JustASC

Knock me over: I grew up using “fumferred” as a word meaning “stumbling over one’s words.” I just thought it was some homegrown onomatopoeia, and wasn’t even sure anyone else used it outside my own family.

Now J.J. Goldberg uses “fumfitted” in a post, and I found out it’s actually a Yiddishism! I found a reference in a book called Give Peace a Stance by Rabbi Hanoch Teller, who explains, “the word is fumfit, and roughly speaking it combines the English terms splutter, mutter, and stutter.” (My parents grew up with Yiddish, to one degree or another.)

Go know. I had the same experience with the word “regn” (rhymes with beggin’) which is how my father refers to rain. For most of my life I thought he was just punning on the homophonic spelling of rain (reign) and pronouncing the silent g. Regn, of course, is Yiddish for rain.  You may, or may not, know it from one of the verses in Tumbalalaika:*

Meydl, meydl, ch’vel bay dir fregen,
Vos kan vaksn, vaksn on regn?

Maiden, maiden tell me again
What can grow, grow without rain?

By the way, my mother, z”l, named our dog “Maydl.” That one I understood.

*You know, the folk song:  ”Tumbala, tumbala, tumbala-laika…” Which reminds me of another story, this one told by Steve Feldman, who I knew when he worked at Biblical Archaeology Review.  Steve was once at a wedding and a strolling klezmer violinist was taking requests. Steve asked if he knew ”Rumania.”

“Never heard of it,” said the musician. 

“But it’s a famous klezmer song. You know, ‘Rumania,’” said Steve.

“I still never heard of it,” said the violinist.

“C’mon,” said Steve. “It goes, ‘Rumania, Rumania, Ru-MAN-ia…”

“Oh!” said the violinist. “You mean ‘Rumania, Rumania’!”