# Yiddish: Geh feifen ahfen yam



## raptor

Hello,

Am I correct in recalling that Geh feifen ahfen yam means literally "Go peddle your fish elsewhere" referring to people trying to sell you something without your interest or consent?

Also, how would this be written in Yiddish?

Thanks!

raptor


----------



## Forero

I am not familiar with the saying, and I don't recognize "ahfen", but it seems to be:

_Go whistle ??? sea._

Sorry my computer doesn't type Yiddish, but:

giml, tsvey judn
fey, pasakh tsvey judn, fey, nun
???
yud, pasakh alef, mem


----------



## nurBahnhof

There's a popular curse "Gey kakn oyfn yam" (גײ קאַקן אױפֿן ים) which literally means go take a crap on the sea.  It could be used in that situation, but emphasizes where the peddler can go as oppose to the actual act of peddling.

It's possible that you're thinking of a euphemism, dialectical variation, or perhaps something completely different.


----------



## Forero

Welcome to the forum, nurBahnhof.

I think that's the curse we were looking for.  Change קאַקן ("kakn") to פײַפן ("fayfn") and we have a version fit for "mixed company".  (I imagine "kakn" changed to "pisn" - cleaner I suppose - and then to "fayfn" through a minor spelling change, and voilà.)


----------



## berndf

It makes sense. Even as a German speaker with limited Yiddish knowledge I would immediately recognise _ahfn_ and _oyfn_ as variants (German _aufm_). _Pissn_ isn't really cleaner than _kakn _but your surmise that _fayfn_ be a euphemism for _kakn_ is intuitively very plausible. In German, _geh pfeifen_ is not really used as a euphemism for _geh scheißen_ but every native speaker would immediately know what is meant.


----------



## David

You asked how it would be written in Yiddish. גיי פײפן ויפן יאם. I believe the word often pronounced as afn is spelled ויפן in "standard" Yiddish. 

 פּייפּן (fayfn) means to whistle (cognate with Engish pipe and fife, two forms of whistles). It is indeed a euphemistic "polite company" version of גיי קאקן ויפן יאם, "go shit in the ocean," "buzz off," "go screw yourself." Perhaps פייפן may also be taken to mean פּישן (pishn), as Forero suggests in his second post, but I think his first suggestion, "Go whistle in the sea" is correct. "Go peddle your fish elsewhere" is an English equivalent, but not a translation. Other equivalents might be "Go fry ice," or as they say in Spanish, "Go fry asparagus."


----------



## berndf

David said:


> I believe the word often pronounced as afn is spelled ויפן in "standard" Yiddish.


 
The monophthongization_ oy -> ah_ is to my knowledge typical for Galician/Ukrainian Yiddish.


----------



## Slinkessa

In Yiddish "feifen" (to whistle) is a euphemism for passing gas. Ahfn or oifn is spelled like this in Yiddish: 
אופן
 
I guess "go fly a kite" or "go play in traffic" would be an equivalent.


----------



## duvija

Oh, the marvels of technology. Very old threads...

The full saying in Yiddish is 'gey kakn afn yam vestu hobn triflaj' (with the vowels shifting according to the required sub-dialect )


----------



## Forero

duvija said:


> Oh, the marvels of technology. Very old threads...
> 
> The full saying in Yiddish is 'gey kakn afn yam vestu hobn triflaj' (with the vowels shifting according to the required sub-dialect )


I'm having trouble making sense of that last word. Could you spell it for me?


----------



## duvija

"Triflakh" in transliteration (sorry, my 'j' comes from Spanish and not Yiddish). It's a light mixture made out of eggs and flour that you pour trickling down into a pot of boiling chicken broth (Want the recipe?). It's quite good. Presumably, the consistency will resemble what happens if you go 'kakn afn yam.'
(Try not to imagine it. Was I disgustingly clear enough?)


----------



## Haskol

The correct spelling of this phrase is *גיי פייפן אויפן ים *and not as written above by the (now banned) user David. 

It does indeed look like a combination of two separate Yiddish insults: *גיי פייפן *(go whistle) and *גיי קאקן אויפן ים *(go shit in the sea), both of which are vulgar ways of saying "get lost". Perhaps someone mixed up the two expressions or was trying to sound funny.


----------



## duvija

Haskol said:


> The correct spelling of this phrase is *גיי פייפן אויפן ים *and not as written above by the (now banned) user David.
> 
> It does indeed look like a combination of two separate Yiddish insults: *גיי פייפן *(go whistle) and *גיי קאקן אויפן ים *(go shit in the sea), both of which are vulgar ways of saying "get lost". Perhaps someone mixed up the two expressions or was trying to sound funny.


Sorry, your spelling of "*ים *" is Hebrew and not Yiddish, ok? Let's keep the vowel in Yiddish, where it belongs.


----------



## Abaye

So how ים should be spelled? Wiktionary supports the "Hebrew" spelling: גיי קאַקן אויפֿן ים - Wiktionary


----------



## סייבר־שד

I don't see anything wrong with Haskol's spelling of ים , either, that's how it's supposed to be spelled, since it _is_ indeed a word of Hebrew origin, just like הנאה, לבנה, פנים or כוונה.
The Soviet Union did use at one point a more phonetical spelling of words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin: יאַם, האַנאָע, לעבאָנע, כאַוואָנע, פאָנעם and so on, but that's about it. Other than that, the original Hebrew-Aramaic spelling has generally been preferred, and is still the one in use today.


----------



## duvija

יאַם
of course! It wasn't just the Soviet Union, by the way. It's just Yiddish.


----------



## Haskol

יאם is as far as I'm concerned an incorrect spelling. Loshn Koydesh words in Yiddish are nearly always spelled according to their original spelling and not phonetically. 

Here and there you can find people who spelled some words phonetically, but it is by and large considered a mistake except, as cyber-sheyd said, in the defunct Soviet style. And anyways, Soviet spelling would have been יאַמ, not יאַם.


----------



## berndf

Haskol said:


> Loshn Koydesh words in Yiddish are nearly always spelled according to their original spelling and not phonetically.


That's what I have learned too.


----------



## סייבר־שד

Haskol said:


> And anyways, Soviet spelling would have been יאַמ, not יאַם.


Thank you very much for the correction! I'm so used to writing such words in Hebrew that I missed that completely.


----------



## duvija

Sorry, יאַם, was always spelled with a final 'm'. I went to school in Uruguay (yes, ICUF) and that's how we wrote it. And yes, we used pure 'idish' (as spelled in Spanish speaking countries, and not 'Yiddish'. In Spanish, even transliteration is different, did everybody know that?). I believe you don't accept political differences in spelling. Your laws are different than mine. There are no kingdoms - nor Academies. I hope whoever reads this will learn a few things. Not everything in idish is English/Hebrew based. 

I'm a 'idishist' and a linguist. Was involved in the idish theater for 30 years, and no, there were not Broadway musicals. Life in other areas of the world may be different than what you were made to believe. At least, we should respect that.


----------

