Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods
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The entry for kvetchn (the verbal form) in Uriel Weinreich's Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary reads simply: "press, squeeze, pinch; strain." There is no mention of grumbling or complaint. You can kvetch an orange to get juice, kvetch a buzzer for service, or kvetch mit di pleytses, shrug your shoulders, when no one responds to the buzzer that you kvetched. All perfectly good, perfectly common uses of the verb kvetchn, none of which appears to have the remotest connection with the idea of whining or complaining. The link is found in Weinreich's "strain" which he uses to define kvetchn zikh, to press or squeeze oneself, the reflexive form of the verb. Alexander Harkavy's 1928 Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary helps make Weinreich's meaning clearer. It isn't simply to strain, but "to strain," as Harkavy has it, "at stool," to have trouble doing what, if you'd eaten your prunes the way you were supposed to, you wouldn't have any trouble with at all. The connection with complaint lies, of course, in the tone of voice: someone who's kvetching sounds like someone who's paying the price for not having taken his castor oil—-and he has just as eager an audience. A really good kvetch has a visceral quality, a sense that the kvetcher won't be completely comfortable, completely satisfied, until it's all come out. Go ahead and ask someone how they're feeling; if they tell you, "Don't ask," just remember that you already have. The twenty-minute litany of tsuris is nobody's fault but your own.—-from Born to Kvetch The New York Times - William Grimes Mr. Wex, a Yiddish translator, university teacher, novelist and stand-up comic, has many such examples up his sleeve, but Born to Kvetch is much more than a greatest-hits collection of colorful Yiddish expressions. It is a thoughtful inquiry into the religious and cultural substrata of Yiddish, the underlying harmonic structure that allows the language to sing, usually in a mournful minor key.
1Kvetch Que C'Est? : the origins of Yiddish12Six feet under, baking bagels : Yiddish in action293Something else to kvetch about : Yiddish dialects474Pigs, poultry, and pampers : the religious roots of Yiddish595Discouraging words : Yiddish and the forces of darkness916You should grow like an onion : the Yiddish curse1177If it wasn't for bad luck : Mazl, misery, and money1418"Bupkes means a lot of nothing" : Yiddish and nature1599Making a tsimmes : food - kosher and treyf17510A slap in the tukhes and hello : Yiddish life from birth to bar mitzvah19711More difficult than splitting the Red Sea : courtship and marriage22112The good for the goyim : sex in Yiddish24913It should happen to you : death in Yiddish265
