Talk:Yiddish words used in English

More than loan-words -- consider loaned grammatical structure.
Moved back to: Talk:Yinglish Peter Chastain (talk) 07:43, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Schm prefix indicating dismissive annoyance
Can any one say whether the American device which adds schm to a noun introduced by one speaker to indicate that the second speaker considers the matter trivial, and forewarning that they have a much more important subject to follow up with, is Yiddish, and if so what's the origin and is it covered in an article? Jack Roo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.117.120 (talk) 20:58, 20 November 2008 (UTC) Reference on whether this is an American innovation If you google the process linguists from upenn, umich, ucsc, and others call reshmuplication, you will find that this is the article that answers your question:  http://cambridge.academia.edu/BertVaux/Papers/136862/Metalinguistic_shmetalinguistic_The_phonology_of_shm-reduplication 173.79.68.61 (talk) 06:32, 10 May 2012 (UTC)MichelleInSanMarcos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shm-reduplication although there is enough use of the term reshmuplication, wikipedia does not include it here. MichelleInSanMarcos (talk) 06:53, 10 May 2012 (UTC)MichelleInSanMarcos now logged in officially

Glitch
I don't think that this word presents many difficulties for people who don't have Yiddish. It's become pretty common in non-Yiddish-speaking circles. Lexo (talk) 00:13, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Etymology problems
Yiddish words are not derived from modern German, any more than modern German words are derived from Yiddish. Both come from Middle High German (MHG). So it's incorrect to say that "gezint" comes from the German "gesund." One could say that they're cognates.

Also, the Yiddish word "abi" is unrelated to the German word "aber." (German "aber" = Yiddish "ober," not "abi.") "Abi" is a Slavic word, cf. the Ukrainian "aby" (аби), which means "only." Jacobadler (talk) 06:24, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Etymology of "Schlock"
Though the term 'schlak' for stroke (German 'Schlaganfall') is etymologically related, I believe any Yiddish-speaking metalworker or jeweler will confirm that 'Schlock' derives from MHG 'Schlag' (modern German 'Schlacke'), to denote the use of slag or metallurgical dross as raw material, instead of what you're refining. Medieval Jewry wasn't permitted to own the woodlands or streamside sites a smith needed, but could remuneratively deal in the slag for use in glassmaking or jewelry - thus, Schlageter is probably a name of Yiddish origin. The derogatory meaning of 'Schlock' is therefore more closely related to incompetence in utilizing what a complicated process is meant to turn out than any psychological deficiency resulting from an inadvertent apoplexy.

EbtheDoc — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.199.179 (talk) 17:05, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

when words are identical in yiddish and german
how can it be clearl if those words (that are identical) came to english from yiddish and not for german, or from german and not from yiddish ? 95.208.187.120 (talk) 17:07, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Fraier and Shmeker
Fraier and Șmecher have entered Romanian slang. Aren't they used in English? --Error (talk) 23:04, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

A very similar page
There's another page on wikipedia with pretty much the same topic here: List_of_English_words_of_Yiddish_origin Is there any difference? If not, the pages should be merged, but I may be missing something.King Klear (talk) 09:52, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Good observation. I have not parsed these pages that carefully.  But the hatnote makes the overlap clear, and we'll see what other editors have to say.  7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 00:10, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

American English vs English spoken elsewhere
I wonder if it would be a useful addition to the article to specify that when speaking of the usage of Yiddish words in "English" that we are primarily speaking of English as spoken in the U.S., commonly referred to as "American English", as distinct from other places English is also spoken as a native language, e.g. the UK, Australia. I am a native speaker of American English and married to a native speaker of British English. My husband immigrated to the U.S. from London nineteen years and was not familiar with any Yiddish words that are commonly used in American English. LawraNelson (talk) 16:39, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Transliteration
The article states that "As with Yiddish, Yinglish has no set transliteration standard." But Yiddish DOES have a transliteration standard, which was established by YIVO. Although slow to catch on, it is now becoming more popular, since most new Yiddish-speakers (except for Hasidim) learn Yiddish in college and university courses, where the YIVO standard is used. I would think this standard should be used in this article, if not everywhere in Wikipedia. If readers want to look up words in standard Yiddish reference works, they need the YIVO transliteration. The second edition of "The Joys of Yiddish" has a good discussion of this issue, and includes YIVO transliteration along with other transliterations that are common.

