Der Vortsman
Of Words and Wars Now that the 2012 campaign is in full swing (az okh un az vey — o and woe), the Vortsman is keeping his eye on the misuse of Yiddish (or Yinglish) in the media. A recent report on the assumed GOP candidate said: “When told that if he doesn’t switch ties, he’ll be perceived as wearing the same thing two nights in a row, Romney says, it’s fine with him, he’ll ‘look like a schlep.’” Even if we were to put aside our insistence that Yiddish words not be transliterated as though they were German (fat chance), the writer of the report...
Read MoreDer Vortsman — April 2012
Fools’ Errands and Errors A reader asks for the meaning of tamevate, and notes it could not be found in any dictionary. Of course not. The reader was looking under ט (tes), one of the two letters in the Hebrew alef-beyz (alpha-bet) with the sound of “t.” Had he looked under the other letter, תּ (tof, in Israeli/Sefardic, tav), he’d have found both the word tam — Hebrew spelling תּם — and tamevate. Tam is the Hebrew-origin word for, as Weinreich’s dictionary has it, “a naïve person, moron, half-wit,” while tamevate is...
Read MoreDer Vortsman — March 2012
Of Dictionaries and Hats A reader wrote: “In the Yiddish I spoke all my life ‘moyde’ meant ‘forgive.’ I recently learned that in Hebrew it means ‘thanks.’ I would like to know how this exchange came to be.” Der Vortsman, hardly a Hebraist, sought enlightenment from his dictionaries: Yitskhok Niborski’s indispensable Verterbukh fun loshn-koydesh verter in yidish (Dictionary of Holy-Tongue [i.e., Hebrew/Aramaic] Words in Yiddish) and The New Bantam-Megiddo Hebrew & English Dictionary. Niborski confirmed that Yiddish uses the Hebrew-origin word moyde in...
Read MoreDer Vortsman — February 2012
Whatever. Strange: Just as one reader asked a question, another posed a query that responded to the first — almost. Reader 1: “How would you say ‘whatever’ in Yiddish? I mean, the way that word is now used, dismissively, especially by teenagers.” Reader 2: “My parents used to say ‘nit gepidlt’ when they meant to dismiss something as unimportant. Does it have anything to do with ‘piddling?’” Der Vortsman informed Reader 2 that his memory or hearing was faulty…that the phrase his parents used was actually ‘nit gefidlt’ meaning “so I/you/it...
Read MoreSchund! at the Israel Film Festival
On March 17, yidARTS joins forces with the Israel Film Festival for the film's West Coast premiere.
Read MoreMichael Winograd Trio in West Hollywood
The Michael Winograd Trio launches the inaugural season of yidARTS at the new West Hollywood Library on January 21.
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