Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ____________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 21.017 April 24, 2012 1) vinkl kheyder (Alan Astro) 2) vinkl kheyder (Arun (Arele) Viswanath) 3) tsezeyt/vinkl kheyder (Hershl Hartman) 4) tsezeyt (Rita Falbel) 5) Proust in Yiddish/translation of idiom (Marc Caplan) 6) Proust in Yiddish (Mike Koplow) 7) Proust in Yiddish (Alan Astro) 8) Proust in Yiddish (Eliezer Niborski) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: April 3 Subject: vinkl kheyder Re: Helene B. Katz's inquiry. One wouldn't necessary put a hyphen between "vinkl" and "kheyder." Why? In what she remarks: " But I read that in Yiddish the determiner is always before the word it qualifies," one should take out the "always" and put in "often." This is because along with composite words on the German and English model (weekend, Wochenende), Yiddish forms composite expressions similar to the German "ein Glas Bier" (a glass [of] beer) but going much further, thanks to Hebrew smichut (e.g., darkhei shalom, ways [of] peace), as in sof-vokh (end [of the] week) or "a teyl shtot" (part of the city, whereas German would have to say Stadtteil). That being said: Without a hyphen there is stress on both words (a vInkl khEyder), but with a hyphen just on kheyder (vinkl-khEyder). The first, a vinkl kheyder (two stresses), would mean the corner of a room. A vinkl-kheyder (one stress, with hyphen) would mean, as she says, a remote room. It also means a small kheyder (Hebrew religious school) in the corner of a poor melamed's dwelling, or maybe, as in the song, in a shul itself. In "Rozhinkes mit mandlen," one has to put stress on "vinkl" as one sings it, but that's because one is singing it. I would argue the meaning that makes sense is "vinkl-kheyder," a room off to the side or in a corner where instruction is given to little children. Re: "in Yiddish the determiner is always before the word it qualifies," not true in another sense: poetically from one song, "a meydele sheyn," or more prosaically in another song: "a yingele a fayns," with the article and the declension repeated. Alan Astro 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: April 3 Subject: vinkl kheyder Dear Helene: It depends on which word you stress. A "VINKL-kheyder" would be a room in a corner, whereas a "vinkl KHEYDER" would be the corner of a room (which is the traditional translation; though perhaps you are correct that in this case it designates a special location in the beys-hamikdesh). In the latter one, there is an understood "fun" between "vinkl" and "kheyder". Another example might be "ekgas" (pronounced ekGAS), which means street corner; if it were pronounced "EKgas", I might take it to mean a street which is at an edge or corner. Arun (Arele) Viswanath 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: April 3 Subject: tsezeyt/vinkl kheyder Re; Mark Froimowitz's query about the meaning of "tsezeyt" in Mark Warshawski's "rozhinkes mit mandlen" (and anywhere else): it means "scattered" as in grain or seed scattering: widely dispersed, but rooted wherever the seeds happen to land. Helene B. Katz's surmise is correct in regard to the same song. The vinkl kheyder in the beys hamikdesh is a corner room in the biblical Temple of Solomon, where sits the widow, Daughter of Zion, rocking her little son, Yidele -- representing the Jewish people. (Many years ago, a popular Yiddish song book misinterpreted the verse as describing an old widow in a corner room of an anonymous synagogue. Several decades later, the author of that glitch apologized to this writer.) Hershl Hartman 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: April 6 Subject: tsezeyt In answer to Mark Froimowitz's question: There is a line in the famous Yiddish song "Rozhinkes mit mandlen" that goes: "Az du vest amol zayn tsezeyt oyf der velt." What is the meaning of the word "tsezeyt?" In the Uriel Weinreich dictionary, Tsezeyt is translated as "widely scattered." The verse containing this word is not found in most anthologies. I found it in a Russian anthology of "Jewish Folk Songs." Rita Falbel 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: April 3 Subject: Proust in Yiddish/translation of idiom I am unaware of any Yiddish translations of Proust either before or after the war, although there were of course many other translations of French literature, particularly best-selling authors such as Guy de Maupassant and Romain Rolland in the era when authors were translated into Yiddish.... Regarding the expression "Same Sh!#, Different Day" (S.O.S., to be idiomatic), I would recommend "di zelbe Yente andersh geshlayert." Hope this helps, Marc Caplan [Moderator's Note: Yelena Shmulenson contributed the same translation of the popular English-language idiom.] 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: April 3 Subject: Proust in Yiddish Jordan Magill asked about Proust in Yiddish. I checked WorldCat, which includes several zillion library catalogues. Proust as author got 17,123 hits. I wanted to limit it by language, and there were no Yiddish hits-in fact, there were none in any of the languages that WorldCat lists under "other." There's also nothing at the National Yiddish Book Center's Steven Spielberg collection. To me, this is very surprising. Mike Koplow 7)---------------------------------------------------- Subject: Proust in Yiddish Date: April 3 To answer, somewhat indirectly, Jordan Magill's query about Proust's having been translated into Yiddish: not that I'm aware of, but Louis-Ferdinand Cline, author of "Journey to the End of the Night" and infamous antisemite, claimed in 1949 that Proust's work WAS in Yiddish: "Proust n'crit pas en franais, mais en franco-yiddish tarabiscot absolument hors de toute tradition franaise" ["Proust does not write in French, but in overelaborate Franco-Yiddish absolutely outside of any French tradition."] Alan Astro 8)---------------------------------------------------- Subject: Proust in Yiddish Date: April 3 [If your software cannot handle the Yiddish characters that follow, try the Mendele website: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/wp/category/volume-21-2011-2012/volume-21-017/ ] ?????? ????????????, ???? ??? ???????? ??? ?' 21.016 ?? ?? ??? ????? ???????? ????????????? ???? ??????? ??????? 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