Verb oyfn tsveytn ort

Once again in response to Becca's insightful question:

There is a concept in Yiddish, and by extension, I assume, in several Germanic languages, of verb oyfn tsveytn ort, the verb takes the second syntactical position in a sentence, no matter what. Take the Yiddish sentence ikh bin gegangen in shul, where ikh is "I," bin is the verb literally meaning "am," gegangen is a particle meaning "gone," and in shul means "to school." These words come together to form the English sentence "I went to school" (although, by the way, in older English, you will observe the construction "I am gone to school," meaning the same thing but nearly identical in structure to the Yiddish).
1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Ikh | bin | gegangen | in shul|
In shul | bin | ikh | gegangen|
Gegangen | bin | ikh | in shul|

As you can see, bin (the verb) is always in the second syntactical position in the sentence, no matter how the sentence is laid out. Now in English this does not have to be the case.
I ate food yesterday
Food I ate yesterday
Yesterday I ate food.
As you can see, the position of "ate" is constantly changing.

You can still see vestiges of this grammatical feature in the English language. The example given by Becca works: "Never have I seen such audacity." Here, "have" is the verb in the second position. Other examples of this are, "Then did I say to him" (that's a bit more archaic) and "Only when I came home did I realize the truth." What caused this construction to become less common in the English language?

Contractions

Yiddish is big on contractions, especially in spoken speak. Dos and es become s', ikh becomes kh', and so on. So why is it that Yiddish does contract tsu and dem to form tsum, but not tsu and der to form tsur? German does it, right? (zu+dem=zum, zu+der=zur) Was there some cultural reason, or did the form just become obsolete? Or is it a recent addition in German?

Neuter Noun Endings

It didn't occur to me till today (I haven't read any Yiddish textbooks, so I feel like it says this in all of them) that common neuter noun in Yiddish that are not diminutives have common plural endings:

hemd/hemder
kind/kinder
bukh/bukher
lid/lider
ort/erter
bild/bilder
and the list goes on... is that a commonly known thing? Has anyone seen this pattern before?

Homophones

Yiddish is infamous for its vocabulary that draws on both European and Middle-Eastern languages. It is therefore no surprise that there are in Yiddish, one from Hebrew and the other from German.

For example:
In my dialect (Southern/Galician Yiddish): דורך is pronounced "derekh." But wait: so is דרך (literally meaning "way"), such as in דרך־ארץ, loosely translated as "respect." Of course, this couldn't cause that much ambiguity, considering that the first is a preposition and the second is a noun. But how about this one (it's very witty, actually): ‫.עמלק and אַמאָליק
Don't be fooled by the disparity in appearance. They are pronounced almost exactly the same. One is amolek, the sworn enemies of the Jews who attacked them from the back in the desert. Haman from the Purim story, and, more recently, Adolf Hitler, are said to be spiritual or physical descendants of amolek. The second word is amolik, the adjective meaning once-upon-a-time. Can anyone think of a sentence where the meaning would be ambiguous?

National Vocabulary Championship

I have mentioned in previous posts that I was studying for a vocabulary contest. I hadn't expected anything to come of it, but one night I came home to discover that I was one of 50 to-be-contestant nationwide on the National Vocabulary Championship on the Game Show Network. I'm going to be flying out to L.A. on March 9th and competing the following day. It should air sometime in April. Any tips on studying vocab besides memorizing lists of words and spending indefinite amounts of time on www.freerice.com?

Wish me luck!

Sorry about that...

Discúlpenme que no he escrito nada el mes pasado - estaba bastante ocupado. Esperen una cascada de posts en un futuro inmediato!

