Michael Wex Kvetches
I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Michael Wex’s book about the Yiddish language, “Born to Kvetch”. The author reads the book himself, which is a good thing, given the requirements of pronunciation, and the flavor it lends the book. Wex is described in the blurb as a stand-up comic, among other accomplishments, but he is really a scholar of the Yiddish language, and seeks to revive Yiddish. World War II had a lot to do with the decline of Yiddish — another consequence of German toxicity in 20th century world history.
This is not a feel good book with chicken soup and Yiddish curses, although it has some of that. It is a book about language. It reveals the way language weaves itself into, and makes manifest, consciousness itself. The despair, anger, deep irony, cutting humor, deep anxieties expressed in Yiddish words and usage, are revelatory of the experience of a people. Language as living history. Yiddish has influenced English in very deep ways, right down to inflection and word order. Already you’re discouraged?
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Language is an expression of the collective genius of our species. All languages. It has always struck me how poetical many words are, more than single strokes of genius making a distinction, but extensions of our imaginative connection to the world.
The word “gimlet” means drill. The very object described, its very shape, in the form of a “T”, suggests it goes as far back as toolmaking itself. The expression “gimlet eye” means a hard stare — a look that drills.
