Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 14.014
October 11 , 2004

1) Esther Kreytman (Faith Jones)
2) shier nisht (Lee Goldberg)
3) shier nisht (Martin Jacobs)
4) borschch and rosl (Zulema Seligsohn)
5) botshvines (Abraham Melezin)
6) Karl May in Yiddish (Allen Maberry)
7) prost un grob (Noyekh Miller)

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1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 6, 2004
From: faithjones@hotmail.com
Subject: Esther Kreitman

The response to my bibliography of Esther Kreitman in the Mendele Review has
been so surprising that I want to make sure the list knows about a rare
opportunity to study Kreitman in some depth. Anita Norich will be leading a
class on Esther Kreitman at KlezKamp this year. Full details are at:
www.klezkamp.org, or email info@livingtraditions.org to be put on the
mailing list.

Also, Alicia Ramos Gonzales has recently launched an Esther Kreitman
information page at http://www.ugr.es/~aramos/kreytman/index.html, which
makes it possible for the casual reader to google Kreitman.

Best,

Faith Jones

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 8, 2004
From: leybl_goldberg@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: shier nisht

A correction to Ruben Frankenstein's transcription [Mendele 14.012] of the
Yiddish Adir Hu poem: the word he transcribes as "boye" should be "boy"
(beyz-vov-yud-alef).  The silent alef at the end of a word ending in a vowel
was a pretty common spelling, certainly for older Yiddish, and even into the
20th century.

Lee Goldberg

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 7, 2004
From: marjacobs1@juno.com
Subject: Re: shier nisht

[Regarding Martin Green's post in Mendele 14.013;]

The simple answer is that it is spelled with an ayin because it is
pronounced with an ayin, in two syllables: shi-er (although the
Niborski-Vaisbrot dictionary also accepts a one-syllable pronunciation). I
suspect however that what Martin Green asks why is it pronounced with an
ayin, what is there in its etymology that would explain the "e" sound, not
found in bir and tsir (I exclude kolir, since that is not a Germanic word).
A challenge to our Germanic etymologists!  Could it be that, although of
Germanic origin, the word has been influenced by the loshn-koydesh "shiur",
that speakers using a Germanic word thought they were using a Hebrew word
and modified the pronunciation accordingly (just as in English many people
think "forte", as in "Yiddish is his forte", is, because of the musical term
spelled the same way, an Italian word and have so modified the
pronunciation, whereas it is originally a French word pronounced identically
with "fort")?

Martin Jacobs
Brooklyn, New York

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 6, 2004
From: zrls@rcn.com
Subject: borschch and rosl

Rick Turkel says [Mendele 14.013] he has never heard anyone say borschch in
Yiddish.  Well, borscht is an Americanized pronunciation and has now become
an American English word.  But Yiddish speakers elsewhere say borschch, and
even in this country, my aunts and uncles who came from Russia early in the
twentieth century always said borschch as did my father-in-law who, having
come from a shtetl on the Polish/Russian border, did not really speak proper
Polish or Russian.   I grew up in Argentina and never heard borscht until I
came to the United States.  Not to say that native Argentinians didn't botch
the pronunciation.

This reminds me of recent discussions on other boards about what happens
to Americanized Italian and Americanized Polish, among others, and how
American-born descendants, hearing the correct pronunciations, consider
them wrong because what they are accustomed to are Americanized words.

Jack Berger's take [Mendele 14.013] on the origins of rosl is probably on
target.  Ros was used in Yiddish by Russian and Polish speakers for "dew."
And rosl (can't do the slash through the "l" on my keyboard), pronounced
"rosow" or something close to it in Polish, has exactly the same meaning as
the Yiddish "rosl," originally brine, a salty liquid, and by derivation, the
liquid in a pot roast.  They are the same word with the same meaning.  But
there is no such word in Russian, so far as I know.

Zulema Seligsohn

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 7, 2004
From: Amelezin@aol.com
Subject: Re: botshvines

Botshvines essentially is adulterated Russian "botva" and "botvina" or
Polish "boc'wina" (bots'vina) or we may say that it is the yiddishized
Russian or Polish word that means leaves from red beets.  In Eastern Europe
usually they were sold in small bunches separately from the root beet and
were much cheaper. Cooked botwina would produce soup of red color of lesser
intensity than a cooked beet, but in the economic conditions prevailing in
those areas it was an affordable substitute for the real beet. "Rosl"
meant any sour soup, e.g., cooked with pickled cucumbers.  The word
originated from the Russian "rassol" meaning salty-sourish brine.  Russians
called a sour soup "rassol'nik," but my grandmother and mother would say
"Haynt veln mir hobn rosl". And, pace Jack Berger, I really prefer dew on
grass and bush leaves in the early crisp summer morning than any kind of
sour rassol in my mouth at any time of the day. Mit a hartsikn grus,

Abraham Melezin

6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 7, 2004
From: maberry@myuw.net
Subject: Re: Karl May in Yiddish

Heike Rudloff wrote [Mendele 14.011] asking about Karl May in Yiddish.

I'm afraid I haven't been able to find very much. As far as I can tell from
checking print and online union catalogs and databases, the only work that I
have found is a citation for: May, Karol. Der geheymer shlos. Yudish:
Shaman. Varshe "Drukarnia Rekord", 1926 (127 p. 20 cm.). This is from the
YIVO catalog but there are records for this same work in OCLC and RLIN, and
from those records, it appears that the only copies in the United States are
at YIVO (microfilm?), Harvard (the original and a microfilm), Cleveland
Public Library (maybe New York Public Library too). The name is a bit off,
but Polish translations of May's works list the author as Karol May.
However, I cannot find any work by Karl May that has this or a similar
title. It might be a part of some work of May's that was simply given this
title by the translator or publisher.

There is a record for a work of May's
translated into French: May, Karl Friedrich, 1842-1912. Une maison
mysterieuse a Stamboul : souvenir ! de voyage, par Karl May. Traduit de
l'allemande par J. de Rochay, illustre de 15 gravures d'apres Meyer,
Gervais, Lix et Gerardin. Tours : A. Mame, 1886 (376 p. 19 cm.). There
doesn't seem to be any exact German version of this title in May's works
that I can find, but it is somewhat similar to the title of the Yiddish
work. Since the work has already been microfilmed by Harvard it should be
possible to get a copy of the film.

Allen Maberry

7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: October 11, 2004
From: nmiller@trincoll.edu
Suject: Re: prost un grob

One way to distingish between prost and grob is to examine their antonyms,
respectively gebildet and eydl.  We see thus at a glance that prost is a
matter of class distinctions, while grob is a matter of character.

Prost has meanings that range from 'run-of-the-mill, ordinary' (a proster
yid) to 'uneducated, unrefined' (a proster mentsh).  But in neither case
is moral judgement involved.  When someone behaves in a manner unsuited to
her class, i.e. seems to flaunt his prostkeyt (say Donald Trump or George W.
Bush or every other inhabitant of Brookline, MA) we speak of a prostak
or--where I come from--a prostnyak.

Grobkeyt, on the other hand, is a personal characteristic and is subject to
moral judgement.  Here too there are varieties, from mere coarseness to
flamboyant obscenity.  It is of course possible to be both a prostnyak and a
grobyan.

A more thorough treatment would also try to work in 'gemeyn', which occupies
a kind of middle position, but I've done enough damage to linguistic
analysis and leave the task to others.

Noyekh Miller

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End of Mendele Vol. 14.014

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