002 Yiddish Mayhem

We have often heard about this funny language called Yiddish. What is this language? Well, it is that Eastern European verbal form of expression that sounds sort of like a mixture of gargling, incessant babbling and spitting all at once, along with epileptic seizure arm waving for added emphasis. Some of us are familiar with Yiddish, while most of us are not quite that familiar. For those of us who are not, Sepharediim/Mizrachiim in particular, it turns out that you actually know more Yiddish than you think?

On TV these days, we will often hear words like Bupkes, Klutz and Shmuck on regular showing sitcoms which do not even have a single Hebrew character in them, and guess what? They are Yiddish words, and therefore they are ours; as in they belong to HaAm Yisrael. Cool huh? It is the Jewish conspiracy at work. This Yiddish addition into the English vernacular can be directly attributed to the large amount of Hebrew writers for TV sitcoms.

The word Yiddish means ‘Jewish’. Yiddish arose in Central Europe between the 9th and 12th centuries from Middle High German dialects. Yiddish is related to German in its linguistic structure and vocabulary, but it is written in Hebrew characters, and, like Hebrew, it is written from right to left.

However, Yiddish is not linguistically related to Hebrew, even though it absorbed hundreds of Hebrew and Aramaic terms taken from Jewish tradition. Hebrew words pertaining to Jewish, religious life were added to German. Later, when the bulk of European Jewry moved eastward, Slavic words were added. Yiddish today is about 85 percent German, 10 percent Hebrew, and 5 percent Slavic, with traces of Romanian, French, and other elements.

Now why should you be interested at all in Yiddish? Because it is a cool language that allows us to express ourselves in a manner that Hebrew, English, Spanish or Russian just do not allow.

Check it out. Here is this issue’s hip Yiddish terms:

“Zol es im onkumn vos ikh vintsh im”

(khotsh a helft, khotsh halb, khotsh a tsent kheylik).
Let what I wish on him come true (most, even half, even just 10%).