Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.252 February 12, 1996 1) Argentine Yiddish tangos (Zelma Teicher) 2) Composite tenses/moods (Meyer-Leyb Wolf) 3) Bokser (Meyer-Leyb Wolf) 4) Yiddish cognate to "Kokolores"? (Anno Siegel) 5) Myron Cohen cassettes (Yaakov Lewis) 6) Er vet kumen (Henekh Coleman) 7) Yiddish lives (Cherna Wolpin) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 19:08:13 -0800 (PST) From: zizi@ns1.aplatform.com Subject: Argentine Yiddish tangos David Robboy asked [5.249] about Argentine Yiddish tangos. "Mein Yidishe Meydl" is a tango. There is a few lines of it in Kammen, folio #9, p.23. This was the first time I saw a Yiddish song in tempo di tango. Please tell us the names of the 5 Argentine Yiddish tangos your group sang. There is a live long playing show in San Francisco called "Tango." Some of the music was familiar yet I could not place the melody. It did not occur to me that I might be hearing Argentine Yiddish tango music---but maybe not. Zelma Teicher 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 03:27:55 -0500 From: wolfim@chelsea.ios.com Subject: Composite tenses/moods/... Ellen Prince: I dont think there's much joy in trying to find a 'pluperfect' or 'sequence of tenses' in Biblical Hebrew; a quick look in any of the standard grammars will make that clear. In any case, the substrata of Modern Hebrew are more important factors. Dovid Braun: Thank you for the object lesson in not disappearing things till theyre really gone. The forms you cite are all known from "Transcarapathian Yiddish" so it's not surprising that they're found in Bukovina as well. Does your Bukoviner informant also have the preterite of zayn? Your clarification has me really confused now -- Noyekh mit zibn grayzn, as it were. Our ever-helpful moderator provided us with "volt geven gevust". Is this what you meant instead of "zol geven visn"? In which one is "gehat totally out"? Moreover I keep seeing "visn zayn" rather than plain "visn" in the examples. Could we please have examples with some other verb such as hern? Meyer-Leyb Wolf 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 03:29:01 -0500 From: wolfim@chelsea.ios.com Subject: Bokser Hershl Hartman: Sorry our discussion of verb exotica aroused pluperfect envy. Bokser derives from Bockshorn, which in modern New High German means hartshorn (I'm not making a joke on your name!). In earlier NHG, it was was also a synonym for the current term for carob: Johannisbrot, St. John's bread. No surprise why Jews opted for bokser. One of the reasons I put off replying to your inquiry was the second part of the question, why it came to be used when there was already a word for it in Hebrew. My meditation ran something like this: Why would one think that because a term exists in Hebrew, it would prevent the adoption of an equivalent term in one of the other stock languages? Just because Hebrew has shemen-zayes are we troubled by boyml? What about emes? It didnt prevent the adoption of vor in early Yiddish, nor the adoption of pravde in 18th century Yiddish. I concluded that I (and perhaps others) dont understand the question. Meyer-Leyb Wolf 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 18:44:39 +0100 From: anno4000@lublin.zrz.tu-berlin.de Subject: Yiddish cognate to "Kokolores"? The German word "Kokolores", (nonsense, unneccessary ado) sounds like it might be of Yiddish origin, but dictionaries don't give an etymology (if the have it at all). I checked a few plausible places in Weinreich and came up empty, but the combinatorial possibilities of the first four sounds are overwhelming. Can I tap the collective wisdom of Mendele? Is there a Yidish word that might have led to "Kokolores"? Anno Siegel Berlin 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 15:16:38 -0500 From: justin_lewis@stubbs.woodsworth.utoronto.ca Subject: Myron Cohen cassettes The Jewish Book Center of the Workmen's Circle actually sells several cassettes of or with Myron Cohen, both in English and in Yiddish. To order a catalogue, call 1-800-922-2558, ext. 285. Yaakov Lewis 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 Feb 96 16:51:39 EST From: 102670.3200@compuserve.com Subject: Er vet kumen Ellen Prince points out in yet another pluperfect note that in English you can't say "on Wednesday he will come" if you mean a previous Wednesday. I thought the velt would be interested in knowing that this is one of the most common English mistakes made in yeshivishe circles, even getting into print quite a bit, nebekh. Interestingly this mistake is a "second generation" one -- those who make it are not first or sometimes even second-generation Americans, and are not native Yiddish speakers. (They're certainly not good enough Yiddish speakers, in fact to know how to formulate the pluperfect!) This Yiddish-syntax-translated-directly-to-English phenomenon is well known, of course; it what makes that distinctively funny Jewish cadence in the works of innumerable Jewish writers, and the mouths of innumerable Jewish people. Henekh Coleman 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 Feb 96 17:43:52 EST From: 103172.1552@compuserve.com Subject: Yiddish lives Yo tayere mendelyaner, yiddish is indeed alive and well and functioning vu mir kukt, me darf nor veln kukn! Consider the National Yiddish Book Center, of which we have been reading a lot lately. A great magazine called der pakn-treger, the book peddler, is created at the nybc and brings all kinds of information including how to receive a catalog of yiddish and english and transliterated materials; cassettes of stories in yiddish and yiddish classics translated into english, just write and ask. Available from the Workmen's Circle in NYC is a catalog of books, music and videos; a list of periodicals from around the world can come to you from the Congress of Jewish Culture in NYC (there were 44 listings in l994-5); also in this catalog is a list of places to study Yiddish in NYC and activities currently scheduled to take place there. Now, consider contacting YIVO for a copy of their newsletter which will bring you current information re: project Judaica in Moscow. Did you know about the school now in its third year in Moscow where Yiddish is the language of instruction??? Az me vil, ken men iberkern di gantse velt! Yiddish is offered at the Uriel Weinreich Institute...language,culture and literature; also the Bialystoker Stimme published by the Bialystoker Center and Bikur Kholim, Inc. is waiting to hear from you. Please lumer nisht fargesn der bay, created and published by Fishl Kutner in San Francisco and now celebrating its fifth year.A lebn oyf dayn kop, Fishl. Dos vel zayn genug far haynt,ikh muz shlofn geyn. Blaybt gezunt un redt yidish yedn tog. Cherna Wolpin Buffalo ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.252