Schwäbisch

On a recent trip to the Poconos, our family went horseback riding (we found out later that they were really mules). Two of the three guides were actually German and spoke a dialect called Schwäbisch (sounds like shvedish, which is what I originally thought it was; that means "Swedish" in Yiddish), a thick countryside version of German in the family of Alemannic dialects. It has a sing-songy quality to it and is pleasing to the ear. Anyhow, when they heard us singing horse songs (inappropriate to the animal, but effective in spurring them on to go faster) in Yiddish, we got into a discussion about the connection between the two languages. Sabina, the woman (the other guy was her son), explained that there are many words in Schwäbisch which appear in Yiddish but not in standard German. For example, she said, the word for "to haul" in Schwäbisch is schleppen, akin to the Yiddish shlepn ‫שלעפּן ‬, whereas standard German uses the more common schleifen. When I looked it up on Wikipedia, I found some more interesting similarities.
The diminutive ending "-le" (spoken very quickly, e.g. Haus may become Häusle, Bisschen may become Bissle) and "-la" for plurals (e.g. Spätzle becomes Spätzla). Wow. This is exactly like Yiddish (at least, the first part)! Hoyz הױז in the diminutive becomes hayzl הײַזל, and bisl ביסל is the Yiddish equivalent of standard German's Bisschen.

They always say that Swiss German is the closest form of German to Yiddish. What I didn't realize is that, as Wikipedia put it, "occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are called Swiss German." Hmmm.

Ladybird

I always presumed, as many have before me, that the word "butterfly" is a spoonerism of the word "flutterby," a description of its motion (maybe it was just something I came up with on my own, influenced by the Yiddish flaterl, meaning "little flutterer"). Boy, was I dead wrong. The Old English buttorfleoge is most probably a reference to the myth that witches disguised as butterflies would consume uncovered milk and butter. They didn't think that they were just butterflies or whatnot. Had to be witches, eh? The German schmetterling lends support to this theory seeing as it means "cream thief." (Compare schmetter with smetene, the Yiddish for sour cream, and tseshmetern, to smash, also Yiddish.) The Russian babochka helps out too - it means "grandmother," something akin to a witch.
Anyhow, an alternate suggestion is the fact that its waste resembles butter, supported by the Dutch boterschijte (do you recognize any cognate there? I'm not sure I see the connection between excrement and schijte - do you?).

Forced Assimilation

Yes, this is a crusade of sorts.
English speakers have this annoying tendency to take words from foreign languages and put them into a format that they're familiar with. For example, the word juggernaut: you might have thought that the "naut" suffix has something to do with the words "astronaut," "cosmonaut," or "nautical," (naus in Greek means ship, and is related to the English "naval"). But no. Those English speakers got you again. There is absolutely no connection. It actually is the following:

1638, "huge wagon bearing an image of the god Krishna," especially that at the town of Puri, drawn annually in procession in which (apocryphally) devotees allowed themselves to be crushed under its wheels in sacrifice. Altered from Jaggernaut, a title of Krishna (an incarnation of Vishnu), from Hindi Jagannath, lit. "lord of the world," from Skt. jagat "world" + natha-s "lord, master." The first European description of the festival is by Friar Odoric (c.1321). Fig. sense of "anything that demands blind devotion or merciless sacrifice" is from 1854.
(By the way, my last name, Viswanath, is related to this word; viswa means "universe" and, as you now know, nath means lord. So my name means "lord of the universe." Not pretentious at all. But certainly befitting if you know my father's Yiddish/Hebrew name: Meylekh מלך.)

Now consider this: the Yiddish for "to bless" is bentshn בענטשן from the Latin benedecire. When this entered the vocabulary of the second-generation, the children of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, and probably influenced by German spelling, it became bentshen. This further evolved into "benchin'," and, under the impression that this was formed in the same way that "whistling" becomes "whistlin'," converted it into the more English-friendly benching (barbells, anyone?).
I recently saw a similar ignorance of a word's Yiddish origin in a caption of a picture in a wedding album on Facebook: "the bedeckin'." I was tempted to break out into a spontaneous round of "Deck the halls with boughs of holly," but I was already marching onto the next picture. (I treat this with considerable sarcasm, but the Yiddish badekn באַדעקן is, in fact, related to "deck" and "bedeck.")
One more example before you start scoffing: it's not "good shabbos," as you might think, but rather gut גוט. This is a pet peeve of mine. But hey, not everyone knows Yiddish. ‫.הלװאַי

Ultimate Stress = French Origin?

It seems to me as though most words in Yiddish with stress on the ultimate syllable come from French. The exceptions, it seems to me, are those words with prefixes such as ge- and those Germanic-derived words such as dertsu, faran, aroys, etc.

