Why Do Israelis Have So Many Words for “Wear,” and Which One Applies to Wearing One’s Coronavirus Face Mask?

How many ways are there to wear a coronavirus face mask? There’s the right way, of course, with the strings looped behind your ears and the mask covering your nose and mouth. And there are the wrong ways of either leaving your nose uncovered or your mouth uncovered too, with the mask somewhere beneath it like a chin strap.

Three ways, with possible variations. Yet in Hebrew there are at least four, none having to do with what you cover and what you don’t.

First, though, a word of explanation. Hebrew, having a much smaller vocabulary than English, often has only one or two words to choose from in places where English has many. Take, for example, the act of stretching one’s lips while sometimes emitting a throaty or nasal sound. In English this can be variously described as to laugh, to smile, to beam, to grin, to chuckle, to chortle, to guffaw, to giggle, to titter, to snicker, to smirk, or to simper. That’s twelve different verbs, each with its own meaning. Hebrew has only four counterparts: tsaḥak, ḥiyekh, giḥekh, and tsiḥkek. True, it is possible to arrive at most of the nuances of the English twelve by adding qualifiers, which is often what a translator must do. One might translate “he grinned” as hu giḥekh mi’ozen l’ozen, “he giḥekhed from ear to ear,” and “he guffawed” as hu giḥekh b’koley kolot, “he giḥekhed at the top of his voice.” There’s no way, however, of matching the English word for word.