RE: Need Yiddish Vocabulary for Music

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

Someone wrote:
>try chaleel for recorder. the ch is like in chupa.

Chaleel is Hebrew, not Yiddish.

When you look at Mordkhe Tsanin's Hebrew-Yiddish Dictionary, you find the 
following definitions for the Hebrew term 'chalil':  fleyt, pastukh-fleyt 
(shepard's recorder/whistle), fayfiyol.

We all know that a 'fleyt' is a flute, but the other two sound good for the 
recorder term people here are looking for.

Neither Weinreich or Harkavy have a term for 'recorder'.

My problems with defining recorder as 'fayfl' is that it is always used as 
the term for a whistle, all kinds of whistles, although some whistles are 
also called a 'fayf'.  The other problem with 'fayfl' for a recorder is 
that it does not differentiate itself from a 'fife', the small, high 
pitched wind instrument played with drums in military bands.
Uriel Weinriech defines a fife as a 'dude' [Remember in Yiddish 
transliteration an 'e' is always pronounced as 'eh', not as in the English 
term dude ranch.].  We also have the Yiddish expression 'haltn zikh mit der 
dude' which means "to be left holding the bag.  This expression may suggest 
the old Yiddish term for bagpipes, which is a different instrument.  Paul 
Abelson's "English-Yiddish Encyclopedic Dictionary" (1924) defines bagpipes 
as a 'dudl-zak' or 'zak-fayf' (the latter being Harkavy's term too).   So 
now we may want to know what is a 'dudke'.

In his 1908 "Complete English-Jewish Dictionary", Harkavy defines 'fife' as 
'kver=fife' and 'fleytl' while in his 1928 "Yidish-English-Hebreyish 
Verterbukh", he defines 'fleyt' as 'flute' in English and 'chalil' in 
Hebrew.  However, he also has the following Yiddish terms:

'fayf'= fife in English and 'chalil' in Hebrew.
'fayfiyol'= flute in English and 'chalil' in Hebrew.
'fayfer'= whistler, piper in English and 'mekhalel bachalil' in Hebrew.
'fayfke'= blowpipe in English...
'dude'= pipe in English and 'chalil' in Hebrew.
'dudke'= pipe in English and 'chalil' in Hebrew.

My home dictionary shows 5 different kinds of German recorders and none of 
these recorders look like the traditional plastic ones most kids get in 
school today or the wooden ones most people saw in Israel in the last 50 
years.

It seems that there are so many different kinds of recorders, fifes, and 
whistles, that even the lexicographers couldn't tell them apart or how they 
were different.  This confusion may mean that they didn't bother to ask the 
experts.  It may also be the case that some of these instruments were used 
by the armies and not by Jews; or (2) that these instruments had limited 
use (geographic or functional) and there were not sufficient reason to for 
Jews to develop a terminology for them.

We do know that:
Sirene = siren, which should be the same as a ' liaremfayfl'
Dampfayfl should mean a "steam whistle"  (Is there any other kind of
instrument propelled by steam??)

It would be nice to know precisely what any of the following are:
fifak, verbl, tibye, flazsholet, hudok/gudok.

No time for any more research.


Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky



----------
From:  Itzik Gottesman [SMTP:itzik (at) mail(dot)utexas(dot)edu]
Sent:  Wednesday, March 22, 2000 10:49 AM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant
Subject:  Re: Need Yiddish Vocabulary for Music

According to Stuchkov's entry under "muzik-instrumentn, shtim" group 286,
pages 256-257, the following are listed under the "flute" category:
"fleyt, fyol, shtolper [klezmer language], aktavfleyt, pifero, fayfyol,
tibye, pikolo, flazsholet" . So piccolo is listed in this group.

 A paragraph later he has another grouping " fayf, fayfl, fifak, verbl,
dude, dudke, svistok, svistshun, visl [american], fabrikfayfl, hudok,
gudok, liaremfayfl, sirene, dampfayfl, damffayfl etc"

I thought Paula/Perl's suggestion of "fayfl" for recorder was a good one.

As you see, Stuchkov includes some klezmer jargon. Other terms he lists:
clarinet - vursht (as in sausage, salami)
fiddle - varplye
trumpet - tshaynik [yes, as in "hak mir nit in."]
drum- tshekal
drummer - tshekalnik
klezmer - labroshnik
cantor - zhokhalnik

- Itzik



-----------------------------------
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Assistant Professor, Yiddish Language and Culture
Department of Germanic Studies
University of Texas at Austin
EPS 3.102
Austin, TX 78704-1190
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