דווקא (davka)

    • It's Aramaic.
    It appears in the Talmud as "precisely" or "exactly".
    Its root דו"ק is close to the Hebrew root די"ק which you might know from words like "דיוק", "דקדקן" "לדייק" , and revolves around punctuality and accuracy. It received another meaning in Israeli colloquial Hebrew which is "spite"/"to spite", which if you think about it, isn't so far from the meaning of "exactly".
    "אני אעשה לך דווקא" = "I will spite you" or "I will do it to you exactly like that".
     
    Thanks Tararam,
    I thought it came from arabic, probably because of the "debka" (the dance), but it davka came from Aramaic.
    I still think there are some uses of the word which necessitate a whole sentence to translate like in :
    From all this crowd this curse had davka to fall on me ! If you translate by "precisely/exactly" it's not enough, the sense of fatality is missing.
    In other words, the word is sometimes unique and proper to hebrew only.
    Do you agree?
     
    Last edited:
    rolmich said:
    From all this crowd this curse had davka to fall on me ! If you translate by "precisely/exactly" it's not enough, the sense of fatality is missing.
    In other words, the word is sometimes unique and proper to hebrew only.
    Do you agree?
    Click to expand...
    "Davka" (paraît-il) est très exactement traduit par "c'est... que" / "c'est bien... que" / "c'est juste...que".
    "De toute cette foule c'est bien sur moi que ça tombe".
     
    I only received a partial answer (from Tararam) to my question. So, I reformulate it :
    Is davka a word proper to hebrew only, needing a whole sentence to translate its meaning (like nu and stam for ex) ?
    Do you know other words which are proper to hebrew only ?
     
    It means סיפוק בשפה העברית where it is only satisfied in hebrew, meaning it only exists as a whole in hebrew and never has a direct translation.
     
    arielipi said:
    It means סיפוק בשפה העברית where it is only satisfied in hebrew, meaning it only exists as a whole in hebrew and never has a direct translation.
    Click to expand...
    But nobody in this forum speaks Congolese. So how can we guarantee that something exists only in Hebrew and cannot be translated to Kikongo or Lingala?
     
    origumi said:
    But nobody in this forum speaks Congolese. So how can we guarantee that something exists only in Hebrew and cannot be translated to Kikongo or Lingala?
    Click to expand...
    I gave nu and stam as examples. These words are typical of the modern hebrew language and need a whole sentence (or at least several words) to be translated in english, and have also several uses.
    Am I clear ?
     
    Yes you are, and as in nu and stam, davka goes to the same type.

    now: it can be used as "especially" (בחרתי דווקא אותה ולא אותה) , "on purpose" (הוא דווקא עושה לה) (הוא דווקא מעצבן אותה) (הוא מעצבן אותה דווקא)
    hes doing it to annoy here: "mom, tommy's doing it "on purpose", tell him to stop!!"
     
    rolmich, check out the thread I made a few months ago on this very topic of davka. In some cases davka can be translated as precisely or "in fact", in other cases it seems like it's a "modal particle". Other languages like German also have such words: small words that are very difficult to translate but convey the mood of the speaker, in the case of "davka", it's one of spite, annoyance, or exasperation.
     
    I asked someone who knows several languages if he knew Yiddish. He replied אני יודע אנגלית, עברית, ספרדית וקצת ערבית. אני לא יודע יידיש למרות שסבתא שלי דווקא כן יודעת

    How would you translate דווקא in this context?

    "I know English, Hebrew, Spanish, and a little Arabic. I don't know Yiddish although my grandmother...does indeed know (Yiddish)."

    I think he forgot the definite article before סבתא (grandmother), but that's a separate issue.
     
    The word דווקא in this case implies a contradiction:
    in contrary to me or to the expected she speaks Yidish.
    More examples:
    אתה כנראה לא מבין אותי
    אני דווקא מבין אותך מצויין

    כשאני לא לוקח מטריה דווקא אז יורד גשם

    אתה עושה את זה דווקא כדי להרגיז אותי (=you do it in a purpose to make me angry)

    My English is not so good,
    and I doubt there is an exact translation.
     
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