Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 07.152 February 22, 1998 1) a frage vegn Lemberg (Marvin Engel) 2) "Lebn Zol di Unyen" (Pessl Beckler-Semel-Stern) 3) galer (Feygl Infeld Glezer) 4) Swiss Yiddish (A Manaster Ramer) 5) Mayse (A Manaster Ramer) 6) mayses/maynses/ma(:)nses (Hugh Denman) 7) mayses/maynses (Norma Brewer) 8) Mayse or maynse? (Louis Fridhandler) [Moderator's note] 9) roms drukerai (Andrew Cassel) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 11:45:21 -0500 From: marvin engel Subject: a frage vegn Lemberg Miriam Isaacs in 07.150:4 asks about the expression: Na'n (9) tug inter Lemberik. I never heard that one before, but I grew up with an expression that is its fraternal twin: gey dray (3) mayl inter'n oyvn. (Go three miles under the oven.) It was a put down that my mother used when I would be particularly persistent in pestering her for something to do or somewhere to go. As I recall, she would say this when my pleas for attention were egregiously ill-timed, as when she was preparing dinner. In those days in the Bronx our gas range stood on four porcelained metal legs and one could actually crawl under it. But I'm quite sure that fact has no bearing on the origin of the expression. Marvin Engel 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 13:13:07 -0800 From: pessl@juno.com (pessl beckler-semel-stern) Subject: "Lebn Zol di Unyen" Bay undz hot men gezogt, "Ikh zol azoy nit visn fun keyn tsories/shlekhts vi ikh veys nit vos er vil/ dos iz., meaning, literally, I shouldn't know from any troubles/evil, like I don't know what that is. In other words it reflected one's ignorance of whatever was being discussed. Iker shakhakhti: I remember a pro-Garment Workers' Union song that was sung to the melody of "Lebn Zol Kolumbus." This one was called "Lebn Zol di Unyen." Does it sound familiar to any Mendelyaner; or could anyone tell me where I might find it? The first few lines are "Lebn zol di unyen, di arbeter tsuzamen, lebn zol di unyen, zi farbesert undzer lage. Mir shayder, koter, preser un apreyter, Mir fayfn af zey ale, Di boses, di fareyter. Pessl Beckler-Semel-Stern 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 16:51:54 EST From: yiddish1@juno.com (Feigl I Glaser) Subject: galer Nekhtn, arum eyns azeyger baytog, iz mayn khaverte gekumen mikh nemen in a restoran, vu mir hobn gezolt fayern a simkhe. Ober vunder iber vunder, vi farkhidesht bin ikh gevorn vos zi hot gor mitgebrakht a gantsn fartikn moltsayt az mir zoln beyde hakn oyf beyde bakn glaykh do, bay mir in der heym. Anu prubirt trefn voser heymish gemaktn maykl ikh hob gefunen tsvishn ale andere geshmake maykholim! Yo, take a frishn, geshmakn, tam-geneydimdikn GALER. Tsi veyst ir vos a GALER iz un vi azoy men makht im? M'koyft in a yatke kelbene fislekh (Rusn un Vaysrusn rufn dos fisnoye). Men reynikt gut op di fislekh, m'kokht zey lange, lange shoen (arum 5-6 sho) -- in a top fun vaser mit zalts un tseshnitene tsibele. Ven di fislekh zaynen gut tsekokht, nemt men zey aroys fun top, m' nemt arop dos fleysh fun di beyner un nokh dem vi m'tseklapt es gut, araynklapndik derin a sakh knobl, tut men dos tsurik arayn in top arayn un me kokht es vider biz es vert vartik. Fun vanen veyst men az es iz fartik? Me veyst shoyn! (Mit di beyner ken men zikh oykh pasmakeven). Nokh dem vi di gekokhte, tsehakte, farknoblte fislekh, vos m'gist arayn in a glezerner fan, vern farglivert, iz dos a GALER un m'est es mit broyt. A sakh mentshn tuen aroyf oyf dem khreyn, ober ikh halt as me makht azoy arum a tel funem tam fun dem geshmakn galer. Andere rufn dos maykhl PITSHA. . Pasmakevet zikh Mendelyaner/kes oder mendeleyaner/kes mit dem "nayem" heymishn maykhl! Zayt gezunt! Khapt zikh nish tsufil tsu tsu mayn GALER! Mit vareme grusn, Feygl Infeld Glezer 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 19:02:22 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Swiss Yiddish Thanks to Vivian Aldridge for his generous statement. Swiss Yiddish, and non-Eastern Yiddish generally, is indeed a topic worth study, and full of subtopics which have not been adequately studied to date, so that it is very much a living, open field. Although I keep criticizing incorrect and uninformed claims in Yiddish linguistics made by all too many Mendele subscribers on a regular basis, I have said before and I would like to say again that the amount that we know with something approaching certainty in this area (and in most other areas of Yiddish linguistics) is TINY compared to what we do not know--or compared to the situation in the linguistics of other languages. Yiddish has really been very poorly served by linguistics to date. This of course makes it all the more startling when the few things we do know are routinely contradicted by people who are proud of not knowing anything about diphthongs etc. But let me conclude on a positive note-- and a challenge: if friend Aldridge or anyone else does want to find out how Yiddish linguistics actually is done, please get in touch with me. Although I have been seriously ill and do little at the moment, I would be happy to show and discuss some of my own work or that of other Yiddish linguists. A Manaster Ramer 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 19:31:27 -0500 (EST) From: manaster@umich.edu Subject: Mayse Dan Gilman asks: "Why