Examples: kapitan, internat, koridor, palats, balants, telefon, parad, tirazh, aktivitet, zhurnal, papir, kolir

I recently proposed this theory to someone who tried to disprove my hypothesis. I asked her to name a single word with ultimate stress that doesn't derive from French. The only possible refutation she managed to come up with was "tararam." I searched for it in French dictionaries in vain. I searched it on Google and only managed to come up with a Russian movie called Tram-tararam Ili Bukhty-barakhty, an Arabic song, and an Israeli dance troupe.
I'll assume this to be a Slavic word and therefore a refutation of (or perhaps simply an exception to) my proposed rule...

Aderabe

How did it come about that aderabe in Yiddish came to mean, besides the obvious "on the contrary" as used in the Gemara to refute a suggestion, "be my guest?" It seems contrary to its original meaning (no pun intended)!
To figure this out, you have to deconstruct the word:
a = on (equivalent to Hebrew "al")
de = that (eq. "she")
rabe = great
When you put that together, you get something along the lines of "on that which is greater." So now I'm actually going to reverse my question. For the Yiddish, I suppose it would make in meaning "all the more so," but how would it mean "on the contrary" in Aramaic... any ideas?

How Come?

To answer Bekkster's question, the following is speculative at most. Here's what I was able to find on the origins of "How come" in the sense of "why."
It seems to be a feature of Germanic languages:
German - Wie kommt es
Swedish - Hur kommer det sig
Dutch - Hoe komt het

Nor is it uncommon to find variants of this phrase in well-known English literature such as Shakespeare:

The Comedy of Errors, Act II, Scene 2
How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art then estranged from thyself?

The Tragedy of Coriolanus, Act III, Scene 1
Sir, how comes't that you
Have holp to make this rescue?

It seems that "How come" is elliptical in that one must fill in the missing words to deduce what the original phrase was trying to say. One possibility would be:
How [did it] come [to be that], which is clearer than the Shakespearean version, which has already dropped the "to be" for the more favored abridged version.

Take Our Word For It offers a historical context:

That's exactly what how come? means. Surprisingly, it is American in origin, at least in that form. It dates from the middle of the 19th century, and its first recorded form is in Bartlett's Dictionary of American English: "How-come? rapidly pronounced huc-cum, in Virginia. Doubtless an English phrase, brought over by the original settlers, and propagated even among the negro slaves. The meaning is, How did what you tell me happen? How came it?"

Its predecessor in England was how comes it that...? That phrase was used by Shakespeare in 1607, in his Coriolanus: "How com’st that you haue holpe To make this rescue?" However, he was not the first to use it; we find it first recorded in 1548 by Hall in Chronicle: "How commeth this that there are so many Newe Testamentes abrode?"

That this phrase dates back to England would therefore leave no doubt in my mind of its distinctly Germanic origin.

Interesting how the pronunciation reverted back to "how come" instead of "huc-cum"...

Yiddish Revolution

One man's observations of a Yugntruf meeting held a few weeks ago.


‫לעבן זאָל דער רעװאָלוציע!

‫די, דער, דאָס: An Enigma for the Ages

I have long promised my cousin that I would compile a list of most frequent words in Yiddish whose genders are feminine, marked by the feminine definite article di, and neuter, marked by the definite article dos. Most words tend to be masculine (דער/der); in fact, the little ditty my family uses when attempting to ascertain noun genders is "When in doubt, make it דער," which works.
Sometimes.
For everything else, we have ... nothing. Which is why I am trying to make this list. Here's what I have so far, and please help me out here if you have words to add to the list. Thanks!

