yak redele to redele (Mendy Fliegler) 6) Pronunciation or reading of abbreviations (Steve Jacobson) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 Nov 95 12:06:27 EST From: 76600.2370@compuserve.com Subject: Mendele on Wall Street Rabosai, We made the papers today. The Colin Powell "Interview" and Mendele are described in today's (11/16) Wall Street Journal, Page B1: "Now it can be told: Colin Powell Is Not Really Fluent in Yiddish". It seems that the journalist, like the subject, is also "not really fluent in Yiddish". According to the report, Powell and Bach snacked on "tichel" instead of "kichel". Furthermore, according to the report "Mendele" means media in Yiddish. Enjoy! Jossi Rabinovich 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 Nov 95 17:56 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: South African _kitke_ _Kitke_ as a designation for 'Sabbath bread' seems to be unique to South Africa only because of the high concentration of Yiddish speakers from the Lithuanian-Belorussian area. The word is virtually restricted to them although we have several recorded instances of speakers from the Southeast who claim to have "heard" it. Where _kitke_ occurs on our map, _khale_ always cooccurs; _koyletsh_ and/or _shtritsl_ sometimes coocur with it as well-- all designating the Sabbath bread and sometimes the festive bread for other holiday occasions as well (Purim-koyletsh, etc.). _kitke_ often designates only the a decoration on the loaf: a strip or a braid of dough. Myy instinct tells me that this is a case in which a designation for a part (the decoration) came to apply to the whole (the loaf). One of our Slavists may know the etymology of the word. I should explain that I have skirted around trying to avoid overusing the term _khale_ in order to avoid prejudicing the case, although for most of us, _khale_ is, in fact, the universal term. In Western Yiddish, on the other hand, _berkhes/barkhes_ is the most widespread, and _da:tsher_ is the term in the Frankfurt area. To the West of the Elbe R., _khale_ generally occurs as a designation of the _mitsve_ known as _nemen khale_ and does not refer to the loaf. Mikhl Herzog 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 Nov 95 17:56 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Menakhem-Mendl The recent reference to Menakhem-Mendl prompts what may be a repeat. The reason for the pairing seems to derive from interpretation of _menachem_ as _menchen_, (German- like) diminutive of _man_, and its pairing with _mendl_, Yiddish diminutive of _man_. Mikhl Herzog 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 Nov 1995 17:50:09 -0800 From: rrobboy@cts.com Subject: Crickets Bob Rothstein inquires why _lamedvovnikl_ can mean 'cricket' or 'grasshopper' (Vol. 5.170). I would appreciate knowing some sources for this usage. I couldn't find it in any dictionary I have, don't remember ever seeing it in literature, and even Stutchkoff's _Oytser_ doesn't seem to include it where I looked. But taking Bob Rothstein's word for it, I can offer speculation (no knowledge). His own suggestion, that they are usually hidden from sight, makes sense with respect to crickets: they seem to always be there, yet are nowhere to be seen. But grasshoppers? What about a visual origin, not for the whole word _lamedvovnikl_, but for just the two _oysyes_? _Lamed_ and _vov_, graphically on paper, are thin and elongated, and the physical shape of the _lamed_ (imagine lamed-and-vov laying horizontally, in missionary position, _take_, with lamed 'on top') suggests the extended hind-leg armature (am I using English correctly here?) of not just the cricket, but the grasshopper as well - certainly the salient anatomical feature the two have in common. That, taken with the ubiquity of hidden crickets, suggests a subtle chemistry of lexical forces, which seems persuasive to me. (And then there is the fact that insects have six legs, and 6 x 6 = 36...) Ron Robboy 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 16 Nov 1995 22:11:48 -0500 (EST) From: efliegle@capaccess.org Subject: Yak redele to redele Daniel Soyer wrote [5.158] about what he found (an exerpt from my old friend: The Morning Frayhayt, in which Motl Peysi's (Sholem Aleykhem's) mother mixes up Yidish/English in sentences. "Ikh gey in tshikn oyszaltzen de kitshn"..etc, etc.. (I guess he wanted to know the meanings). If Daniel did not get an answer yet, here an attempt: The gist of the mixed words improperly in place mean: "I go into the kitchen and salt (kosher) the chicken" , not: "going into the chicken and salt the kitchen." A small joke, but it has more meaning to me than others, because I grew up as a Yidish speaking chicken farmer in Central New Jersey, when it was the egg basket of the whole country... But my own mother said things like that. Sorry, but I'm stymied by the next line: A dayge--sogt zi--(yak redele to redele, abi dobre maynele...). I'll leave it to other Mendlyaners who may know Polish or Russian.... Mendy Fliegler 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 08:26:58 -0900 (AKST) From: ffsaj@aurora.alaska.edu Subject: Pronunciation or reading of abbreviations I have a question which probably has an obvious answer which I just don't know and can't find in books -- so I turn to Mendele. Here's my question. Can all Yiddish or Hebraic Yiddish abbreviations written with double apostrophe be pronounced as acronyms? I know that, for example, zayen '' lamed can be pronounced or read as "zal", and that khes - bes '' daled is pronounced or read as "khabad", but what about ayen '' hey? Is there an acronymic pronunciation (and if so what), or is it only read out as "olev hasholem"?, and how about zayen tsadek '' lamed?, and others? To put it another way, is the situation like American city abbreviations where one can say things like "I live in el-ei" (LA), but not "I live in en-wai" (NY)? Steve Jacobson ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.171 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) 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 ****Getting back issues**** 1. Anonymous ftp archives are available. ftp ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files A table of contents is also available, along with weekly updates. 2. Mendele archives can also be reached as follows: via WWW: http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mewais.html via gopher: gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/../.pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele via ftp: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele