Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 6.287
April 17, 1997

1) Nibl-pe (Dovid Braun)
2) Nibl-pe (Sam Weiss)
3) Ashkenaz (Michael Steinlauf)
4) A lost line from Y.L. Peretz (Paul Miller)
5) Shprikhverter (Al Grand)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 19:28:02 EDT
From: dovid@mit.edu
Subject: Nibl-pe

We may theorize about why "[nivlpe]" would be pronounced as such, but
have we established that that _is_ in fact a pronunciation current
among native speakers of Yiddish?  I don't remember that we have.  One
reader mentioned that Tsanin's dictionary seems to distinguish between
the Hebrew (with [b]) and the Yiddish (with [v]).  I don't have
Tsanin's dictionaries at hand.  Is the word unequivocally spelled with
a veys and not a beys there?  (I.e., if I remember correctly, the
earlier volume of Tsanin does not present the Yiddish using the YIVO
standardized spelling system while the later volume does.  Is there a
_rofe_ over the veys?  In a volume not employing the YIVO spelling
standards, the beys and veys may be indistinguishable -- e.g. if no
_dogesh_ is used in the beys.)

Dovid Braun
Cambridge, MA

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 21:49:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: sweiss@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us
Subject: Nivl-pe

I sure hope this is the last !*#%!*&$! item about nivl-pe... [That
makes me wonder: Can you have 'nivl-pe' in written form, or does it
have to be spoken?] It seems from the pattern of postings that we may
be moving out of a state of denial that spoken Yiddish has 'nivl-pe'
but not 'nibl-pe', towards a state of wondering why this is so.  Les
Train's theory of consonantal dissimilation (in Mendele 6.286) makes
sense, and it is aided by a theory that Dov Noy recently communicated
to me, which I paraphrase:

	Yiddish speakers preferred the 'V' sound of the Torah (Vayikro
        11:39, 22:8, Dvorim 22:21. [Yisro's 'nuvoyl tiboyl' in Shmot
        18:18 played an important role in our Galician children's
        folklore]) and connected the term 'nivl-peh' with 'menuvl'
        (despicable person -- spelled with double-vov), with 'neveyle'
        (carcass) and 'nevole' (infamy), rather than with the
        post-Torah forms of the NBL root such as the expression
        'nibul-peh' (both noun and verb) which only starts to appear
        in Talmudic-Midrashic sources.

To Noy's 'menuvl' 'neveyle' and 'nevole' I might add the more removed
but still distasteful V-words 'nivze(-dik)' 'mevuze(-dik)' 'mevaze
zayn' and 'mevayesh zayn'. Truth be told, I erroneously thought that
'nivl-pe' was indeed spelled with tzvey-vovn, not having ever heard it
pronounced otherwise, while a friend of mine reports thinking that
'menuvl' was spelled with a 'veys'.

I propose that we match the 'beys -> veys' shift with a corresponding
'pey -> fey' and pronounce the term 'nivl-fe' [spelled 'fey-ayin'].
Kinda gives it that real yidishe taam.

Sam Weiss
Baltimore

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 21:54:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: yivo3@metgate.metro.org
Subject: Ashkenaz

To David Roskies' outline of the intellectual contours of Ashkenaz,
and his accompanying thought of how hard this makes it to be a true
scholar of Ashkenaz, and to Miriam Isaacs' reminder that women of
Ashkenaz had ideas too, let me add the need to study the body of
Ashkenaz, its social, economic, political history, its ethnography,
its popular culture, its relations with coterritorial folk, and
thereby suggest that mastery of this field by any one person is indeed
a hopeless task, and that we have before us a field broad and serious
enough to engage endless scholars of Ashkenaz for generations to come.
And a yasher koyekh to our colleagues in Ohio for a useful and timely
way of beginning to reconfigure what it is we do.

Michael Steinlauf

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 12:51:06 -0400
From: wisdom@user1.channel1.com
Subject: A lost line from Y.L. Peretz

I recently ran across the following in a partial copy of a (homemade)
hagode of unknown origin:

    At the risk of interrupting the seder, another question is asked:
    "Why must I believe in liberation as a Jew?  Why can't I just
    believe in it as a human being?"  Yitzhok Leybush Peretz, answered
    it almost a hundred years ago in this way:

And, unfortunately, the next page is missing.

Can anyone point me to Peretz' answer? Or even, if it is short enough
and of potential interest to others here, post it to Mendele? I would
be much obliged.

Paul Miller

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 16:16:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: savoyid@aol.com
Subject: Shprikhverter

This past weekend (April 12 - 13), after three performances of Der
Yiddisher Mikado in Seattle, my group was regaled at an evening
reception by the very delightful Jewish community for whom we
performed.  To establish something of an oriental touch our hosts had
piles of fortune cookies set up among the cakes and deserts.  Imagine
our delight, when breaking open the cookies, to find that each one had
a Yiddish proverb!  Since I'm considered something of a Yiddish
_mumkhe_, the singers less fluent in Yiddish kept running over to me
with their little paper "fortunes" to ask for translations.  I
pocketed a few and here's what they say:  _Yeder eysel hot lib tsu
hern vi er hirzhet_ (I _love_ that one!); _Ven a ganef kisht darf men
zikh di tseyn ibertseylen_; _A lebediker khoyle veyst mer vi a toyter
dokter_.  But here's one that even I, the brillliant _meyvn_, couldn't
quite understand: _ A puste fas hilkht a sakh_.  I suspect that there
may have been more than a few Mendelyaners among the huge audiences in
Seattle who attended the reception.  Perhaps they may want to share
with this list some of their own fortune cookie _shprikhverter_.  I
would also be grateful for some first-hand reactions to the shows.

Al Grand

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End of Mendele Vol. 6.287