DOS/דאָס

1. ‫[דימינוטיװן] _ל, _לע, _עלע
2. _גע
3. עכץ_
4. [אינפֿיניטיװן]
5. עניש_
6. ות_
7. [מעטאַלן]
8. אָרט
9. בילד
10. ליד
11. קינד
12. יאָר
13. מױל
14. האַרץ
15. מענטש***
16. װאַסער
17. עסן
18. הויז
19. שטול****
    
20. העמד
21. בוך
22. געלט
23. װאָרט
24. קלײד
25. לאַנד
26. בלוט
27. זאַמד
28. פֿלײש
29. ליכט
30. ברױט
31. אױג
32. גליק/אומגליק
33. אײַז
34. גיהנם
35. אײַנגעמאַכץ
36. ארץ־ישׂראל
37. גלאָז
38. אַש
39. ביוראָ
40. ביר
41. בית־דין
42. בלאַט
43. בית־הכּנסת
44. גליד
45. בלעך
46. גראָז
47. רובֿ
48. *בלאַט
49. בײַטל
50. רענצל
51. לײַב
52. פּנים
53. וועש
54. מזומן
55. לשון
56. מזל
57. הקדיש
58. נחת
59. קול
60. רחמים
61. בעט**
62. דאָרף
63. רײַ*****
64. משוגעת

DI/‫די

1. ע_
2. ונג_
3. קײט_
4. הײט_
5. שאַפֿט
6. זאַך
7. צײַט
8. ‫עװעניו
   
9. גאַס
10. האַנט
11. נאָז
12. שיסל
13. זײַט
14. מינוט
15. נאַכט
16. װאַנט
17. טיר
18. ערד
19. באָרד
20. האָר
21. שטאַט
22. הױט
23. הײם
24. לענג/ברײט
25. שול/שיל
26. שפּיל**
27. פֿױסט
28. גאַל
29. לענד
30. ניר
31. ליפּ
    
32. לעבער
    
33. לונג
    
34. ריפּ
35. מילץ
36. צונג
37. אָדער
38. נאָדל
39. שאַל/שאַרף
40. זשאַקעט
41. טוך
    
42. ‫פּראָגראַם
43. האַלדזבאַנד
44. גריל
45. קראָ
46. טױב
47. פֿליג
48. בין
49. לױז
50. מױז
51. שלאַנג
52. שפּין
53. װעספּ
54. מידבר
55. רײַ*****
56. זון
57. ‫שעה
    

*Also feminine when meaning "leaf, sheet of paper, or (if veb is added at the beginning) webpage"; However, when meaning "newspaper," it is always neuter
**Also feminine
***When referring to a female
****Also masculine
*****When referring to a place (e.g. bakery), it is feminine, but when referring to the field (e.g. baking), it is neuter

To be continued... as you can see, I have a long task ahead of me (that is, if I really want to do 100 each... or maybe I should just do 100 total? Hmmmmm...)

Please let me know if you have anything to add to the list (which you surely must!) so we can get this show on the road, baby!

Tmesis Revisited

Another grammatical shenanigan that always bothered me, but that I never cared to actually look up.
Consider this dialogue:
A: I don't want to go because it'll be too crowded.
B: But that's a whole 'nother thing! You told me you didn't want to go because you're socially awkward!
Note how anyone with grammatical OCD would cringe upon hearing the bolded section. I happened to look up tmesis on Wikipedia, and I glanced at the examples they gave. One of them, of course, was "congratu-f#$%-lations", akin to my example "abso-bloody-lutely," but their second one was the phrase bolded in the above dialogue. I took the liberty of naming this phenomenon casual or unaccustomed tmesis, a term which I'm sure will be quoted for generations to come. So in this case, you have "another" interpolated with "whole" to create "a-whole-nother." So next time you wish to express this idea, I would suggest "a wholly different idea," because I can't seem to figure out a way using "whole" and "another" that sounds right. Ideas?

Are You Serious?

After pouring my heart out regarding my frustration of misspellings of the word "medieval," I happened to look through the Google queries that lead to this blog. Tied for first with "tmesis" is (drumroll please): "cool mideval words." Are you serious??

My first (official?) translation

An article about Jewish couples of which both members are converts:

http://yiddish.forward.com/node/1045

And my translation:

When Both Husband and Wife Are Converts

By Rukhl Schaechter, NY –

Charlie Hall and Paula Sinclair

When someone decides that he wants to convert to Judaism in an Orthodox manner, he must first demonstrate that he has no concealed intentions – for example, that his reason for conversion is that he is in love with a Jewish girl. In fact, Orthodox rabbis make an effort to talk potential converts out of their intentions: the potential converts are advised to find their own way to God through keeping the seven Noahide laws (the heavenly decrees that all humankind must observe) and lead their lives as righteous people.

