Yiddish

The Lord’s Prayer in Yiddish:

Yiddish (1000- ) is a form of German that was common among Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe for a thousand years. In the 1930s over 10 milliion spoke Yiddish. Hitler killed 5 million of them. Now fewer than 2 million speak Yiddish, though many more can understand it.

“Yiddish” is Yiddish for Jewish.

Words: About 70% are German, 20% Hebrew, 10% everything else (Polish, Russian, English, etc).

Script: Yiddish is written in Hebrew letters, going right to left. That means Hebrew words look just like they do in Hebrew.

History: A thousand years ago most Ashkenazi Jews lived in Germany and spoke German, though they often used Hebrew words for things from religion or history. Starting in the 1100s they were increasingly forced into ghettos. Many moved east into Poland, Hungary, Russia, etc. These things separated Yiddish from mainstream German.

Yiddish became the language of the home because women were not taught Hebrew. It has always been an underdog language because it was not Hebrew and because it never had an army and a navy.

Yiddish reached its glory days in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It had newspapers, theatres, schools, literature and all that. It was favoured by Orthodox Jews, who thought Hebrew was too sacred for ordinary use, and by socialists, who saw Yiddish as the language of the people.

Then came Hitler, who sent half of the Yiddish-speaking world to their deaths in the early 1940s. Two-thirds of the rest went to Israel.

Then came America and Israel:

• In Israel the Zionists successfully pushed Hebrew as the main language of the country.
• In America, from the 1950s onwards, the Jewish ghettos began to disappear and Jews became increasingly Americanized.

Because of the position Jews have had in Hollywood and New York, many Yiddish words and expressions have entered English:

Those I might have used on this blog:

big deal, bottom line, deli, Enjoy!, for free, glitch, Go see, hole in the head, hoo-ha, How come?, klutz, kosher, likewise (= me too), Look who’s talking, low-life, mish-mash, out of this world, plain and simple, He’s something, So what?, That’s for sure, What else?, What gives?, What’s to lose?, What’s with …?, You want to hear something? (as conversation starter).

Those I have used when talking:

Aha!, bagel, blintz, chutzpah, enough already, Get lost!, glitzy, Go figure, Mom-and-pop store, matzoh, maven, mezuzah, Only in America, pareveh, putz, seltzer water, shlep, shlock, shmaltzy, shmooze, shmuck, shtik, So – uh…, Thanks a lot (sarcastic), That’s all I need, yarmulke, yeshiva.

Those I know:

ai-yi-yi, Bite you tongue!, boo-boo, boychick, cockamamy, Don’t ask!, dreck, Drop dead!, eat your heart out, excuse the expression, fancy-shmancy, fin ($5 bill), gefilte fish, Go fight city hall, goyish, icky, I should live so long!, Is the whole world crazy?, kibitz, knish, know from nothing, kvetch, Live a little!, make with, Mazel tov!, mensch, moxie, nebbish, -nik, nosh, oy, phooey, a regular genius, schlong, shekel, shiksa, shlemiel, shnoz, shmendrick, shmutz, shtup, shvartzeh, So sue me, That’s not chopped liver, tush, yenta, zaftig.

See also:

• Jews
• Asimov – his first language was Yiddish
• Hebrew
• English
• Americanisms
• Ebonics