American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots

2. Klezmer-loshn: The Language of Jewish Folk Musicians

In 1888, Sholem Aleichem published Stempenyu, a novel about a Berdichev violinist of the same name.1 In chapter 3, Stempenyu and his klezmer kapelye arrive at a wedding, where he notices an attractive young woman. The following conversation ensues (in Joachim Neugroschel’s translation): “Who’s the chick next to the frau-to-be?” asked Stempeniu in musician ’s lingo, staring at lovely Rachel. “Hey, Rakhmiel!” he said to one of the swollen-cheeked apprentices. “Go and check her out, but snappy man, snappy!” Rakhmiel quickly came back with a clear answer: “That’s no chick, man, she’s already hitched. Dig, she’s Isaak-Naphtali’s daughter-in-law, and she comes from Skvirre. That’s her ol’ man over there. The one with the velvet cap!” “You’re too much, baby!” said Stempeniu cheerily. “You checked it out that fast? Man, she is really dynamite! A righteous chick! Dig those eyes!” “If you like,” the swollen-cheeked boy asked Stempeniu, “I’ll go and rap with her. . . .” “Go to hell!” replied Stempeniu. “No one asked you to be my go-between, dig! I’ll do my own rappin’ with her!”2 The “musician’s lingo” (klezmer-loshn) used by Stempenyu and Rakhmiel is represented in this fragment by fourteen words and expressions that Sholem Aleichem (or his editors) felt needed translation into “normal ” Yiddish in footnotes. chapter 2 Klezmer-loshn The Language of Jewish Folk Musicians robert a. rothstein 24 Figure 2.1 Page from Sholem Aleichem’s 1888 novel Stempenyu. Photo by UMass Photographic Services. klezmer-loshn yiddish shekhte nekeyve (woman) smisanke kale (bride) probe oys ver gevor (find out) mehetam ver zi iz (who she is) khidke geshvind (quickly) shekhtl meydl (girl) yoldovke vaybl (married woman) yold man (husband) katerukhe hitl (cap) klive sheyne (beautiful) matret kukt (looks) zikres oygn (eyes) tirn shmuesn (chat) mit tsuzenikhe mit der doziger (with her) Klezmer-loshn is an example of a professional argot or jargon. Those terms are used to refer to a specialized variety of a language (here, Yiddish) used by members of a particular professional or occupational group. Such an argot differs from slang in the relative size of the group that uses it: typically small and more specialized in the case of the former , larger and more general (e.g., speakers of a certain generation) in the latter. Both concepts are distinguished from that of a dialect, which is usually understood to have geographic rather than professional or chronological boundaries. A dialect, moreover, normally differs from the standard language in phonology and grammar as well as in vocabulary , while argots and slangs are typically made up of a body of words and phrases that are not part of the standard language (or not with their specific argot or slang meaning). Argot, slang, and dialects may influence one another and may affect the standard language as well. In American English, for example, the word cool moved from musical argot into youth slang; heist moved from underworld argot (cant) into relatively general media use. Professional or occupational jargons fill certain needs. They provide for group solidarity among, say, truck drivers or students. They provide a means for concealment (and/or intimidation of outsiders), as reflected in the popular sense of the term jargon (e.g., medical jargon). Indeed, the 26 Robert A. Rothstein original French meaning of argot, according to the Larousse,3 is langue des malfaiteurs—language of criminals. Probably the most studied of jargons is, in fact, the “language of criminals ,” known by such terms as ganovim-loshn (Yiddish), Rotwelsch or Gaunersprache (German), blatnoi iazyk (Russian), and others. Its first analysts were often police officials, who published dictionaries for internal police use. A number of students of the subject noted the international character of underworld argot in Europe, in the sense of finding common elements in the criminal argot of various countries. Among these common elements are numerous Yiddishisms. Consider, for example , two words cited here in their Polish form: ksywa, false papers (cf. Yiddish ksuve/ksive, [ornate] writing) and dintojre, kangaroo court (cf. Yiddish din-toyre, lawsuit in a rabbinical court). The presence of these and other Yiddishisms in European cant has been interpreted variously by Yiddish linguists. Max Weinreich, for example, simply observed that “in creating their secret language, thieves have recourse to those linguistic elements that are unknown to the majority of the population.”4 Ber...