Coffee And Politics, Or: From Cups To Coups

By Dr. Jeremy Benstein, HATC Senior Consultant

The favorite joke of one of my sons, when he was about four years old, went as follows (translated from the original Hebrew): “A man was walking along, fell into a hole, and couldn’t get out. ‘God,’ he prayed, ‘Make a miracle for me!’ God answered: ‘With sugar or without sugar?'”  

Now, in order to get this joke, you have to understand that the word for “miracle” in Hebrew is nes, which also means “instant coffee.” So, if you ask someone to make you a nes, you’re more likely to get a cup of coffee than a miracle. Even from God.  

Nes, by the way, is actually short for nescafe, which though the brand name of a type of coffee made by Nestle, is generic in Israel for “instant coffee.” The correct term for that light brown powder dissolved in hot water (which is hardly divine, by any standard) would be kafeh names, literally “dissolving coffee.” Compared to other types of coffee, this one (pronounced “nah’mess”), indeed involves less mess, and thus is somewhat miraculous.  

Today Israel boasts world-class cafes in most cities and a burgeoning coffee culture, with a plethora of brews to fit every discerning palate. But once nes was one of a mere two types of Israeli coffee.  

The other was a sort of Turkish coffee that, instead of being cooked on the stove, is simply mixed in water like nes. But since it is essentially unbrewed coffee grounds, the miraculous dissolution does not occur. This leaves a thick, black sludge at the bottom of the glass, which looks a lot like mud, or in Hebrew, botz, which became the name for this potent beverage usually served in small glass cups.  

It’s not hard to imagine the chalutzim, Israeli pioneers, after a hearty mug of muddy botz in the morning, going out to drain the swamps — the bitzot, same root — whose black peat looked and probably smelled about the same.  

Miracle or Mud? 

These two types of coffee seemed to define the two poles of Israeli reality: miracle or mud. Roses or thorns, paragon or pariah: a country of extremes. And it’s no accident that these are opposites. For the third type of coffee, which came on the scene a little later, is kafeh hafuch, or simply hafuch, meaning “opposite,” or “reversed.” Or upside-down, or inside-out, or backwards – from the Hebrew word hafuch means all those things. More on that to follow.  

In the case of coffee, though, it means something between a cappuccino and a latte (or café au lait) – a shot of espresso, with a lot of milk, and possibly some ketzef, whipped or steamed milk, depending on your taste. It’s not clear whether this is considered hafuch, backwards or reversed, because the hot milk is poured in first, and only then the coffee (not every barista would agree with that method), or simply because as opposed to nes, which is a lot of water and a little milk, this is the opposite. (While this coffee is usually not made at home, it is one of the most popular types ordered in cafes.)  

Many claim that this is a unique Israeli blend, but it turns out that in the Netherlands something like this type of coffee exists and is called verkeerd,“incorrect” or “cockeyed,” not unlike hafuch. Who knows? Perhaps it was not only the Turks who influenced Israeli coffee culture, but the Dutch as well.  

A revolutionary word 

The root of the word hafuch is h-f-ch, which may not evoke the same symbolism as do “miracles” and “mud,” but is also central to Israeli culture and history. The very oscillation between the “roses” and the “thorns” is an indication that reality here is very hafachpach, a beautiful word that means “changeable,” “volatile,” or “erratic.” It is in a form that repeats the second syllable (“f” and “p” being alternates of the same medial letter) to make it a descriptor, and almost onomatopoeic at that: one can almost hear the flip-flop.  

Probably the most well-known use of this root was by the legendary newscaster Haim Yavin, who broadcast the results of the election polls in the game-changing vote of 1977 when the Labor Party was ousted and the Likud, under the leadership of Menachem Begin, came to power for the first time in the history of the state.  

To this day, Israel uses paper ballots, and so it can take many hours to get even preliminary results. That year was the first time public opinion surveys were conducted at the polling stations to get an indication of the results before the final count. When Yavin got the news that the polls showed Likud with a significant lead, he summed it up in a word: “Mahapach!,” a reversal, an upset, a sea change.  

