Troyern

Pronunciation: TROY-er-en
Definition: to be sad, grieving, or mourning
Example Sentence: I’m troyern, but I don’t know why.

Some Fun Thoughts:

There are three parts to this section today and I shall try to keep them brief.

Part I: Picking and using a Yiddish word for English audiences can be challenging. We use many Yiddish words in our day-to-day: tuches, kvetch, nosh, shtick. But it is not “Yiddish,” so to speak. Yiddish is written in Hebrew and a full language. We are using—in some senses creating—a Yiddish/English hybrid, which is beautiful. So at times we must get creative and bring our word choices into modernity.

Part II: When researching troyern, I found very wrenching expressions of grief, like mourning the death of a loved one, but also abstract feelings of sadness. All of these uses were also written in Yiddish. Sholem Aleichem wrote, “Yidishe mayses lozn zikh oys, tsum maynstn, troyerik” or “Jewish stories end, for the most part, on a sad note.” Another common phrase, A kluger zun makht zayn tate tsufridn; a narisher zun iz der troyer fun der mame; or, A wise son makes his father glad; a foolish son is the grief of his mother. Each use so alive with a version of the root word and complex cultural meaning. I, for one, am guilty of assuming the Yiddish words I use are stagnant, simply words, not part of a living language. Here with troyern, we see different forms expressing different parts of speech communicating different meanings. As we get deeper into the Yiddish language, I will try to showcase the breadth and vitality of each word. I will also try to keep the sentences fresh and modern, which I tried to do today. To me, it is so current to be sad and not know why… or to be sad for all reasons and none at all. I suppose another use of this newsletter is to be able to expand how we express and appreciate how people have expressed before us. I’ve had a bad couple of days, I will be the first to admit, and I appreciated the fresh perspective this word gave: yesterday ended on a sad note, in whatever ambiguous way that may be.

Part III: I am a bad supplier—at least in the capitalist sense. I have a product, you signed up for the product, and I owe you this product. (In the communist sense, I suppose I’m fine. The worker [me] would try to overtake the means of production from the administration [also me] so we just turtles-all-the-way-down to not worrying about it.) I apologize for skipping a few days. I am human—a worse human than my brother in terms of getting things out—but I do hope to be better about it. And I hope that you know that I appreciate you, dear readers, and that I do feel troyern any time I miss a day. (On the other hand, in a capitalist sense, you don’t pay for this, so I’m probably fine… I’m doing it for free and that’s just socialism.) At any rate, I’ll see you all tomorrow.