40 Yiddish Words You Should Know

dailywritingtips.com:

The Yiddish language is a wonderful source of rich expressions, especially terms of endearment (and of course, complaints and insults).

Read the whole story: dailywritingtips.com

Comments

[BcemXAHA]

09:07 PM on 05/18/2011

All I know is this:

Voos ertseh?

the answer is usually:

Mi gooltsih i mishertiah, i zivax nohamool :)

[Erewhon7]

01:23 AM on 05/18/2011

After reading the linked list of words it came to me that Yiddish is like jazz- a combination of recognizable elements that form a unique whole.

In case of jazz it is a "mishmosh" of Western harmony and instruments, combined with African rhythms and aesthetic but the result is uniquely American.

Yiddish is a combination of clearly recognized Hebrew, Russian, German and Polish words-- but the resulting matzoball has its own unique originality.

[Greg Mirsky]

02:02 AM on 05/18/2011

It is not surprising that you bits of these languages in Yiddish. But it was not a one-way street where Yiddish took in words from language environment it was in. 'Blat' is very popular and useful thing to have in Russian-speaking environment. What is it? 'Blat' - a piece of paper. During turmoil of Revolution piece of paper meant not only food or cloth but life. To have a blat - to have someone who'll do you a favor.
Or you can find in Latvian 'shmurgul', someone who's not neat, always badly dressed. Easily you'll find many similar words among set of 40.
Or Russian verb "shlepat'" both walk lazily or spank lightly.
I can go on but with some sadness. Yiddishkite is gone, the culture of my grandparents disappeared, was destroyed by Na zis and Bolsheviks. Jewish poet Itzik Pfepfer, killed at Night of Poets when Stalin crushed Jewish Anti-fascist Committee, said "Hitler wanted to destroy us physically, Stalin wants to destroy our souls". Sadly they did it.

[MaineSenior]

10:39 AM on 05/16/2011

The photo is wrong. Israel, by reviving Hebrew, has lessened the value of Yiddish, which in Israel is spoken primarily by those who object to the use of sacred Hebrew for everyday objects. So the Israeli flag is not appropriate to display in an article about the joys of Yiddish.

[Erewhon7]

01:05 AM on 05/18/2011

What flag? Since when Star of David is exclusively Israeli symbol?
Notice I am speaking in questions :-)

[MaineSenior]

08:34 AM on 05/18/2011

The background is a neon version of the Israeli flag: The Star of David between two blue stripes, reminiscent of a tallit, one a white background. Yes, the Star of David appears in many contexts, but this arrangement and color scheme is the Israeli flag.

You're right that Yiddish has a lot of borrowing from the languages on the lands European Jews lived in. I have never studied Yiddish, but I can usually make out what a word means because I have studied Hebrew and German and because it's such a colorful language that you can get the gist of a word from the way it sounds. How could a schlemiel be anything but hapless?

[Lev Raphael]

10:33 PM on 05/18/2011

It's the Israeli flag in lights of projected onto a wall.

[enderM]

09:13 PM on 05/18/2011

actually, i think the picture is perfect….chasidic jews, who are primarily the jews who still speak yiddish as their first language…..silhouetted against the star of david….
totally appropriate. totally.

as for the lessening of yiddish, it is a bit more complicated than that….i would disagree on that point.

[radnip4]

09:01 PM on 05/15/2011

Leo Rothstein's The Joys of Yiddish, is a must on anyone's bookshelf, not just writers.

[robiform]

05:38 PM on 05/16/2011

I agree with you about "The Joys of Yiddish", but a small correction, if I may. The author's name is Leo Rosten, and among his other books are a series of short stories about the night school experiences of a teacher of recent immigrants. The first, and most memorable of these was a book titled "The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N" (The title character wrote his name that way!!)

[bessielil]

06:22 PM on 05/15/2011

I can't count the times I've had to explain to someone that they mean "futz" when they use "putz". They do not want to be 'putzing' around. Same for schmuck. 'Schmuck' goes far beyond 'jerk' in meaning. Words matter.

[CoronaDischarge]

12:35 AM on 05/16/2011

I noted those right away were missing. So was shtick which  which I think has pretty wide usage.

[Lev Raphael]

02:40 PM on 05/16/2011

Shtik is in there.

[BannedInBoston]

02:42 PM on 05/15/2011

Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint remains the most brilliant riff on Yiddish in the English language. I think that's where I learned most of these words....

