Taytsh

Word Entry

DEFINITION(S)

I can't figure out what this word means, and it doesn't seem to be in any Yiddish dictionaries. I think it may mean something like "hail," as in "Hail to democracy!" Here are the exact lines of the poem: הער דאקטאר, הער קאנצלער -- צי יענע, צי די עס לעבע, עס האך די דעמאקראטי

COMMENTS

  • Mundart Press

    Hi Roizy,

    I'm still looking into this.

    My first guess would be that it is a ,,daytshmerish" spelling and pronunciation of ,,hoykh," but I asked a friend and he isn't sure about that theory.

    He wants to know if you can cite the source poem for us?

    Best,
    Yosele

    16 March 2015, 10:37 am

  • Roizy

    Thanks, Yosele. I posed the same question on facebook and like your friend, someone assumed that it's daytshmerish for hoykh. Another person suggested that in German "Hoch is also an exclamation, something like "up with" - "Up with democracy!" That seems to work with my original theory of "hail."
    At any rate, the lines are from Peretz Markish's poema Der Fertsikyeriker Man. They are Lines 5 and 6 of Section 28 in Part 2. As far as I know, this text is not available anywhere in digital version.

    16 March 2015, 10:54 am

  • Mundart Press

    Hi Roizy,

    I think ,,hoykh" does sound like a good fit.

    My friend said if the theory of ,,hoykh" was right and Peretz Markish was the author, he might be satirizing the pseudo German of American socialists.

    He said he couldn't quite understand it as German "es hoch die Demokratie" but it doesn't seem as strange to me. On the other hand, but probably less likely, maybe it is supposed to be some kind word opposite of the ,,es lebe" directly preceding it, but in that case I would expect another ,,tsi" following ,,es lebe," and preceding ,,es hoykh" and I can't think of any word that would be a good fit for that scenario.

    Al dos guts,
    Yosele

    16 March 2015, 12:54 pm

  • Roizy

    Markish has a habit of turning nouns into verbs, adjectives into nouns, etc., so his phraseology is more difficult to figure out; we can't rely on typical parts of speech or word usage to help us out.

    Re your suggestion that the word might be an opposite of "lebe" -- Markish actually often does those types of contrary couplets, but in this case, I have a feeling "hukh" is meant to reinforce "lebe" somehow.

    16 March 2015, 4:48 pm

  • Mundart Press

    Yeah, I think you're right. It's got to be a daytshmerish verb (or perhaps exclamation) meaning "hail" or "up with."

    Looking for it as a German verb I would expect to find it under ,,hohen", but I am not finding that or ,,hochen."

    It's interesting that you wrote hukh since that was one of the spellings that my friend said he would have expected to see, but with a phonetic Soviet spelling ,,hokh" seems likely too.

    Best and thank you for the citation as well,
    Yosele

    16 March 2015, 7:57 pm