[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 24.006

[Victor Bers]

Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
____________________________________________________

Contents of Vol. 24.006
January 14, 2015

1) Request for full text (Gloria Donen Sosin)
2) Rendlekh (Leonard Fox)
3) Rendlekh (Maurice Wolfthal)
4) Shamus (Robert Rose)
5) Tshavuk (Gerald Marcus)


1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: January 5
Subject: Request for full text

In mitn drinen iz mir in kop arayngefaln verter fun a lid oder a mayse:

"In Brooklyn in a shtibl, on vent un on a dakh,
hot zikh gelebt an oreman mit kinderlach asakh"

Iz dos fun Mani Leyb? Un vos iz geshen  mit dem man un zayne kinder?

Kent ir mir entfern?

A sheynem dank,
Gloria Donen Sosin
White Plains, NY


2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: January 5
Subject: Rendlekh

In response to Yaacov David Shulman's query about "rendlekh" in Mendele
24.005, a "rendl" was not a specific currency or unit of currency, but was
the word used to refer to any gold coin. In his History of the Yiddish
Language, Max Weinreich quotes the expression, "a rendl a vort," which is
translated (Noble and Fishman) as "a ducat a word." In a Yiddish folksong,
a young man says of his girlfriend that she is "sheyn vi a rendl gold."

Leonard Fox


3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: January 6
Subject: Rendlekh

Yaacov David Shulman [24.005] asks about rendlekh, the plural for rendl.
There was actually no such currency, and it was used to refer to coins
generically, usually silver or gold.  The word rendl is clearly a
diminuitive, possibly of a MHG form of Rand, one of whose meanings was the
rim of a shield, somewhat analogous to the old French coin  écu and the old
Spanish and Portugueses coins escudo, both meaning "shield."

Maurice Wolfthal


4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: January 6
Subject: Shamus

I am a lurker, but the discussion of shamus [24.003-5] has brought me out
of the shadows.

I think finding an exact etymology rubric for foreigns words borrowed into
English is impossible, and you are bound to find yourself in the realm of
what John Ciardi called spook etymology.  I offer two examples.

I named my dog Mazel, as in mazel tov.  The dog groomer, who hails from
Mexico, knows from maize (corn), and knows only one Jewish person (me),
pronounces her name to front rhyme with maize.  The young checker at the
Petsmart, who hails from LA and loves puzzles, pronounces her name to front
rhyme with maze.  My Israeli friends pronounce her name with an accent on
the second syllable, with an "a" vowel instead of an "e".  Lucky for her,
she answers to all variations of her name, so long as you have a dog
biscuit in your hand, and doesn’t care a bit about etymology.

Another example is the almost ubiquitous "bubbe meise," which everyone in
my circle will tell you means an old wive’s tale.  But, Michael Wex has a
more convincing etymology tracing back to the Bove book, now available on
Amazon.

I will go back to the shadows now.

Robert Rose


5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: January 6
Subject: Tshavuk

In his memoir, Joseph Rolnik refers to an elderly man as "Ruven der
tshavuk." The context is that he is sitting with a group of Jews in a beys
medresh. I am hoping someone out there knows what "tshavuk" means.

Thanks very much.
Gerald Marcus

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 24.006

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