Jacobadlerarkansas (talk) 16:27, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Abi: Slavic or Germanic?
It's been suggested that the Yiddish word 'abi' may be Germanic, related to the word 'aber,' which means "but." This seems to me unlikely. The Yiddish counterpart of 'aber' is 'ober,' and in Yiddish (unlike German) the final 'r' sound is not omitted. So I don't see how one could get from 'ober' to 'abi'. Historians of Yiddish identify 'abi' as Slavic: See, for example, Benjamin Harshav, "The Meaning of Yiddish," p. 48; Max Weinreich, "History of the Yiddish Language," p. 527; Yaron Matras and Jeanette Sakel (eds.), "Grammatical Borrowing in Cross-Linguistic Perspective," p. 251.

If the person who suggested Germanic origins knows of any sources substantiating that view, perhaps s/he can cite them. Jacobadlerarkansas (talk) 23:32, 30 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It's unsourced, speculative and implausible, therefore easy to remove. I've done so. If a source is found (which I doubt) it can always be restored. Hertz1888 (talk) 01:01, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

List must be split or merged with List of English words of Yiddish origin
The list must be split into words entered mainstream English/Amerikish and these used by Jews as a matter of code switching, especially Yeshivish. This list heavily overlaps with List of English words of Yiddish origin and I am inclined to suggest megre the two articles. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:31, 17 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I’ll make a formal merge request if I have time. HappyWith (talk) 18:23, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Orthographic/transliteration consistency
This article is inconsistent in its orthography where transliteration is concerned. While I acknowledge YIVO transliteration necessarily flattens dialectal variation in that it represents klal-shprakh, I propose re-transliterating this list such that it is a) internally consistent and b) consonant with YIVO transliteration orthography standards. newmila (talk) 01:49, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If this article is to be overhauled, involved editors might also bring it in line with MOS:GLOSSARIES. – Reidgreg (talk) 09:53, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Include a reference to code-switching?
Code-switching is when a speaker switches into a vocabulary of language that s/he assumes the listener will understand. Here is a reference specific to Yiddish https://www.jstor.org/stable/40605074 MichelleInSanMarcos (talk) 12:16, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

"ay yi yi" etymology
There is evidence the phrase may have entered the English lexicon through Latin Spanish, instead of through the Yiddish "oy."

See:

https://borderzine.com/2016/09/what-does-ay-ay-mean-in-spanish/

https://grammarhow.com/aye-yai-yai-spelling-meaning-origin/

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52790/where-did-phrase-aye-yai-yai-come Brassmonkey3212 (talk) 22:10, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Used in English? Really?
I speak English every day, I have never heard or spoken most of these words, and I couldn't remember what most of them mean. I think it would make sense in a list like this to require attestation of each word having been printed in several English publications that are not from Jewish authors, publishers, or neighborhoods, and that could not expect a considerable Jewish audience.

It seems to me that the most famous half-dozen or so words on the entire list are probably the only ones that belong.

Think of "all the English words that have ever been used by Yiddish speakers" compared with "English words commonly used in private Yiddish conversation". The lists are certainly not going to be the same. Going the other direction, Yiddish words in private English conversation, probably produces a lower number than that. TooManyFingers (talk) 01:18, 8 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Specifically recognizable: ay-ay-ay, bagel, chutzpah, dreck, farklemt, futz, gesundheit, kibitz, kitsch, klutz, kosher, kvetch, nebbish, nosh, oy, oy vey, schlep, schlock, schlong, schmaltz, schmo, schmooze, schnook, schpiel, schtick, tchotchke, zaftig.
 * That's over two dozen, not half a dozen, so my estimate was way off, and of course I'm guessing anyway. Several of them I wouldn't use, but I believe they get used enough that they would often be recognized. (But probably half of the people I know would fail to define several of even these two dozen.)
 * I left off the food words except one. Bagel has certainly become an English word, as bagels have been endlessly botched by people who don't even understand what a bagel is.
 * What I'm trying to say is, I think my list of almost 30 words probably ought to be pretty much the only ones that get mentioned in the article. TooManyFingers (talk) 01:48, 8 June 2024 (UTC)