In saying this, Yavin meant that this was not nearly a mahapecha, a full-fledged “revolution.” And since it was achieved by democratic means, neither was it a haficha, a coup d’etat. But all of these words from h-f-ch signify different political developments that turn things, well, inside-out, upside-down, or backwards – at least relative to previous regimes or norms.  

Even though the Starbucks chain famously failed in Israel, it seems that the global coffee culture is here to stay. One might say that this trend is not hafich, “reversible.” This form makes the verb “X” mean “X-able,” such as achil “edible”, from aleph-ch-l, “eat,” or kari, “legible,” from k-r-aleph, “read” or dalik, flammable, from d-l-k, “burn.”  

But to someone who would claim that regime change or a bad political decision is irrevocable or irreversible, bilti hafich, we would say: lehefech! “Au contraire!” Hope springs eternal, and we have to believe that there’s still room for some surprising tahapuchot – turnarounds, changes of direction, though at times it may seem like this requires nothing short of a nes.  

The Heat Of Summer – In Hebrew

Dr. Jeremy Benstein, HATC Senior Consultant

In Israel, we take our vacations very seriously. Even a short respite from work or school here is called a chufsha, from the root ch-f-sh, meaning “freedom” or “liberty.” We don’t just vacation, we escape bondage! Even more dramatically, the two-month summer break from school, which we are currently in the thick of, is called hachofesh hagadol – “The Great Freedom.”

We devote most of this chofesh, an alternative word for “vacation,” to finding ways to beat the “heat,” chom. When there’s a heat wave – gal chom – we look for galim, waves of a different sort down at the chof, “beach” (unrelated to the word for vacation).

Jerusalem, the holy city, ‘ir hakodesh, is landlocked and surrounded by hills. But coastal Tel Aviv has many beautiful beaches, making it the preeminent ‘ir shel chol – meaning both “city of sand” but also “secular city” (chol from chullin, means “secular” or “profane,” while another chol means “sand”).

The words for hot and cold have parallel forms. “Hot” is cham, “warm” is chamim and “heating” is chimum. “Cold” is kar, “cool” is karir, and “cooling” is kirur. You may be chilling drinks in the mekarer, the refrigerator. But when you drink them, please go easy on the environment, and don’t use cups made of that light-cooling stuff – kal, light, fluffy + kar, cold = kalkar, “styrofoam.”

Struggling to find time for a drink? Maybe the kids would enjoy some time at camp. There are two words for camp in Israel. “Overnight camp” – often organized by a youth movement – is a machaneh, also the word for a military encampment.

The root, ch-n-h, also gives us the contemporary word for ‘park’ – not the type where you would go camping, but what you do with your car, lehachnot, “to park,” and chanayah, “parking.” And what do you call going camping in Hebrew? La’asot kemping, of course. Go figure.

The other word for “camp,” usually used for the day camp variety, is kaytana. Since day camp is usually for small children, I used to assume the word had something to do with katan, “small.” But it turns out it’s from the Aramaic word for “summer,” kayta – kayitz in Hebrew – which also gives us kayit, a “recreational holiday.”

If you can’t ship your kids off to camp, you can all go for a dip at the pool. A pool is a bereicha, and while there probably is no linguistic connection, you may feel that on these long days in this ‘Great Freedom,’ the chofesh hagadol, there is no greater blessing, beracha, than that.

Can Computers Invent New Hebrew Words? AI meets the Akademiya, or: “Eliezer Bot Yehudah”

By Dr. Jeremy Benstein, HATC Senior Consultant

Like France and Spain, Israel has a national institution to guide language policy: the Academy of the Hebrew Language – האקדמיה ללשון העברית. One of the tasks it is charged with is coming up with good Hebrew equivalents for foreign words that have made their way into Israeli Hebrew from English or other tongues – known as lo’azit, all languages that are not Hebrew. For this task they have a special committee, composed of members of the Academy, along with representative writers, teachers and other language mavens. They also have started asking the public what they think about new ideas and suggestions for Hebrew neologisms (new words, coinages).

