Yiddish is a High German language written in Hebrew characters that is spoken by Jews and descendants of Jews of central and eastern European origin.
(debated but not discredited by Wikipedia)
This seemed to be a revelation to me and yet I have no idea where I thought Yiddish came from, though somewhere in my head I had it connected to Hebrew (as descendant or precursor I am not sure). I also seem to think of it as (and excuse my stupidity and/or lack of sensitivity here) "Jewish Slang."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and blame the media. I'm going to blame every one from Woody Allen to Barbara Streisand to Mordechai Richler. I lay blame to anyone who worked the words mensch, hutspuh, meshuganuh, or tokhes into a news story. I even blame Laverne and Shirley for the shlemil/shlemazel nonsense.
3 comments:
What? What are you so WOR-ried about? Relax, already -- nobody thinks you're a Nazi or anything! Here, have a nice bagel ...but remember to cut *away* from your throat! Be careful with that knife, already!
All of what you say is true, even the seemingly contradictory parts. It is a little to simplistic to say Yiddish is German written in Hebrew. It was once a living language spoken by millions, by Eastern European and German Jews, and their descendants in America. (Examples: Emma Goldman once published a regular political column in an American Yiddish newspaper. There was a thriving Yiddish theatre world in New York in the late 19th/early 20th century.) Yiddish is about 80% German. It has a lot of Slavic and Hebrew in it as well. It is now, as a language, moribund (i.e., not dead but dying). But it is being kept alive as "Jewish slang" (although I would almost say "American cosmopolitan slang", because a lot of Gentiles use a lot of Yiddish slang these days.) So it is slang now, but was once much more.
I like the idea of "American cosmopolitan slang" and I know a lot of Gentiles use Yiddish words -- I have, often without realizing it. When I googled "common Yiddish words" I was stunned by some of the words on the list that are just so familiar I never gave a thought where they came from. The biggest surprise though was to find that shlemil/shlemozel actually roughly translates as fool/unlucky person -- I always thought they were meaningles syllables. Sigh. I still have much to learn.
Post a Comment