[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 24.005

[Victor Bers]

Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
____________________________________________________

Contents of Vol. 24.005
January 5, 2015

1) Shamus (Alexis Manaster Ramer)
2) "fraye mine" (Paul (Hershl) Glasser)
3) "Collar stay" etc. (Maurice Wolfthal)
4) Sesame seed / velkhes / yedes (Yonason Felendler)
5) Rendlekh (Yaacov David Shulman)


1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 29
Subject: Shamus

It has long been noted that the etymologies of words that are or are
suspected of being of Yiddish--or any Jewish--origin are often quite
imaginative, and the more imaginative the more people seem to like
them. I would tend to think therefore that Leyzer Gillig [24.004] is
likely to be right that the etymology of English shamus as being from
(Hebrew-)Yiddish shames is spurious, simply because as he says people
like to make up such Jewish etymologies.

But what I would like to throw out there is the suggestion that
perhaps there exist some principles, some methods, something maybe
approaching a science, which can be consulted on such matters to help
us decide. I know this sounds crazy, almost as crazy as if I suggested
that maybe there is a science that tells us what 2+2 is or another
that tells us whether the earth is flat or round. In other words, what
I'd like to suggest is that almost always such discussions involve not
just the desire to find a Jewish origin for everything (which is bad
enough) but also an absolute rejection of the idea that there exists
any such science combined with an absolute insistence that whatever
pops into someone's head must be the correct etymology.

Mr. Gillig is as I said right about the first factor, but there is
also the second to consider. And of course they work very well
together. So what can be done? Here is a very simple example of the
principles that one would invoke if one were to contemplate doing
etymology scientifically: one would recall that languages do not
evolve entirely at random, so that if someone thinks that a Yiddish
short "a" vowel (the vowel of shames) is borrowed into English as the
so-called "long a" (similar in sound to Yiddish "ey"), then they would
be very politely asked to explain why in that case mazl tov is
pronounced in English with the "ah" vowel and not the "long a" (mozzle
not mayzel) and similarly why khale is pronounced holla and not hayle,
and so on for every word i can think of--whereas the "long a" sound is
used precisely where Yiddish has "ey", as in maven from meyvn. And if
they could not answer satisfactorily, they would be very politely told
that their etymology is also not entirely satisfactory.

This approach in turn reflects some two hundred years of work by
hundreds maybe thousands of scholars on the history (including
etymology) of at least hundreds, perhaps thousands, of languages--and
basically rests on the simple idea that science of any kind is a
WHOLESALE not a RETAIL business. even if we are interested in the
origin of one particular word (though it is not clear to me why we
should), the only way we can be sure or close to sure that we have
found the answer is in the context of an overall history of words,
plural. There are patterns to the way hebrew words are pronounced in
yiddish for example, and there are patterns to the way that yiddish
(and hebrew) words are pronounced in english. If there were no
patterns or if we did not know them, we would know NOTHING.

There are probably numerous other reasons why a yiddish origin for
this word is less likely and an irish one more likely, such as (as
again Mr. Gilling correctly points out) that at the time the word
first appears in English there were a lot more Irish-American
policemen than say Irish-American mohels. And indeed such observations
are also one of the patterns that etymologists would take into
account. This is why we would expect Yiddish influence in those
segments of the vocabulary that involve businesses and professions
where Jews were prominent, such as comedy, the media generally,
circumcision, delicatessen--but not necessarily police work. of course
this is not an entirely exact science, but we have at least two
reasons for preferring an irish origin over a yiddish one, and if this
is wrong after all, that can ONLY be shown precisely by doing THIS
kind of study, NOT by merely saying: Hey, shamus looks like shames, so
it IS shames!

Note here, dear friends, that shamus does not SOUND like shames, it
merely LOOKS like it--and here is another pattern. Yiddish words are
normally borrowed into English, and many other languages, based on the
sound NOT on the basic of spelling. And this fact, already itself a
pattern, is part of some BIGGER patterns, including the fact that
Yiddish is not natively written in the same alphabet as English, the
further fact that the standard transliteration of Yiddish or anything
like it has not historically been widely known to English-speaking
people, the fact that Yiddish was not a language taught to English
speakers in schools and universities, that Yiddish words as far as we
can tell have always been borrowed from Yiddish speakers (unlike say
Chinese words or French or Latin), and so on--so that for all these
reasons whereas it is conceivable for a French or even a Chinese word
to be completely mispronounced based on spelling, this would be very
unusual for a Yiddish word.

Alexis Manaster Ramer


2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 29
Subject: "fraye mine"

"Fraye mine" means 'happy face'; "fray" is a little-known synonym for
"freylekh." For further information, see Mordkhe Shekhter, "Laytish
mame-loshn" (1986), pp. 180-181, with quotes from Mendele, Peretz,
Sholem Aleichem, Goldfaden and other 19-century writers, as well as
mainly Polish-Yiddish writers from the 20th century: Yosef Okrutni,
Shimen Horontshik, Itshe-Meyer Vaysenberg, Y.-Y. Singer, Y.-Y. Trunk,
et al.

Paul (Hershl) Glasser


3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 30
Subject: "Collar stay" etc.

Oysgetrakhte verter far Y. Felendler (vol 24.004):

a. collar-stay: kragnshtitsl, kragnbayndl, kragnripl (alternatively
kolnershtitsl, kolnerbayndl, kolnerripl)
b. shoe-taps: shukhkleplekh
c. nebulizer: neplmakher
d. drill bit: boyershpits

Maurice Wolfthal


4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 31
Subject: Sesame seed / velkhes / yedess

A. How would one say sesame seed in Yiddish? I've heard of two words
so far-kunzhut and sezam-kerndl, does anyone have any others? and for
the word kunzhut, for anyone that's familiar with it, how would it be
pronounced-ku'nzhut or kunzhu't? and what would be it's plural form
(if there is)?

B. Are there perhaps different dialects for the words velches/yedes in
the neutral form? I've seen once in a book that the author wrote
"yeder vort" as opposed to "yedes vort", although it could be a
mistake, but is there such a dialect, to say it like masculine? Is
there perhaps a dialect that says it with the feminine form?

Y. Felendler


5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: January 3
Subject: Rendlekh

Yiddish Hasidic stories of the nineteenth centuries often refer to
rendlekh. Does anyone know what kind of currency that is or was? Thank
you!

Yaacov David Shulman
Translator; Editor; Ghostwriter
Specializing in Torah and literary texts
shulman-writer.com

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 24.005

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