Indeed, in the end it is the public that will decide the fate of a new word, and sometimes it’s hard to predict what will catch on, and what will die an ignominious death of neglect. For instance, no Israeli would ever say kompyuter, since the universally accepted (Academy-coined) word is machshev (from the root ch-sh-v, meaning both think and compute). However, the Academy’s attempt at creating a Hebrew equivalent for telefon in sach-rachok (from words meaning ‘speak at a distance’) failed completely, and t-l-f-n has been accepted as a “Hebrew root,” and a person can even metalfen (call) someone else, though of course now that’s mostly on the nayad (portable), sometimes still called the cellulari.

This important mission of adapting the language to changing realities and needs has been basic since the beginning of bringing Hebrew back as a spoken language. (Actually, even before, since Hebrew in antiquity and the medieval eras also needed new words and concepts to deal with foreign novelties and changing times). One of Eliezer Ben Yehudah’s central tasks in his journalistic and lexicographical work was indeed to enrich the contemporary vocabulary – either with “repurposed” words from the sources, or with new coinages based on earlier roots, or borrowings from the closely related language of Arabic.

Neologizing, or creating a new Hebrew word requires several different skill sets and knowledge bases. A thorough grounding in general linguistics and the structure of the Hebrew language is essential. Familiarity with the different historical strata and classic texts of the language is up there too, but so is imagination and creativity, as well as a common touch, a more emotional intelligence about how words function in society, and what will actually “work.”

Given that, could this complex task be entrusted to a computer? Even with the amazing progress that machine learning and artificial intelligence have demonstrated recently (in everything from self-driving cars, to chat-bots that are almost human), could they acquire and apply the various skills necessary to come up with new Hebrew words?

The answer seems to be yes. Hebrew University computer science students Moran Mizrahi and Stav Yardeni Seelig (under the direction of Prof. Dafna Shahaf) undertook to design a program that can suggest neologisms that are at least as likely and potentially attractive as what the Academy serves up. This brief description is based on their work (see below for reference).

What did they do? They designed a process whereby they take an original English word, tease out its semantic components, translate those components into Hebrew, identify the equivalent roots, run those through a generator with the relevant mishkalim, the nominal or verbal forms that the roots are expressed in, and voilá – out comes a (potential) new word. One example they go into in depth is the word palette (a board artists use to mix colors). Israelis generally say paleta, though there does exist a rarely-used Academy-coined word p’techa (from a Talmudic root p-t-ch that meant “to mix”). The word palette connects to: color (צבע), mix (ערבב, ערבל), and board (לוח, קרש). There are several possible mishkalim, but the most relevant is maf’ela, which can be used for tools. So out comes matzbe’ah, and also ma’arbelah. The generator also will make up compound words – such as luach tzeva, a color board –  and even “portmanteau words,” mushing two words into one, like kaduregel for “football” (kadur + regel) or ramzor for “traffic light” (remez + or). In this case the result was irbuluach, “a mixing board.” They then submit the ideas to a rating process done by actual humans, who grade each idea on three scales: suitability (as a Hebrew translation of the original idea); likability, and creativity.

Some words their generator came up with rated quite highly. For instance, Israelis use the word kapkeyk (ie cupcake) even though there is a “proper” word that has been proposed – עוגונית, oogonit, a diminutive of ‘ooga, “cake.” Their suggestion? גביעוגה, gevi’oogah, combining a word for cup gevi’a with cake, which may be a better proposal than the experts. And occasionally they come up with a whole list of possibilities. You’d think that an argumentative culture like Israel has a good word for debate, but most Israelis use that – dibeyt. The Academy has proposed ma’amat, from ‘imut, “confrontation.” But that has not been accepted at all. Their program suggests: sichuach (from sicha, conversation), pilmus (from the originally Greek pulmus, polemic or argument), krav diyun (a compound meaning “discussion battle”) and others.

Who knows? Maybe some day we will have a self-driving Academy.

 

Note:

The Hebrew essay Eliezer Bot Yehudah, by Moran Mizrahi and Stav Yardeni Seelig (under the direction of Prof. Dafna Shahaf) of the Hebrew University is a “popular” Hebrew language version of their academic paper, “Coming to Terms: Automatic Formation of Neologisms in Hebrew,” (published in Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2020, pp. 4918–4929). The “bot” can be tried here.