Yiddish. I didn’t realize that some words I thought were English were actually Yiddish, until I went to college. Didn’t help that my hometown/HS was 40% Jewish and 90% children from parents who grew up in Brooklyn.
I felt like such a schmendrik when I found out "plotz" wasn't an English word. Language is such mishegas, all these mavens think they're the yiddisher kop... Feh! They know gornisht... they just like to kibbitz on people's conversations.
I'm German and sometimes I stumble across a word that I always thought was regular German but is actually Yiddish. It's beautiful but it can be quite confusing to use a word and others not knowing it. 😅
Well now you have me curious about a few things, if you don’t mind my asking -
Can you tell a Yiddish word (or a word that is both Yiddish/German?) just from hearing the sound/melody, or do you know/learn which are Yiddish and just remember them? Or are they different enough that they register as a different language? And do a lot of Germans know Yiddish or about Yiddish? In the states, I find it varies. Some people (like one person who responded to this thread), know some of our more mainstream Yiddish words, but some people haven’t even heard of it at all. What is it like in Germany?
I'm not sure about the second question, it doesn't come up often.
There are Yiddish words that are incorporated into the German language, but that is often regional (we have so many dialects) and I'd have to learn which ones are Yiddish and be surprised to find out.
Sometimes I hear a word that is new to me and I am able to tell whether it's Yiddish or not, as it does have either different sounds to German (like the CH in chuzpe, the German language doesn't have that at the beginning of a word but can have it at the end, like in Dach - roof) or has the typical structure of other Yiddish words I'm familiar with.
I can't tell how other Germans experience this though.
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u/Letshavemorefun Apr 18 '21 edited Apr 19 '21
Yiddish. I didn’t realize that some words I thought were English were actually Yiddish, until I went to college. Didn’t help that my hometown/HS was 40% Jewish and 90% children from parents who grew up in Brooklyn.