[Vote2bfree]

01:32 PM on 05/15/2011

Anyone who grew up in Jersey or New York makes use of these words and more on a regular basis not really thinking of their roots.

[Mr Muckle]

08:45 PM on 05/15/2011

Beat me to it, but it is as basic as that.

[Lev Raphael]

02:41 PM on 05/16/2011

I have never heard my non-Jewish friends in New York use Yiddish words aside from plotz, schlep, farklempt, mentsh, putz and one or two others.

[enderM]

09:16 PM on 05/18/2011

really? i thought just about everyone in NY mixed yiddish words into their vocabulary.

[OrangeSalad]

04:50 PM on 05/20/2011

I'm Sicilian and grew up in the Bronx where neighborhoods were often mixed and, in addition to the words you have listed we used: (Please forgive my spelling)
oy vey es mir
bupkis
chutzpah
chochkey
drek
ferkakta
glitch
kibitz
klutz
kvetch
maven
megillah
meshuggenah
mishagas
nebish
nosh
shlemiel
shlong
shmatta
shmeer (cream cheese on a bagel)
shmutz (you've got some shmutz on your face)
shnook
shtick
tush

It's not much of a list but it is more than you've listed. Maybe your friends are really from the mid-west but live in New York now?

[Indigo1941]

12:25 PM on 05/15/2011

That's a useful glossary. Thanks. Obytheway, how do you "Thanks" in Yiddish?

[Lev Raphael]

02:42 PM on 05/16/2011

A dank = thanks. A shaynem dank: Thanks very much. A zeyer shaynem dank: Really, that was terrific of you!

[Gelfling]

12:15 PM on 05/15/2011

I love Yiddish: it often has just the precise word for hard-to-define things in English. It also reminds me of my long-gone Bronx-Jewish grandparents. I use 'ferklempt' all the time.

[thepoliticalcat]

02:36 PM on 05/15/2011

Me too. Who will keep the yiddischkeit alive, now that the old folks are going?

[Gelfling]

01:36 AM on 05/16/2011

We will. In their honor. : )

[RedDogBear]

11:15 AM on 05/16/2011

I think they will stay alive because they are just so expressive. Even for a goy like me I love Yiddish words.

[ModerateVoiceofReason]

11:45 AM on 05/15/2011

My ex wife's parents were conentration camp survivors who spoke Yiddish as children.

My ex mother-in-law used to quip that the Nazis did a better job of eradicating Yiddish as an everyday language than eliminating the Jewish people.

[Greg Mirsky]

05:23 PM on 05/18/2011

As I've pointed earlier, it was both Na zism and Bolshevism that killed Yiddishkeit, education, culture. Even after 90% of Latvian Jews were murdered there was Jewish school in after-war Riga but it was closed. There was attempt to revive, preserve something with amateur theater and choir in late 50's. Both were closed. There were few performers who sang Yiddish songs, small theaters that continued to work with plays in Yiddish but the culture was gone. Only grandparents used it so we cannot understand ;(.

[DannyGee]

07:46 PM on 05/18/2011

Weren't the Bolshevic leaders Jewish?

[ModerateVoiceofReason]

08:05 PM on 05/18/2011

I have no doubt about your facts, I was quoting an old Jewish woman and her personal account with the Holocaust.

[Titanshanks]

11:36 AM on 05/15/2011

I noticed something interesting living in Poland--although there had been a significant Jewish minority living in Poland for centuries, the language had no words (that I could notice, anyway) of Yiddish origin. It brought home how separated the societies were.

[Erewhon7]

01:07 AM on 05/18/2011

And yet Yiddish absorbed quite a number of Polish language words. I guess it was a one-way street.

[bmermaid]

11:15 AM on 05/15/2011

It's amazing what popular culture and TV can do. I am not Jewish, and coming from the center of the mid-west, never even met anyone Jewish until I went to New York in my late teens, but I knew the meaning of all but about 3 or 4 of these words.

[rsheeran]

09:45 AM on 05/15/2011

"40 Yiddish Words You Should Know"

Why?

[c-tom]

10:43 AM on 05/15/2011

Knowledge is good.

[maxfax]

12:20 PM on 05/15/2011

We don't give enough attention to the etymology of words to understand the past.  We should.

[StevieTheK]

09:08 PM on 05/18/2011

Thank you, Emil Faber :)

[Aimee Bellefleur Hogan]

02:17 PM on 05/15/2011

It never hurts to know a little something....

[thepoliticalcat]

02:37 PM on 05/15/2011

Ein bissel yiddisch, especially.