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Yiddish terms
- From: Paul M. Gifford <PGIFFORD...>
- Subject: Yiddish terms
- Date: Tue 10 Mar 1998 21.58 (GMT)
I'm curious about certain Yiddish terms. Can anyone elucidate them?
kapelye / kompanye - Is there any difference implied by the two
different terms? Any regional usage? A Belarusian book I'm looking
at right now (I. D. Nazina, _Belorusskie narodnye muzykal'nye
instrumenty_ [Minsk: Nauka i Tekhnika, 1982]) describes peasant
ensembles (such as that consisting of fiddle, cymbaly, button
accordion, and bass drum with cymbal) as "kapelya" (in quotes). I've
seen _kompanje_ in Polish sources.
baraban, buben. _Baraban_ is a bass drum with a cymbal on top;
_buben_ is a tambourine (these are Russian and Polish terms). Are
these also Yiddish terms, or are there Germanic equivalents, such
as _troml_, which might have been used as well? I'm also wondering
what surnames might have been derived from these words. I saw
"Trommler" somewhere, but I wonder if "Bubner" or "Barabaner" might
exist.
Finally, where is/was the dialect boundary between Galician and
Lithuanian Yiddish, at least towards the Pale? I realize that
boundaries are hard to define, but would the modern Belarus/Ukraine
border be roughly the border, or might it be further north, somewhere
south of Minsk? I've been looking at cymbaly types, and
a "Lithuanian" and "Galician" division seems to make the best
typology ("Galician" including both Hutsul and Rzeszow styles). I'm
wondering about possible historical connections to Jewish migrations,
which might account for the differences.
Thanks.
- Yiddish terms,
Paul M. Gifford