It seems to me as though most words in Yiddish with stress on the ultimate syllable come from French. The exceptions, it seems to me, are those words with prefixes such as ge- and those Germanic-derived words such as dertsu, faran, aroys, etc.
Examples: kapitan, internat, koridor, palats, balants, telefon, parad, tirazh, aktivitet, zhurnal, papir, kolir
I recently proposed this theory to someone who tried to disprove my hypothesis. I asked her to name a single word with ultimate stress that doesn't derive from French. The only possible refutation she managed to come up with was "tararam." I searched for it in French dictionaries in vain. I searched it on Google and only managed to come up with a Russian movie called Tram-tararam Ili Bukhty-barakhty, an Arabic song, and an Israeli dance troupe.
I'll assume this to be a Slavic word and therefore a refutation of (or perhaps simply an exception to) my proposed rule...
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Here are a few that came to mind. :
סוף־װאָך
רלב“ג
עליה (move to Israel)
קיבוץ (communal farm in Israel)
באַלאַגאַן
מקום
איך פֿאַרליר
אַיאָ
באַנאַן (?)
מקור
I tried thinking of some from a variety of sources. Some come from categories (verbs ending in -ir, ancient commentators with acronymic names, terms borrowed from Israeli Hebrew, perhaps "mem" nominals from hollow Hebrew roots?) from which you could likely draw more examples. Of course, there are many other words (some you mentioned) that most likely weren't borrowed directly from French, or that are only also in French from a common source, but if it seemed likely that they "passed through" I tried to leave them out.
sof-vokh: is a compound word composed of two monosyllabic words. i don't buy it
ralbag: i would say that in yiddish, the stress is penultimate, no?
aliyah: is that actually a word in yiddish? (don't have a dictionary on hand) i feel like that's a recent addition from modern hebrew that didn't go through the transformation of yiddish morphology
kibuts: ditto
balagan: good question
mkoym: im not sure about the pronunciation, i'll check it up
farlir: i should widen the prefixes rule to "far-," "ba-," and others. actually, nix any words with prefixes like that.
ayo: doesn't apply either, interjections don't count. actually, it only applies to nouns, now that i think about it.
banan: might that be from french?
moker: that's penultimate, no?
good point - "-ir" verbs are exceptions.
so let's say this: nouns in yiddish without germanic prefixes usually came into the language through french. better?
sof-vokh: is a compound word composed of two monosyllabic
words. i don't buy it
-hey, no fair to throw out compound words--you didn't specify noncompoundness. Compound words are just as much words as "you" and "me".
ralbag: i would say that in yiddish, the stress is penultimate, no?
-I don't think so. Or rambam, ramban... can you check with someone?
aliyah: is that actually a word in yiddish? (don't have a dictionary on hand) i feel like that's a recent addition from modern hebrew that didn't go through the transformation of yiddish morphology
-sure it's a word in yiddish! i'm pretty sure it's in weinreich, even. the "french" borrowings are also relatively recent, and came in after yiddish had "finished" (not!) its phonological development.
kibuts: ditto
-ditto
balagan: good question
mkoym: im not sure about the pronunciation, i'll check it up
-yeah, the other one too. if you're right i've been pronouncing these words wrong for a while.
farlir: i should widen the prefixes rule to "far-," "ba-," and others. actually, nix any words with prefixes like that.
ayo: doesn't apply either, interjections don't count. actually, it only applies to nouns, now that i think about it.
banan: might that be from french?
-ver veyst... but it's pretty international and not originally from french, so you'd have to prove it did.
moker: that's penultimate, no?
-maybe; uh-oh, been pronouncing it wrong then
PS What kind of bizarre compound word is sof-vokh anyway? Usually compounds in Yiddish are head-final and have stress on the first element. Where did this word originate? if it's the yidishists i'm going to be pretty mad. the word should be 'vokh-sof (cf. Ger. Wochenende, Eng. weekend), if anything...
it's weird also because when did the jews get the idea of a weekend? there used to be, i presume, just shabbos and that's it. I'd be really happy if you could tell me where this farzeenish came from.
Gitl said that mkom and mkor are both penultimate, and that all mforshim's names have penultimate stress.
about french and hebrew borrowings, i suppose it would make sense that recent borrowings from either languages would have ultimate stress, considering that both languages prefer most words to be as such.
is balagan l"k?
i'll look into banan and tararam.
how late would you estimate french vocabulary entered yiddish? i was under the impression that it was one of the earlier contributors of vocabulary...
the sof-vokh construction could be slavic in nature. how do you say weekend in russian, or polish, or ukrainian?
"sof-vokh" i would guess comes from Russian "komets-nedalya", i.e. "end-week."
Great, that works out perfectly! This only lends further support that Yiddish is a Slavic language (Paul Wexler). Ha. I knew it.
lol :D. Wexler's "thesis" is interesting, but I can not even imagine how it could be true.
btw i couldnt help noticing the title of your URL "dakht zikh mir"- isnt it always "mir dakht zikh?" Also, is the pattern (dative) dakht zikh, i.e. we think is "undz dakht zikh?" thanks for the help,
Wexler's theory is unlikely, but it would certainly account for the somewhat Slavic nature of Yiddish grammar, which vexes native German speakers time and time again.
I believe (you can double-check me with other sources) that the two are identical in authenticity. However, there is a semantic difference: "mir dakht zikh" stresses the "mir," whereas the form I used in my URL stresses "dakht."
You are correct that the pronoun takes the dative form, resulting in "mir," "im," "ir," "zey," and, as you said, "undz." This is because the verb "dakhtn zikh" means "to seem, to appear," and therefore "dakht zikh mir" would mean "It seems to me." The implied "to" absent in the Yiddish causes the pronoun to take the dative.
Hope that helped.
If you don't mind my asking, who are you?
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