David Gower asked for "fresh ideas" for Purim. Here's mine.
Why are the Purim pastries known as Haman-tashen (Haman's pockets) in
Yiddish called @oZNay-Haman (ears of Haman, using @ for the letter aleph)
in Hebrew?
From a culinary viewpoint, the Yiddish expression is very sensible. This
triangular pastry has a filling, usually poppy seed, and the dough is
folded over the filling to form a "pocket" that contains it. So the Yiddish
term was borrowed into modern Hebrew.
Tashen is not a sensible word in Hebrew. Giving the Yiddish sh a zh-sound
(as in English measure, pleasure) and mis-dividing the Yiddish phrase as
Hamant-ozhen would cause a Hebrew speaker to hear Hamant-@oZeN (literally,
Haman's-ear) which was grammatically "corrected" to @oZNay-Haman (ears of
Haman).
Enjoy,
Izzy
Beer Sheva
054-754-2744
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