do non-literate speakers think that "mayse" is pronounced "maynse?" I hope friend Friedlander and others will not mind if as a linguist working on Yiddish I answer the question. The question is not quite rightly posed. Many Yiddish dialects do have a nasal sound of some kind in this word and indeed in a whole family of words like it (see below). This is probably more commonly a nasalization of the vowel or diphtong than a separate nasal consonant, I think, but in any case there is no doubt that it is a nasal sound. But some dialects lack the nasal sound, and Standard Yiddish happens to be based on this kind of dialect. Incidntally, there is nothing mysterious or strage about this difference. All dialects and related languages exhibit complex but regular correspondences between their sounds. I think we just recently had some discussion of dialects which regularly have word-initial i- where most Yiddish dialects have yi-, for example. It is the existence of such patterns of correspondnce which is the main reason we can figuer out the prehistory of a language. The reconstruction of the earlier stages of the language is based on comparing teh different dialects and reasoning as follows: If one dialect has id 'Jew' as well as iberlebn 'to experience' both with i-, but another has yid vs. iberlebn, we automatically tend to hypothesize that the latter presevers the original state of affairs, and the the former underwent a change of yi- to i-. If we then find that related words in languages related to Yiddish, e.g., German or Dutch, have the same distinction (German Jude vs. u"berleben), then our hypothesis becomes a certainty. (I am overismplifying slightly, and I have to cuation that this is NOT the ONLY kind of reasonng we use, but basically this is the kind of excample we would start a class in linguistic reconstruction with.) The same applies to the question of the nasal in mayse. There is no question that the nasal pronunciation is the older. Finally, we should note that most of the words which have a nasal /ay~/, /aa~/ or /ayn/, /aan/ in some dialects but /ay/ in others are of Hebrew origin and involve a sequence of /a/ vowel followed by an ayin or sometimes alef or he, and no Hebrew nasal of any kind. These words include dayge, maykhl, and a few others. I have also proposed (in work that remains to be published, inasmuch as I have been too ill to finish it) that words such as shayle and mayrev, which don't have a nasal in any modern dialect, had one originally. As for the spelling, these words, like all Yiddish words of recognizably Hebrew origin, are spelled as in Hebrew and not in accordance with the pronunciation anyway. The only non-Hebrew-origin word which is widely attested with this correspondence is mayster, but its history is one of those many still-open problems of Yiddish linguistics as far as I know. I hope this helps. A Manaster Ramer 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 11:32:00 +0100 From: Hugh Denman Subject: mayses/maynses/ma(:)nses With reference to Dan Gilman's enquiry [07.151:3], ma(:)ses is not alone. Take for example 'bansher', 'shmontses', 'yandes', 'daynge' with their varying degrees of geographical extension as well as the ubiquitous 'Yankev'. But haven't we been over this ground before? In any case, an exhaustive answer is probably not currently possible. Suffice it to reflect how 'ma'asah' is pronounced by oriental Jews and then ask oneself why 'evil eye' in Judaeo-Italian should be 'ngain-oreng'. Hugh Denman 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Feb 98 00:12:19 GMT From: Norma Brewer Subject: mayses/maynses In Vol: 07.151, Dan Gilman asks about mayses v maynses. I am a speaker of the Litvak dialect of Yiddish which has no 'n' in ' mayses', but my friend Chaim Pevner, whoo speaks a Voliner dialect of Yiddish, says 'maynse'. He quoted other words which had this variation. On his return to London, I will ask him to write to Mendele on this topic, if it hasn't been resolved in the meantime. Un alle bobemayses zainen nisht bobemayses! zait gezint Noma Brewer 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:04:34 EST From: Lfridhan@aol.com Subject: Mayse or maynse? Apropos of Dan Gilman's (7.151, 3) question: Why do non-literate speakers think that "mayse" is pronounced "maynse"? Naturally, being Jewish, I respond with a question: Why do perfectly literate speakers think that "Lech Walesa" is pronounced "Lech Walensa"? I heard only "maynse" in childhood, never "mayse". (Polish influence?) My parents were literate. I and my family come from Kishinev, Rumania at the time, Moldova now, but basically it is in the Ukraine, once part of Poland. There is also a history of Ottoman Empire influence. Louis Fridhandler [Moderator's note: The mayse/manse topic has been discussed in Mendele several years ago, c.f. vol3.112, vol3.266, vol3.308, vol3.319. -i.v.] 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:39:02 -0500 From: "A.W.Cassel" Subject: roms drukerai ikh hob amol gezen a geto-lid, vos heyst (az ikh dermon zikh) "di bleyene platn fun rom's drukerai." 's'hot gedakht mir zeyer a rirendiker lid, un ikh volt shtark gevolt lernen di verter. ken emetser mir oyshelfn? Andrew Cassel ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 07.152 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html