Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.003 May 20, 1996 1) Tshatshke/tsatske (Paolo Agostini) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 19:46:56 +0200 From: pagos@mbox.vol.it Subject: Nokh a mol iber tshatshkelen Harvey Spiro in his sagacious posting [5.315] noted: Jastrow's 1903 Dictionary of the Talmud cites the word tsa'atsu'im (root tsadi-ayin-tsadi-ayin), used in the Tanakh in II Chronicles (3,10), to mean "miniatures, babes, dolls." Ignoring the late 20th century slang meaning of "babes," we have a potential source for the [tshotshke = toy, knickknack] meaning, plus a potential link to [tsatske = attractive female]. The second Hebrew word, sh'a'shu'a (shin-ayin-shin- ayin) appears first in Rabbinic Hebrew, according to Jastrow, who cites it in Tankhuma, Cant. R. and Pesikta R., meaning "delight, pleasure." A hartsiken dank to Harvey Spiro for drawing our attention to the Hebrew words. As a matter of fact the word tsa'atsua' (tsadhe - 'ayin - tsadhe - waw - 'ayin) -- a hapax legomenon in the Bible, occurring Chron. II 3:10 in the pl. (tse'atsu'im) -- has the meaning of "image work, carving, casting, things formed by metal-casting" (the meaning in Modern Hebrew is "toy"). There's also a verb, i.e. ts'ts' (tsadhe - 'ayin - tsadhe - 'ayin), denominated from tsa'atsua. It means "to adorn, ornament". This verb supplies a key to explain the further meaning of "attractive, comely (woman)". The second Hebrew word mentioned by Harvey Spiro does not explain the meaning of "attractive". To wit, sh'sh' (shin - 'ayin - shin - 'ayin) is the Pilpel form of the verb shin - 'ayin - 'ayin (="to smooth, to besmear" and "to pat on" whence the further meanings of "to play (at)" -- e.g. Is 11:8 -- and "to treat fondly, to caress" -- e.g. Ps 94:18) (see Holliday, W.: A concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Leiden, 1988). Therefore the base sh'sh' (shin - 'ayin - shin - 'ayin) has two meanings: (A) 'to smooth, to besmear' (although it occurs in the Hitpalpel form only, in the meaning 'to blind oneself', lit. 'to paste one's eye, to be stuck shut -- of eyes' ), as well as (B) 'to take delight, to delight' -- cp. also the meaning of its Pilpel form shi'asha': 1. trans. "he delighted, amused, entertained"; 2. intr. "he sported, played, was amused" (see also Klein, E.: Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, Haifa and Jerusalem 1987) From a strictly semantical point of view, I would discard this base as a possible origin of the Yiddish word. Harvey Spiro poses then a very shrewd question: who borrowed from whom? Was the source for the Yiddish words Slavic or Hebrew? What if the source of both Slavic and Yiddish was Hebrew? As a matter of fact, Slavic languages seem to have preserved several words of Aramaic-Hebrew (Aramit) origin. Cp. for example Slavic *k6lbasa or *klobasa (=sausage) which, in Bernecker's eyes, originates from Hebrew "kol basar" (approx. "all meat"), although Bernecker was unable to explain how did the Hebrew compound-word get into Slavic (see Bernecker, E.: Slavisches etymologisches Woerterbuch. Heidelberg, 1908-1913, I:514) . The Slavic word "beseda" (=speech) possibly belongs to the same layer. Its etymology is unknown to date. Yet, IMHO, it could be related to Hebrew "beseder" (= in order, arranged). "Seder" in Post-Biblical Hebrew had the meaning of "succession, sequence, arrangement, order" (this is why the word is used as name of each section of the Mishnah). And a speech is nothing but a succession of arguments put into a certain order. The loss of the final consonant both in "kolbasar" and "beseder" is evidently due to the well-known fact that in earlier times the Slavic languages preferred words having "open" syllables (i.e. syllables ending with a vowel). In loanwords, this phenomenon caused the apocope of the ending consonant of words. Even a "typically Slavic" word like kosa ~ kasa (=scythe) is probably related to the Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew verb QSX (i.e. khaph - samekh - cheth), the meaning of which is "to cut off, trim, mowe". The same applies to the Slavic verb kopati 'to hoe, hack', which is possibly related to the Hebrew verb QFX (i.e. qoph - phe - cheth) 'to beat, strike' (cp. also Hungarian kapa 'hoe, hack'). The Slavic word kopac^ 'a tool to fallow the land, to break the soil' is probably an early borrowing from Hebrew qofits 'hatchet, chopper' (the latter deriving from the verb QFTS, i.e. qoph - phe - tsadhe, 'to chop, cut'). As concerning the concordance of Hebrew tsadhe versus Slavic tsh, we have to remind that the tsadhe was used and pronounced as an emphatic _s_, to say it could easily turn into a tsh. Further evidence is supplied by medieval Hebrew sources, e.g. the Turkish dignitary title of "talmatsh" (~ "tilmatsh") was translitterated as teth - lamadh - mem - tsadhe (!). Incidentally, the agro-technical words mentioned above show that the ancient Slavic peoples were probably taught basic agricultural practices by the Jews. *** How and when did these borrowings take place in the Slavic languages? H Baratz maintains that in the oldest Russian writings of a legal character there are Hebrew, mostly Biblical-Talmudic elements, and that these go back to Khazar times. Thus the fact that early Russian codes, including the "Zakon sudni liudem" ("Law for the Judging of the People"), contains traces of Mosaic and talmudic legislation, is due not to contact with the Catholic West, as has also been maintained, but to the influence of the Jewish Khazars. This view has been characterized by a Russian academician (I. V. Yagich) as "a scarlet thread for everyone to walk by" (Encyclopaedia Judaica , "Khazars", p. 948) N. Golb and O. Pritsak supplied further evidence to the presence of Khazarian Jews in Kiev during the last years of the 9th century, i.e. when the bulk of Slavic wordstock -- and the Russian state -- were "in statu nascendi". It is common knowledge that before the Rus' conquered Kiev, the city was under Khazarian administration (Golb-Pritsak: Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Cornell University Press, 1982). IMHO the Slavic word for _tshatshke_ is most likely a Hebrew loanword. There is an open question, though. Is the Yiddish word a Slavic loanword, or does it belong to the most ancient layer of the Yidishe mameloshn instead? Any comments would be appreciated. Kindest regards Paolo Agostini Padova, Italy ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.003