מענדעלע

to Bob Poe:

Kabak is a pumpkin in Ukranian and some Southern Russian dialects (cf. _kabachok_[squash] in Russian). "A mushl kabak" was a common expression at least in western Ukraine and Besarabia. Your explanation is correct, it refers to something irrelevant or unimportant.

Iosif Vaisman

(1) Just to clarify matters (this comment is intended for MeysheYankl Sweet, in MENDELE 3.256), I was merely passing along Philologos's comments concerning various Yiddish pronunciations -- the views expressed were not my own, but rather were intended to elicit the sort of discussion that our pseudonymous columnist was asking for. And, at least regarding "manseh," it seems to have done so. Knowing the ways of the grapevine, he will doubtless learn about whatever answers MENDELnikes provide to his queries. I personally have heard the sort of nasalized pronunciation of "mayse" that Arn Abramson describes (same issue), but cannot attest to the other pronunciations that Philologos found in Henry Roth's new novel (which I have not yet read): "Takken" (for "take[h]") and "ikh khom" (for "ikh hob") -- or the etymology of "shmulyares" (="dollars").

(2) I believe the original question was, What is the term for "gay" in Yiddish? In recent years I have heard the term "freylekh" (e.g. "freylekhe yidn") which I believe is a new coinage, modeled on the corresponding English term. That does not necessarily mean that the term has become universally (or even widely) accepted, merely that it has entered into Yiddish usage. As for the word "feygele," my sister has a male acquaintance who goes by the name Feygele ben Miriam. (Feygl is of course a very common women's name among Yiddish-speakers.)

Zachary Baker

Zeyt mir moykhl! Several kind Mendele readers have pointed out my error in citing I.L. Peretz as the author of "White Challah," when it was in fact Lamed Shapiro. The management regrets the error.

tsipe khana shavelson

When I was a kid, the term used for someone who was all turned upside and around and backwards and sideways was "Moishe Kepoye" (pronounced "keh-POY-eh"). I thought it was a Yiddish expression for being in a state of total confsion but then someone said that the term was named after a Yiddish actor who used that name. Perhaps it was his real name or perhaps it was his stage name. Furthermore, the stage Moishe Kepoye specialized in doing strange things, but I never found out what they were.

Is there anyone out there who can fill me in on precisely what a "Moishe Kopoye" is or was (or might be or even might have been?

Dan Leeson

There was a single joke that was an interesting play on words between English and Yiddish and I don't know many that had that characteristic. It goes as follows:

Were you aware of what Mrs. Horowitz's name was in the old country?

No. What was it?

Mrs. Nafkowitz!

The play is, of course, on the fact that a "nafka" and a "whore" are the same words in Yiddish and English. Are there many such play-on-words jokes that cross from one language to another? I cannot think of any and I don't believe I ever heard another.

Dan Leeson

Meyshe-Yankl Sweet writes:

"And what of the truly invisible Lesbian in Yiddish?...I've heard "Lesbiankes", but that's probably a fairly recent coinage."

My own contribution, picked up by way of, as I recall, my rebbe Yehoshua Rothenberg, z"l, is "dos meydl iz nisht keyn meydl" (Radom and Varshe, 1920's and 30's) which of course takes us right to the heart of invisibility.

Anyone else?

There is, of course, a world of body-centered, zaftikn, lebedikn Yiddish, of mark, gas, ganovim, teater (as Meyshe-Yankl points out too) fast vanishing beyond our tattered dictionaries. This larger question also requires our attention -- and now. In twenty years we'll have nothing left but the dictionaries.

Michael Steinlauf