I have learned the following tidbit from NPR and Chicago Public Radio’s “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”
Apparently, Condaleeza Rice has become such a frequent visitor to Israel in recent years, that Israeli government officials have adopted a new slang term, l’kandel. I’m not sure how the conjugate this. The radio show only noted how to pronounce the infinitive. This word is apparently derived from Condi’s name is used to refer to the act of shuffling about between various meetings, saying many things, getting nothing done.
Aside from the surface humor of this, I’m also amused by the fact that no word for this already existed in the Israeli political lexicon. I’m amazed frankly.
Not knowing how to conjugate this verb, let me just say that during this short week before Thanksgiving, with many people either physically or mentally on vacation, a lot of people are l’kandel-ing.
Oooh! Oooh! let me try — we’ve been doing this in Biblical Hebrew. (Of course, one of the participants in Wait, Wait… threatened violence if anyone mentioned conjugation again…)
Kandalti Kandalnu
Kandalta Kandl’tem
Kandalt Kandl’ten
Kandal Kand’lu
Kandlah Kand’lu
And since we’ve only done pa’al so far, I won’t be trying any of the other 127 forms I used to know by heart. It’s amazing how much grammar one can forget in 25 years.
L
I suspect that Harold’s “l’kandel-ing” might be “M’Kandlu.”
From your transliteration, it looks like a pi-eil verb.
Yes, foreign words that become Hebrew verbs are generally pi’el (with some exceptions, such as “l’haklik” – “to click”). So it would be kindalti, kindalta, etc.
i’ve been kandeling for the past 4 months.
hoohah bsing skills.
אחרי שאני כותב זה, אני מקנדל בירושלים