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 Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. 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