Rabbi Meir Fond, the founder of the “Flatbush Minyan” in Brooklyn, NY, and one who teaches people in the process of conversion, explained that he indeed only accepts a small number of students into his classes. “Because you can never know beforehand who the best candidates will be, I choose those who display a firm devotion, attend synagogue on Shabbos and on Yom-Tov, and live a religious lifestyle. I don’t expect this to happen overnight. Because of that, it can sometimes take months, or even years.”

Most converts marry born Jews, and therefore “buy into” a Jewish family with new Jewish roots. But what about a convert that marries another convert? Is it harder, having no protective net of a family? Is their life any different from a couple where only one is a convert?

Paula Sinclair, a doctor who is an Orthodox Jewish convert from the Bronx, feels that it is to her advantage that she married another convert. Her husband, Charlie Hall, is a biostatistician in Yeshiva University. “We have similar backgrounds,” she told The Forverts. “We both celebrated Christmas as children. We are very devoted to leading a religious Jewish life, since we don’t do it just because ‘that’s how grandma did it.’ On the contrary, had Charlie been an FFB (frum from birth), it would be harder for me because our relationship would not be even. He, and not I, would have a whole Jewish family with traditions. I would feel as though I have to leave it up to him to decide how we will lead our lives. The way it is now, we’re level, and I never have to hide my non-Jewish past.”

Paula grew up in California. Her parents were descendants of Protestants, but considered themselves atheists. She herself experimented with Eastern religions, such as Zen, “but when they told me to bow down to my pillow, I realized it wasn’t for me.”

In college, she tried Christianity, “but the idea that Jesus died for my sins seemed so childish to me, because I feel that one has to be held responsible for one’s own sins.” Through a friend who was a convert, her interest in Judaism blossomed, and in 2001 she completed the conversion.

Charlie also has a Protestant background. As a child, he studied in a Presbyterian Sunday school, but when he grew older, he was disappointed with the liberal atmosphere in the Protestant churches. “It bothered me that they made theological decisions based on the majority. Ignorant worshipers shouldn’t make such decisions.”

Charlie survived several personal crises in his personal life. He married twice – and both times got divorced. Depressed, he once accompanied a friend to a prayer session of the Jewish Renewal movement in Hartford, Connecticut, where he received a warm welcome. He began to develop an interest in the Jewish religion, and the idea of one God was very attractive to him. “They say that Christianity is monotheistic, but I’m not so sure. Believing in a God, a Son, and a Holy Ghost sounds to me more like three gods, not one. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I must become a Jew.”

When he got a job at Yeshiva University, he met many Orthodox Jews, which immediately captured his interest. He started learning with a rabbi and converted in 2003. He met Paula through the matchmaking website “Frumster,” and immediately felt a connection, he said. “23 days later, we got engaged, and three months after that, we got married.”
Charlie maintains that it’s just a coincidence that they are both converts. “I could just have easily married a born religious Jewish girl,” he remarked. “But I couldn’t be with a ba’al teshuva (penitent), because they often aren’t sure where to go. One day they want to be Hasidic, the next day – Carlebach, and the next – Modern Orthodox. Converts are more similar to born Jews because both understand that one needs a rabbi as a guide, and this creates a more stable life.”

Paula and Charlie converted separately, before they met. But sometimes, a non-Jewish couple decides to convert together. For Denis and Isabelle Supersac, a couple in France that decided to convert, the process was so long and bitter, it’s nearly a miracle that they held out. You would think that a married couple would have less trouble going to a rabbi, because it’s clear that they aren’t converting to marry a Jew. But not this time – their process dragged on for eleven years.

One possibility is that the rabbis in France, most of them Sephardic Jews, are stricter about conversion than in America. You could also deduce that their being a couple caused more suspicion, and even discrimination, than if a potential convert were to come with a Jewish girl.

