Let us turn now to the all-consuming (literally) internet, formerly known as the World Wide Web. In that vast region there are many sites relating to Yiddish. Google turns up no less than 124,000 of them, including some that claim to be “translators.” As a professional translator, Der Vortsman was drawn to one that promised to be “the most comprehensive automated Yiddish translator on the internet: guaranteed.”
We typed in: “I wanted to go for a walk.” In real Yiddish, that would be: ikh hob gevolt geyn af a shpatsir or ikh hob gevolt geyn shpatsirn. The “guaranteed” result came back as: ikh vilst keyn geyn shpatsirn. The word-for-word re-translation is: I/you want/not/to go/walking.
Intrigued, we then typed in “I wanted to go for a stroll” and got back “ikh vilst keyn geyn oyf a stroll—(…on a stroll). “Stroll,” of course, does not exist in Yiddish. Bottom line: watch your Yiddish step on the internet.
Now, going from the “latest thing” to the tried-and-false, there’s the “Yiddish” word made famous on Saturday Night Live: “verklempt,” supposedly meaning “choked up.” Its latest appearance was in the good grey N.Y. Times (7/28/11), quoting Rep. Nan Hayworth (R, NY), both an ideological and a linguistic associate of Rep. Michele Bachmann—the one who accused the President of “chew-tspuh.”
The Congresswoman described an emotional meeting with appreciative Tea Partyers: “Everyone was verklempt.” Sorry, Ms. Hayworth and assorted other comics, the word is farklemt and it means “anxious, depressed, grieving.” To cite a real Yiddish expression you guys are familiar with, in the original or direct translation: “genug shoyn! Enough already!”
Finally, a reader found on Wikipedia (we said the net was all-consuming, didn’t we?) the intriguing information that “The popular Yiddish saying ‘to be a Nachshon’ means to be an ‘initiator.’” This bit of wisdom is found up-front in an article on Nakhshon, the biblical Aaron’s brother-in-law, who walked into the Red Sea (Sea of Reeds) up to his head until it (the sea, that is) split—ergo, he was the initiator of that miracle.
Sorry, Wikipedia, there’s no such Yiddish saying, popular or obscure. Nakhshon does not appear in any Yiddish dictionary or thesaurus. What may have confused the Wikipedia “expert” was the very popular Yiddish phrase zayn an akshn—to be a stubborn person. In speaking, words often tend to slur together (the technical term is “elide”). So, an akshn might be heard as a nakshn, from which the miracle of the internet could derive “a Nakhshon” and then stride head-first into the waters of biblical interpretation until it came up with this howler.
Genug shoyn!
