RE: Yiddish terms

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Alex,

I don't know what joy you get out of always telling us the German
equivalent of Yiddish words.  Not even on Purim is this response 
either correct or relevant.  The Yiddish term has nothing to do 
with modern German.   Both Modern German and Modern Yiddish grew 
out of Middle High German and thus both are equally close and equally 
distant from the common source.  Yiddish did not get these terms from 
German.
 
Across all Yiddish dialects, "polke" means a non-Jewish, Polish 
woman and a "pulke" means a drumstick.

Too bad I didn't have time to read this on Purim.  I would have
been in the Purimdik spirit.

I guess the xylophone derived from a "polke" too, didn't it?


Reyzl







----------
From:  Alex Jacobowitz[SMTP:Alex_Jacobowitz (at) compuserve(dot)com]
Sent:  Wednesday, March 11, 1998 5:50 AM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant.
Subject:  Re:  Yiddish terms

B"H Kiryas Arba

Yiddish for drummer is <<poykler>> (var. "paykler"), from the instrument
<<poyk>>.  As in the Rebbi Eli Meylekh lyric.

Eve Sicular
Metropolitan Klezmer
-----------------------------

>From the German "Pauker", timpanist, 
from the German "Pauken", timpani.

(Or, if you like, from the Yiddish "polke,"
 from the chicken leg, known as a "drumstick."
See under "fligel.")

Alex Jacobowitz
Rural Klezmer