Denis and Isabelle Supersac and four of their five children

Denis, a translator, hails from a Protestant family, and Isabelle was a secular Catholic language instructor when they engaged in a long discussion about religion, specifically Judaism. “That discussion was a landmark in my spiritual journey,” remarked Denis. “I had long wrestled with the question of why there are two versions of Christianity – Protestantism and Catholicism – if they both believe in Jesus. It just didn’t make any sense.” Isabelle had also begun to dabble in various religions, and like Denis, became very interested in the Jewish faith.

“But when we wanted to learn more, we could only take classes with a liberal non-Orthodox rabbi, because the Orthodox rabbis wouldn’t let us in,” said Denis. He started learning Hebrew, Chumash, and Torah law on his own. By then, they already had one child, and lived in Nantes, in western France, where their neighbors, Polish Jews, warmly accepted them. But when the neighbors wanted to bring them along to synagogue, the rabbi would not let them in.

“At about that time, we began to observe Judaism,” tells Denis. “We bought kosher meat in Paris and drove five hours with full suitcases to bring it home.” When their second child, David, was born in 1996, he had to be circumcised in the hospital, because the mother was not yet Jewish.

After that, the family blossomed, and in 2004, when they already had five children, Rabbi Moshe Chen, the Chabad rabbi in Toulouse, finally agreed to learn with them privately, and they signed up for the general conversion class. “The teacher was a twenty-year-old girl – I already knew more than she did,” recalls Denis. Then, the beis-din gave them a written exam of 280 questions and required them to write a lengthy article; Denis’ totaled 80 pages. But when the couple was asked whether they could take the oral part of the test (the last stage of learning), they answered: “Not yet.”

“We were furious,” said Isabelle. “We already had a visa to travel to America at that point, and we absolutely couldn’t wait any longer.” Disappointed, they made an appointment with the beis-din of Paris – a step which the rabbis in Toulouse did not approve of. The beis-din of Paris posed several questions to Denis (how, for example, do you make havdala, when Shabbos comes right before Yom-Tov?) and in 2005, the rabbis agreed that the family was ready for the mikvah. They first ruled, however, that the couple had to separate for three months.

Denis and Isabelle protested that they could not wait three months, because they had to move to America, and the rabbis changed it to one month. Finally, in June 2005, all seven members of the Supersac family immersed themselves in the mikvah, and immediately after that, Denis and Isabelle were married under a chuppah. “I stood under that chuppah with wet hair,” recalls Isabelle.

The Forverts unsuccessfully tried to reach the rabbis in Toulouse.

Today, Denis and Isabelle very happily reside in their new Modern Orthodox home in Teaneck, New Jersey, with their children David, 11; Miriam, 10; Eli, 8; and Rebecca, 6. When asked whether their life as a couple is different from that of a convert and a Jew, Denis answered: “Of course. Because we are not born Jews, we did not have to culturally orient ourselves. But that’s why we like to go together to conferences on Judaism, to analyze linguistic nuances in the Chumash, and to read Pirkei Avos.”

“We still don’t understand why it took 11 years for us to convert, just because we couldn’t find a rabbi willing to help us,” sighed Denis. “Our children kept asking us: ‘Are we Jews yet?’ It shouldn’t be like that.”

מײַנע מחשבֿות - הערט זיך צו אַז איר װילט

אַ מאָל פֿיל איך זיך װי איך װעל נישט איבערלעבן די קומעדיקע פּאָר טעג/װאָכן/חדשים, אָבער איך װײס אַז צום סאָף, װעט אַלץ זיך גוט אױסאַרבעטן. אָבער הײסט דאָס אַז ס'לױנט זיך נישט זיך צו זאָרגן בכלל? איז עס דאָך נישט גוט פֿאַרן געזונט אַזױ זיך אױפֿצופֿירן?...נו, כ'װײס? הכּלל, די טעג זענען דאָ פֿיל זאַכן װעגן װעלכע מ'קען זיך גוט אָנזאָרגן - סײַ אינעם פּערזענלעכן לעבן, סײַ אין דער באַגרענעצטער סאָציעלע קרײַזן פֿון װעלכע מ'איז אַ מיטגליד, סײַ אין דער שטאַט, סײַ אינעם לאַנד, סײַ אױף דער װעלט... אָבער שטענדיק דאַכט זיך מיר אַז דער קומענדיקער כעמיע עקסאַמען, צי די צוקונפֿט פֿון אַ רעלאַטיװ נישט־װיכטיקער אָרגאַניזאַציע 'יוגנטרוף' איז װײניקער װיכטיק (פֿון אַ גלאָבאַלן שטאַנדפּונקט, פֿאַרשטעט זיך) װי די אַסאַסינירונג פֿון בענאַזיר בהוטטאָ... אױ, װער װעט זײַן דער אױסלײזער פֿון מײַן שולאַרבעט?

