אוי ווי זמיר
Sunday, March 23rd, 2014 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manFollow-up to my last post: I only realised a few months ago that אוי ווי זמיר "oy vey zmir, which I first heard in between the lines of a Shabbos zemira, has got nothing to do with zemiros, but is short for oy vey iz mir.
I was just thinking about this just now, and had another ping moment: In the English equivalent "woe is me", "me" is not accusative, as it normally is when without any accompanying words, but dative. (How could it be accusative when "to be", being a copula, takes a nominative?). In English "me" can be either accusative (corresponding to German/Yiddish mich) or dative (corresponding to German/Yiddish mir). The latter is normally preceded by "to" or "for", but it doesn't have to in German, and it strikes me there are probably stock phrases which preceded the need for the preposition to distinguish the two. That "woe is me" is an example is confirmed, I now see, by the places it is used in the KJV corresponding to dative in Hebrew, e.g. Psalms 120:5.
Another example that springs to mind is "methinks", which I already knew is not bad grammar for "I think", but short for "[it] thinketh me," Middle English for "it seems to me". Again, I hadn't realised until now that "me" here is dative.
I was just thinking about this just now, and had another ping moment: In the English equivalent "woe is me", "me" is not accusative, as it normally is when without any accompanying words, but dative. (How could it be accusative when "to be", being a copula, takes a nominative?). In English "me" can be either accusative (corresponding to German/Yiddish mich) or dative (corresponding to German/Yiddish mir). The latter is normally preceded by "to" or "for", but it doesn't have to in German, and it strikes me there are probably stock phrases which preceded the need for the preposition to distinguish the two. That "woe is me" is an example is confirmed, I now see, by the places it is used in the KJV corresponding to dative in Hebrew, e.g. Psalms 120:5.
Another example that springs to mind is "methinks", which I already knew is not bad grammar for "I think", but short for "[it] thinketh me," Middle English for "it seems to me". Again, I hadn't realised until now that "me" here is dative.
