One of the small oddities of Yiddish is the situations where
a German word and a Hebrew word have similar sounds and similar meanings. I’ve always enjoyed noticing those, and today
I came upon a new one. Here is a short list of some of my favorites:
Schlachten/Shekhten. The German word for slaughter is
similar to the Hebrew. A schlachtfeld is a battle-field, but a shekhthaus is a slaugher house. A ritual
slaughterer is of course a shoykhet.
Bühne/Bimah. The stage where the German actor performs is
the podium in the synagogue where the cantor does his performance. The Hebrew
National Theater in Mandatory Palestine was called Ha-Bimah.
Rausch/raash. A commotion is almost the same in both
languages.
Narr/na’ar. The German fool
is confused with the Hebrew youth.
What most of us think of as na’arischkeit
should more properly be written narrischkeit.
Sach (hard “s”) vs sakh (soft “s)”. The Hebrew quantity is used in context similar to
the German thing, matter.
Kunde/koyne/kundes: The German kunde meaning “customer” is close to the Hebrew koyne with the same meaning, and even
closer to the Hebrew for joker.
Schier/shiyur: This pair is so close you find them
interchanged among even the most educated Yiddish writers in classical times. Schier nischt is used idiomatically as
the equivalent of the English “all but”, as in “sie is schier nischt gestorben
vun karpeh un bushah.” (she all but died from embarrassment”. Alternately, she might have been embarrassed “ohn
a shiyur” – “without limit”, where this time it is the Hebrew word which is
used idiomatically. Additional confusion arises because a shiyur can also be a Rabbi’s lecture on a passage from the Gemara.
I’m not sure if that has a different spelling from the first shiyur.
Gedärim/geder/gedorim: Another word that means “limit,
boundary” is the Hebrew geder, which
is so close in sound to the German gedärm
(intestines) that the latter has assumed a Hebrew plural form (the –im ending). Although the meanings do
not appear to be related, there is a bizarre cross-pollenization manifest in
the quaint expression poretz geder, “violator
of boundaries”. The poretz here is a
different word with possibly a different spelling from the common word for lord, landholder; but its influence in
that sense can be clearly seen in the transformation of the expression poretz geder => nogidishe kishkah. A nogid is
a rich man, and a poretz is certainly rich; the German gedärim translates into the Slavic kishkah. While a poretz geder is a violator of boundaries, a nogidische kishkah is someone with refined tastes…a rich man’s
perogative.
Regel/regel: In this example, the homonymous pair are not
German/Yiddish, but Latin/Yiddish, dating back to the days when Rome ruled
ancienct Palestine. The apocryphical story is told of a Roman soldier who
challenged Rabbi Akiva to explain the entire Torah while standing on one foot…regel akhat. Akiva met the challenge by
stating the Jewish version of the golden rule: “do not unto others…”. In this
way, he was able to not only answer while standing on one foot (Hebrew regel), but also at the same time
distilling the essense of the Torah to a single rule (Latin regel).
Heiraten/harei-at: The German verb to wed
is eerily close to the first two words of the Hebrew wedding vows. This
isn't something I noticed myself, it's a well-known folkloric false
etymology.
And finally, here’s the one I just noticed today:
Rauch/reyakh: The German smoke
is even closer to the Hebrew for scent,
wind when the former is Litvicized to reykh
from its Polish pronunciation of roykh
.
I’ll add more to this list as I think of them.
UPDATE: Here's one that's just a plain mystery: golen, to shave. It's treated everywhere, and by the most educated writers, as a German word; and by "treated" I mean in the old days when people spelled etymologically, it was spelled as thought it was German. But I don't find it in my German dictionary. It's close to the Hebrew galikh, which is related to the word for priest, galakh, or shaven one; but it's also close to the Polish golic. So what kind of word is it?
UPDATE: Here's one that's just a plain mystery: golen, to shave. It's treated everywhere, and by the most educated writers, as a German word; and by "treated" I mean in the old days when people spelled etymologically, it was spelled as thought it was German. But I don't find it in my German dictionary. It's close to the Hebrew galikh, which is related to the word for priest, galakh, or shaven one; but it's also close to the Polish golic. So what kind of word is it?
great stuff, amusing etc. Just two corrections: should be kharpa and the rabbi is not Rabbi Akiva but Hillel.
ReplyDeletecheers
Okay, "karpeh" was just a typo but you got me on Hillel. I'll think of some more before I'm done...
ReplyDeleteI also think I'm using the wrong expression for dying of embarrassment. I'm thinking of someone who's at a party and laughs so hard at a joke she pees her pants. That's not exactly a kharpe un a bushah, is it? I just can't think of the right word.
ReplyDeletepeeing one's pants publicly would be a kharpeh and a bishah.
ReplyDeletenot so much if it was private, then it would be a shtikel imbakveym.
I had to look this up, because I just couldn't think of any on my own. The dictionary offers the German verlegenheit and the Hebrew bizyoynus. I don't have a feel for the German option, but I'm leaning to bizyoynus as being the closest fit for peeing your pants. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteActually, if I think about it, the kharpah and bushah would be the objective description of the person's status having committed the act, and bizyoynus would be more descriptive of the feeling the perpetrator would have. Does that sound right?
I was just kidding around, kharpah and bushah is really much more serious than peeing one's pants. It would be something truly scandalous, like bad mouthing the roshakul, or going on Dr. Phil to trash khasidus
ReplyDeleteno,bizyonus are the shameful things one does, it's not a descriptive word, it's a noun
ReplyDeleteSo we're still looking for the right word to describe how you feel after you've peed your pants?
ReplyDeletefarshemt. those who appear on Dr. Phil's show are umfarshemt.
ReplyDeletedi altitshke hot zikh ugepisht. Zi filt zikh farsheymt. (notice I added the y). Der vos lakhn zenen umfarsheymt.
ReplyDeleteYes, you add the y to identify your dialect, as we Galitzianers also say peysakh instead of pesakh. But as for the wording: No, it has to be a noun. Remember the original sentence: "Sie is schier nischt gestorben vun (fill in missing word here)". Farschaemung? Bizyoynus? Farlegenheit?
DeleteAnd anyhow, there's always been a problem for me in Yiddish distinguishing between shame and embarassment, which I distinguish as two separate emotions.
hmm, shame and embarrassment are two different emotions/states. What does Weinreich say?
ReplyDeletere: peysakh and pesakh, no yiddish speaker would have said pesakh, that's modern Ivrit. It's either paysekh or peysekh
Fraylikhehn pirim
And since you say "fraylikhen", I guess that makes you one of the "paysekh" people.
ReplyDeleteI got verlegenheit from Weinreich. My German correspondents agree with it, and even go so far as peinlichkeit. If I'm interpreting them correctly, our spectrum of shame to embarassment actually goes through fourlevels in German: schand, scham, verlegenheit, und peinlichkeit. I wonder where kharpah, bushah, and bizyoynos fit on that spectrum?
they don't because they are all loshn koydesh
ReplyDeletedefinitely am one of the paysekh people...
now this is truly bizarre; I'm watching the British TV series "Auf Wiedersehen Pet" (on youtube) and decided to look up "geordie" in wikipedia. I came across this entry in the geordie dictionary: BIZEN, BISON, BYSEN - A show, a spectacle of disgrace (*07)
ReplyDelete