אַזאַ קשיא װעט זיך מסתּמא קײנמאָל זיך נישט לײזן, אָבער אַן ענטפֿער װעט דען מער נישט נײטיק זײַן אין אַ צװײ יאָר אַרום...
הײסט עס, אַז לאָגיש, איז נישט כּדאי זיך צו זאָרגן? צי יאָ? כ'װײס אַלײן נישט

Medieval

Does it ever annoy you how so many people are still spelling it "mid-evil" like you did in fifth grade? Sure, you know how to spell it, but why does everyone misspell, and what the heck does it mean? Was everybody back then really evil? Well, I was flipping through some vocab recently and stumbled across the word coeval, which means "occurring at the same time." Of course, I said to myself, "co-" means "with", so I guess "evum" must mean "time" (it's actually aevum in Latin). Then it hit me that the word was probably related to the words event (actually unrelated, but hey, nice try) and, yes, medieval. So basically, coeval is pronounced co-ee-val. So what must have happened was that medieval used to be pronounced me-dee-ee-val, and the two "ee"s just assimilated into one sound (the dictionary actually had both pronunciations). So "medi-" means "middle," which would make medieval mean, no, not "evil times," but rather befittingly, "middle ages."

Duh.

Nebekh

Congratulate me: I just discovered that nebbish is a word in English. I was previously under the impression that neb was a shortened version of the Yiddish נעבעך nebekh and that it had come via Yeshivish.

Definition: A weak-willed, ineffectual person; a person who, entering a room, leaves the impression that someone just left; a person whose life runs, ironically, on the law of an Irishman named Murphy: "If anything can go wrong, it will." The difference between a nebbish and a schlemiel is that a nebbish is always pitied while attitudes toward a schlemiel can be harsher. Leo Rosten claimed that a nebbish picks up what a schlemiel knocks over. The quintessential nebbish is, of course, the Woody Allen characters of Allen's early films.

And now (drumroll) for the origin:

It's actually directly from the Yiddish, which is derived from the Czech nebohý "poor, unfortunate." But there's more to tap into - I'm talking Proto-Indo-European, baby! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, stop here and beware of the dangers of tracing word roots waaaaaay back - this is serious business.) The Slavic root is boh (this word in modern Slavic languages carries the meaning of "God," but bohatý, which would literally mean "godful," actually means "rich" - of course, people with God on their side would be wealthy, I suppose) and derives from the PIE root bhag-. So let's see what other words we can recognize from this root:

It wouldn't take too much skill to recognize the Sanskrit words bhagah and bhagavati, and if not that, at least the name of the Hindu religious work Bhagavadgita (literally, song of the blessed). There is some speculation as to whether the English word pagoda, which came via Portuguese, came from the polar origins of "idol" or the root that came to mean "god" - compare the etymologies of [from a corruption of Persian butkada, from but "idol" + kada "dwelling"] and [perhaps from or infl. by Tamil pagavadi "house belonging to a deity," from Skt. "goddess," fem. of bhagavati "goddess," fem. of bhagavat "blessed, adorable," from *bhagah "good fortune," from PIE base *bhag- "to share out, apportion"]

Then, if you figured, "hey, let's take the b and replace it with a p," you might think of the word esophagus, or recall learning in biology class of a certain type of virus called a bacteriophage, which means a bacteria-eater. These words comes from Greek, which ultimately came from the root bhag-, which appears to mean "to share out, apportion," which eventually evolved into the aforementioned Sanskrit and Slavic meanings.