shabash

[Alexis Manaster Ramer]

Does anybody know such a word in Yiddish, and if so, from where?

[Jordan Kutzik]

A dialectical Litvak pronunciation of Shabbos/Shabbat? Some Litvak dialects of Yiddish pronounced all Sh as s's (so you get Sabes) while others pronounced all s's as sh's so you would get shabesh. 

On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Alexis Manaster Ramer <manast...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Does anybody know such a word in Yiddish, and if so, from where?

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[Sabar, Yona]

You probaly refer to shabash < Turkish / Persian (< shad bash "Well Done,
Bravo!") meaning money gifts given to the bride and groom and the
musicians on the wedding nights.

On 11/30/13 10:06 AM, "Alexis Manaster Ramer" <manast...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>Does anybody know such a word in Yiddish, and if so, from where?
>

[Andrey Rozenberg]

In the article "וועגן אַ 'שבת' דוואָס איז איינגעהילט אין אַ סוד" by Chaim Liberman ((יידישע שפראך 20 (1960, p. 50), the author investigates the usage of the word "שבת" (or "שאַבעס") in the context of money given to klezmorim. According to some sources and based on testimonies, there was in the past a wedding custom: klezmorim exclaimed "shabes, shabes!" and the bride began to perform her dance and they in turn were given the tantsgelt (טאַנצגעלט). The author discusses this custom and different etymological hypotheses for shabes in this particular meaning, and under the 4th point he writes, that in two literary sources שאַבאַש was given the basic form for the term. Whatever its origin, the word (shabes or shabash) came to mean the טאַנצגעלט itself.
I haven't found שאַבאַש in Weinreich's "Modern ... dictionary", and he doesn't mention tantsgelt as an alternative meaning for שבת. But in the "Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary" by Beinfeld and Bochner under "שאַבאַש" one can find:
"1. gratuity given to wedding musicians; 2. receptacle for such a gratuity".

The very form "שאַבאַש" for שבת doesn't sound "very Yiddish": if the accent falls on the first syllable (like in the Russian шабаш for "witches' Sabbath"), we have unreduced second "a" and if otherwise the accent falls on the second syllable (like in the Russian for "enough!"), it belongs to a small group of words with final accent. I'd hypothesize, that שאַבאַש is a recent loan (rarely used even when the custom was followed) from an East Slavic language (Ukrainian?). If, so, it's a kind of back loan, because шабаш (with meanings completely different from tantsgelt) stems from (likely non-Ashkenazic?) שבת for Sabbath.
So, I doubt, it's a Litvish hyper-corrected form of shabes.

The Liberman's article can be found here: http://hebrewbooks.org/43585 (page 59 in the pdf).

Best regards,
Andrey Rozenberg

-- 
Andrey Rozenberg

Ruhr University Bochum
Department of Animal Ecology,
Evolution and Biodiversity,
Universitätsstraße 150
D-44801 Bochum, Germany

[Sabar, Yona]

Well, it seems to be of Persian / Kurdish origin (probably used by Turkish
Kurds as well). I know the custom of shabashe "money gifts to the new
couple") personally from Kurdish-Jewish weddings; see also: Sabar, Yona, A
Jewish-Neo-Aramaic Dictionary, Wiesbaden 2002, p. 293; among Christian
Neo-Aramaic speakers in Arthur John MaClean, Dictionary of Vernacular
Syriac Oxford, 1901, p. 299; F. Steingass, Persian English Dictionary, p.
720: Shabash < Shad Bash money thrown about at marriages, or given to
singers.

On 11/30/13 12:58 PM, "Alexis Manaster Ramer" <manast...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>i am, of course, but it is not clear to me what the basis is for the
>much-repeated claim
>that this is really yiddish. i dont deny that it is, but i want to know
>where that info
>comes from. by the way, i am even having a hard time verifying that this
>existed
>in ottoman turkish. the ottoman dictionaries i have checked so far only
>mention it in the sense of 'bravo'. while some internet sources do
>mention
>it as meaning also the kind of payment u describe, i have no real quotable
>authority for it as yet. i was gonna email some of the turkish webmasters
>to ask them where they got it from in fact. the complexity is that the
>persian
>is clearly borrowed into kurdish, and it is conceivable that the turkish
>occurrence i have found are all really referring to turkish kurds.
>whatever
>u can add to this, i would be most grateful and will acknowledge in print.

>
>On Nov 30, 2013, at 12:53 PM, "Sabar, Yona" <sa...@humnet.ucla.edu> wrote:
>
>> You probaly refer to shabash < Turkish / Persian (< shad bash "Well
>>Done,
>> Bravo!") meaning money gifts given to the bride and groom and the
>> musicians on the wedding nights.
>>

>> On 11/30/13 10:06 AM, "Alexis Manaster Ramer" <manast...@yahoo.com>

[Oren Roman]

I would suggest to look at Prof. Erika Timm's thorough work on this word:

E. Timm and G. A. Beckmann, Etymologische Studien zum Jiddischen, Hamburg: Buske 2006, pp. 129-133

Oren Roman

[Jules F. Levin]

On Saturday, November 30, 2013 10:06:42 AM UTC-8, Alexis Manaster Ramer wrote:

Does anybody know such a word in Yiddish, and if so, from where?

See my article "Two Exclamations:  Russian šabáš!, English Bushwa!" Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Band 13, 1984, 161-169.

