Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ____________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 15.039 January 11, 2006 1) tomid vs keseyder(Zulema Seligsohn) 2) tomid vs. keseyder (Margie Newman) 3) badkhen (Lillian Siegfried) 4) klezmer (Al Miller) 5) Yiddish Terminology Sought (Stephen Cohen) 6) More on kvetsh (Joachim Martillo) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: December 30, 2005 Subject: tomid vs keseyder Felicitas Payk asks if they are different in meaning. In Yiddish tomid can mean "often, constantly, etc.," whereas keseyder signals more of a repeated action at regular intervals. Harkavy says "seriatim, in regular order." It is sometimes used when something is annoyingly repeated, whereas tomid does not carry such a charge. Keseyder is a Hebrew word spelled Khof, Samekh, Dalet, Resh. If someone goes to a place often it is tomid, but if a child asks questions constantly it is keseider. Zulema Seligsohn 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: December 30, 2005 Subject: tomid vs. keseyder I believe "keseyder" is from the Hebrew "seder," meaning "order." Margie Newman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: December 30, 2005 Subject: badkhen Does any one have any information about a badkhen. It was a jester who entertained at shtetl weddings in Eastern Europe. Or would there be any recordings of this? Lillian Siegfried 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: December 30, 2005 Subject: Klezmer In reference to Goldie Milgram's list of Yiddishisms: to the best of my knowledge, "klezmer" (or its plural "klezmorim") means itinerant musicians who played at various simkhes in various shtetlekh. Al (Avrum) Miller 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: January 1, 2005 Subject: Yiddish Terminology Sought Concerning Goldie Milgram's query on Yiddish culture-building terms: I am a little unclear what sort of culture-building she means. Is this what people in "der alter heym" did? If so, our ancestors would be a little confused as to the purpose of "Yiddish culture building." If she means what we do TODAY, in the modern non-shtetl world, then there are all sorts of people who build Yiddish culture. As an example, may I add what I do to further Yiddish culture (in addition to teaching my young children Yiddish)? That is, calligraphy in Hebrew and Yiddish (as well as English and a bit of Greek). A calligrapher is a kaligraf in Yiddish (but I am unclear as to the feminine form; others can add this). The art of calligraphy is kaligrafye. I am also the president (as well as music writer and arranger) of a local independent Jewish choir, Sharim v'Sharot, whose members sing high-quality music in all Jewish languages. A choir would be a khor in Yiddish. I am sure others have ideas on this topic. Stephen (Shloyme-Khayim) Cohen 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: January 1, 2005 Subject: More on kvetsh In Yiddish kvetshn means crush, press or squeeze like the the German word quetschen. In Yiddishized English (Yinglish) kvetch means complain or complainer. I doubt that the English word kvetch is related to the German word quetschen. Here is my thought. Polish has the following two words. kweczec (the first e, e-cedilla, is nazalized; last c is a soft ch-sound) means grumble, groan, complain, bitch (sl), be ailing. kwekala (the first e is e-cedilla pronounced with nasalization; the l is crossed pronounced like l in the English word ball, an old-fashioned stage pronunciation, or like English w) means grumbler, complainer, hypochondriac. kweczec and kwekala seem to correspond more closely to the Yinglish meanings of kvetch than the Yiddish dictionary meaning of kvetshn. E-cedilla is nasalized in Standard Polish, but the (semietymological) orthography of Polish is a concession to the loss of nasalization in some dialects and in other Slavic languages.or to the development of nasalization, where it did not exist historically. A pronunciation of kweczec withount nasalizing the first e is quite probable in some places or in the past. In any case because Yiddish does not have nasalization, loss of nasalization in a borrowing from Polish or a related Slavic language is quite probable. It is unlikely for the Yinglish meaning to have passed back to Polish in Poland. Now it is possible that the Yinglish meaning of kvetch was generated in a place like Chicago or NY where Polish and Yiddish speakers were in close proximately and both groups were learning English(*), but I suspect it probably existed dialectically in Eastern Europe among Yiddish speakers (either as a borrowing from some Slavic language or dialect other than Polish or perhaps as an inheritance from Judeoslavic) and just never made it into the dictionaries as an acceptable usage. (*) The English language slang use of nuts for no or nothing doing may be a similar example -- it was common among American Jews where I grew up, but I think it comes from Polish nic z tego, nothing doing. Joachim Martillo ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 15.039 Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. Instead, choose one of these two: Messages for posting on Mendele Personal and other messages to the shamosim