 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Bryan Pardo
Date: 2002-01-17 13:38
Hi all,
There is a kind of uptempo Klezmer piece called a "freylakh" or perhaps "freylechs". Different sources seem to indicate one of these two spellings. One has the "s" on it, and appears to keep it even in the singular. Does anyone out there know which is more correct?
- Bryan Pardo
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Author: Steve Epstein
Date: 2002-01-18 05:58
This term is a transliteration of a Yiddish word, probably the same word as the German "freulich", which means joyful or happy (although I'm no language expert). By transliteration, I mean the spelling phonetically in English of a word from another language. Yiddish was (and still is) a German dialect with a liberal dose of Hebrew, Russian, and various other languages, including English, spoken by many Eastern European Jews.
The "ch" is pronounced like it is in German, with the back of the tongue going to the roof of the mouth (hey, is this anchor-tongueing?:-) In recent years, it has become fashionable to use the Russian-looking "kh" to indicate this and to indicate that the pronunciation of this gutteral is harder than "ch", more like it is in Hebrew. Again, I remind you that I am not a language scholar. Putting an "s" on the end probably indicates plural but may also be the singular, what you get when you pronounce this gutteral sound quickly. The "s" just slips on involuntarily.
It really would be nice to post topics like these on the klezmorim forum; it's so under-utilized. But since it's here already, I chose to respond to it here.
Steve
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Author: ron b
Date: 2002-01-18 06:43
According to one web Yiddish dictionary: Frailech = Happy
I'd guess, as Steve does, that it's closely related to German 'freulich'.
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