Shabash is a Russian exclamation, meaning something like "quitting time!", "Time to go home...!"  There was an etymology linking to Yiddish (or even Hebrew!), but my article explains why this is probably not correct.  I am very familiar with "sabs loshen", having heard it in my own family (tsownt for cholent) and "shabash" from that dialect just doesn't sound right.  But where is the Yiddish stress? 

[Jules F. Levin]

On Saturday, November 30, 2013 10:41:47 AM UTC-8, Jordan Kutzik wrote:

A dialectical Litvak pronunciation of Shabbos/Shabbat? Some Litvak dialects of Yiddish pronounced all Sh as s's (so you get Sabes) while others pronounced all s's as sh's so you would get shabesh.

The actual pronunciation is a lateral [s] a la Humphrey Bogart.  An actual š is most likely heard only as a hypercorrection by sabs loshen speakers who know some ‘s’ should be pronounced ‘sh’

 

[Alexis Manaster Ramer]

I want to thank everybody who has contributed so far, but I am not asking for speculations

or hypotheses or theories about the origin of the word, or about the scholarly literature

propounding such proposals written by  authors who themselves

either did/do not speak eastern yiddish natively or at all or ones who did/do but didn't/don't know

this word from their own dialect or any other dialect they could say they had heard or from any yiddish book

article or manuscript they had read.  i know the speculations, i know much of the literature

unless there is something new, i know persian and turkish (both badly),

and perhaps not all but at least the main dictionaries of these languages, i dont

know kurdish but am satisified that the word exists there from a wide variety

of credible reports by travelers, dictionary-writers, and others (some

apparently native kurds).  i know the word exists in persian, i

know that it exists or existed in turkish (though its range of meanings

seems very uncertainly documented there).  however, all i was and am asking is about a word of yiddish and not

the same or homophonous word in kurdish or turkish or persian, and i am satisifed from credible

reports that kurdish, and from personal knowledge that persian and turkish are not yiddish.  

i even know the great erika timm and am satsified that she exists because

i have corresponded with her and read most of her published work--and am quite sure

that no one else could have written it. 

all this is not what i asked and would like to ask again.

  

i am asking a very simple and humble question: does anybody actually know this 

word and if so from where.  f.ex. does anyone speak a variety of yiddish that has this

word and so uses it himself? if so, what is that dialect?  if not, has anybody personally heard another yiddish 

speaker use it?  it not, has anybody ever read this word in any yiddish text, other than the

niborksi yiddish-french dictionary or an article in a scholarly journal like

di yidishe shprakh?  

it is very nice to have theories, and it is not at all necessary to have facts

to base these on.   in fact, it helps enormously not to have too many facts

and it helps infinitely not to have any--as we saw in the recent learned expositions

concerning glitch.  but there are some people who like to know facts. i realize it is a moral failing 

and a cognitive disorder, but i fear it may be innate and incurable so

i beg your indulgence and repeat the question, based on the simple

and naive assumption that if i asked whether anybody knows the

yiddish word like hant or hunt or rozhinkes or podloge, there are

any number of people who would simply say 'yes' and if i asked

if anybody knows a yiddish word like uhuru or mbwana or humuhumunukunukuapua'a

or zebanshenasi, people who know yiddish would all say 'no'

because each is a words of some language but not of yiddish.  

and in the case of a word like perhaps gayes or yandes, some would say 'yes,

i use this word', others would say 'i dont use it but i have read

it in thus and such a place', and yet others would say 'i have

never encountered this word'.  

it is really not a difficult question. it is not a trick question.

nor is it a test, since  i dont know what the answer

is, at least not for sure. i hope to get some help in answering

it.  

[Andrey Rozenberg]

I don't think one can get more information than collected by Horav Chaim Liberman, a Chabadnik, a Yiddish native-speaker born before the Shoa, interested in Hasidic folklore. As I mentioned, he cited two literary sources in Yiddish, which called "shabes" in the discussed meaning as "shabash" (שאַבאַש), and I think these two texts fit in the definition of "any yiddish text". The sources are:
קאָראַבעלניק׳ל by someone M. Katz, Warsaw 1900. The chapter is called "פאַרצייטיקע חתונות"
and
רשמות by A. Druyanov, 1918
And yet another source (in Hebrew?) which mentions "שַבַת" (with two pasekh's) in מנהגי ישורון, written (judging from the context) by Druyanov as well.
One can find more bibliographic information and even quotations in Liberman's article.

(@Jules F. Levin: in the "Two Exclamations..." article you do not reject the idea, that шáбаш as "witches' Sabbath" derived from some kind of (non-Ashkenazic, Karaite?) שבת [as indicated, for example, in Kuznetsov's (1998/2009) Большой толковый словарь русского языка], am I right?).

[Jules F. Levin]

In reply to @Jules..., my orientation was from the standpoint of Russian etymology.  шáбаш is obscure and probably has some literary origin.  On the other hand shaba'sh! with end stress is more or less popular.  I was basically arguing against the default etymology from Yiddish/Hebrew.  As I pointed out, it was recorded at the end of the 18th Century in the first Academy Dictionary.  There the Jewish sabbath is recorded as shabat, i.e., a literary term.  (the first Academy people were Germans brought in by Catherine)  Ukrainian and BR langs (and Lith.) both show popular knowledge of Yiddish shabes, etc., but there is no evidence in the Russian lexicon of direct popular knowledge of Yiddish until much later.  There was an idea that the exclamation "time to quit work...!" was first used by Volga boatmen, who would have had contact with Turkic and Persian, but not Yiddish.  This seems more reasonable to me.  I am summarizing my '84 paper from memory, so if you just read it you know it better than I do.