Fwd: question

[Peter A. McGraw]

I've been waiting for someone who has some familiarity with Yiddish to
chime in, but since no one has, I'll just say that the phrases "to kill
for" and "to die for" have no word-for-word parallels in German.  The
closest I can think of would be "Es ist zum Lachen" 'it's laughable', and
"Es ist zum Kotzen" 'it makes me sick'.  No preposition at the end, and the
construction is made possible only by nominalizing the infinitive.  It
doesn't seem to be a productive pattern: there is no parallel *"Es ist zum
Toeten" or *"Es ist zum Sterben".  I find it hard to see where Yiddish
would have gotten such a construction, but I can't say for sure.

Peter Mc.

--On Friday, February 4, 2005 8:57 PM -0500 sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
wrote:

>>> The Rabbi, Jim Ponet, asks:
>>>
>>> ... explain if you will the structure "Not to worry."  Does it emulate
>>> anything Yiddish.  Then there's "to kill for,"  "to die for."
> ~~~~~~~
> "Not to worry" has a kind of breezy quality that suggests to me that it's
> simply
> a case of  lowering the imperative tone of "I'm telling you not to worry!"
> No particular foreign influence.
> "To kill for" & "to die for," OTOH, do have a kind of Yiddish or German
> resonance, to my ear, at least.
> A. Murie



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************