FW: "Jass" card game in 1911 (from Barry Popik)

[W Brewer]

GL Cohen wrote: <<<Yachts here is the German word Jux>>>

WB:  My train of thought has been derailed. Can?t you guys read my mind?
[yachts] = <y(es)> + <(kn)ots> (I.e. the <y> of YES plus the <ots> of
KNOTS.) This is the ancient Chinese mode of indicating pronunciation known
as fanqie, which I must resort to in the 21st century because IPA has not
yet been invented. What Herr Hoffmann muttered was something like: <die
Jazzmusik> [yots.muzik], which in an IPA-less environment was rendered [dee
YACHTS.muZiK]. But, as I recall, <der Jazz> is usually rendered in German
something closer to English: [dZEz]. So that pronouncing German <Jazz> as
[yachts = <y(es)> + <(kn)ots>] wahrscheinlich einer Jux war. Now, according
to Wikipedia s.v. Yahtzee, that game-name originated from the English word
<yachts>, allegedly because the rich couple that invented the game did so
on their yacht; this struck me as a gimmicky marketing legend. My brilliant
leap involves a connection between the game of Yahtzee (a poker-like dice
game, originally called Yachts [yots]) and the citations in Kluge of Swiss
German Jass (card game) < Dutch (joker card). Ergo, Herr Professor
Hoffmann?s <die Jazzmusik>, with a German-orthographic spelling
pronunciation, could have meant (joker-music) or the like. Here?s a smiley
face (|:^o). However, seriously, I am unsure of a correspondence of finals:
could Dutch/Swiss <ss, i.e. scharfes-S, beta, [Ess-tsEt]> correspond to
Standard German [ts] <z, zz>? (BTW the sound of Yahtzee reminds me of what
my landlady used to call everone: Schatzie [SHOT.see] (darling). But also
rhymes with Nazi.)

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