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 MoreDer Vortsman — January 2012
2012 starts with triumphs and tragedies for Yiddish. Der Vortsman looks at Yiddish in the news in the new year.
Read MoreDer Vortsman — December 2011
Der Vortsman reflects more on “capotes,” on Polish influence in Yiddish, and talking horses.
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