Tell me about Yiddish

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Just today I figured out the sight gag in Top Secret! where the hotel is called "Hotel Gey Schluffen"!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 14 July 2005 02:25 (twenty years ago)

i don't have enough experience with yiddish as a written language to make an informed comment about yivo -- i'm sure their judgment is trustworthy though.

― president carter loves repetition (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 14 July 2005 02:35 (twenty years ago)

"gey schluffen" = "go to sleep"! the german is "geh schlafen."

― president carter loves repetition (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 14 July 2005 02:37 (twenty years ago)

it does make sense, although it's kind of funny to see the words spelled khale and beygl

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Thursday, 14 July 2005 02:39 (twenty years ago)

Rawther scholarly recent book I read about Yiddish was Words on Fire: the Unfinished History of Yiddish (by Dovid Katz). Actually I didn't read the whole thing, got bogged down and switched to Outwitting History: the Amazing Adventures of a Man who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books (by Aaron Lansky), which is a quick read, charming, and has lots to say about the fall and rise (as of late) of Yiddish in America. Highly recommend esp for the anecdotes and the window on Yiddish as the mama-loshn (mother tongue) for daily life. Highly recommend!

― Laurel, Thursday, 14 July 2005 02:44 (twenty years ago)

http://www.mandypatinkin.net/IMAGES/mlcov.jpeg

― president carter loves repetition (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 14 July 2005 02:47 (twenty years ago)

heh, they played his version of Take Me Out to the Ballgame on JM in the AM the other week

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Thursday, 14 July 2005 02:50 (twenty years ago)

i wonder if "loshen" (which doesn't mean "language" or "tongue" in german) has its roots in "lecchÅ?n" (old high german for "to lick," also "liccian" in old english).

― president carter loves repetition (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 14 July 2005 02:57 (twenty years ago)

oh okay, i'm sort of right: it's from the hebrew "lashon" (tongue).

― president carter loves repetition (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 14 July 2005 03:04 (twenty years ago)

Nem mikh oys tsu der ball game
Nem mikh oys mit dem oylem
Koyf mir di nussen un crackerjack
Ich mach mir nisht oys oyf ikh keyn nisht avek

(that's all I can remember) (I think that's right) (I love it)

I'm heard many good things about Lansky's book.

I don't mind the YIVO spelling standards, they only look a bit wierd because we're used to everybody just making up their own spelling .

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 14 July 2005 03:16 (twenty years ago)

Here's YIVO's guide to pronunciation and transliteration.

If you want to hear some Yiddish, go to this site. Click on excerpt that you'd like to read, and then click on the little man to hear the excerpt read (.mp3).

― you better believe it (you better believe it), Thursday, 14 July 2005 11:28 (twenty years ago)

It's not a dialect of German, but it is a Germanic language, as are Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, etc.

As is English of course!

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 14 July 2005 11:48 (twenty years ago)

But Yiddish is way more like German than English is.

It's going to be a while before I hear some of this fascinating language, given my shite internet connection, but as a written language nothing I am seeing on this thread makes me think it is less like German than Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, etc.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 15 July 2005 22:50 (twenty years ago)

I'm reminded of Ewing's Law Of Languages: That all continental European languages are the same, it's just impolite to say this out loud.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 15 July 2005 22:50 (twenty years ago)

spoken yiddish would be 90% comprehensible to someone fluent in german, so yeah, it's basically an offshoot of german.

there was a lot of ladino on tablets and such in the jewish museum in paris, taken from historical jewish communities in spain and portugal. in hebrew school (hehe "hebrew school"--just proves slocki's point, in my mom's day it was "jewish school") we learned a hanukkah song in ladino.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 15 July 2005 23:56 (twenty years ago)

omg jody the guy on that site with the mp3s is so annoying!

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 15 July 2005 23:57 (twenty years ago)

spoken yiddish would be 90% comprehensible to someone fluent in german, so yeah, it's basically an offshoot of german.

This is wrong, but the degree to which it is wrong depends on where you go in the German-speaking world. Hoch Deutsch and (essentially any dialect of) Yiddish are mutually near-incomprehensible, not because the root words aren't the same, but because the vowel sounds are completely different. However, Bavarian and Austrian dialects sound quite similar to the Western dialect of Yiddish that was spoken in places like Hungary (geographically, this makes sense, of course).

― 30 Bangin' Tunes That You've Already Got ... IN A DIFFERENT ORDER! (Barry Brune, Saturday, 16 July 2005 13:12 (twenty years ago)

Indeed. There are different types of Yiddish, varying with geography. And what is called Yiddish varies from a full language to 'Yinglish', where occasional words are used for emphasis, or to render something that is untranslatable.

interestingly, there's also a sephardic equivalent in ladino, which is archaic spanish with hebrew bits thrown in.
-- s1ocki (slytus...), July 13th, 2005.
Even more interesting is that some religious Sephardic jews, even Tunisian jews in France, who generally speak French with Hebrew and Arabic words thrown in, speak Yiddish, because of the influence of Chabad Lubavitch. I have very rarely heard Ladino in Paris, but have frequently heard Tunisians speaking Yiddish...

― jadrenos (jadrenos), Saturday, 16 July 2005 13:41 (twenty years ago)

isn't ladino a dead language?

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Saturday, 16 July 2005 14:07 (twenty years ago)

My favourite everyday Yiddish word is "Ayayayayayayay....."

― JTS, Saturday, 16 July 2005 23:12 (twenty years ago)

It's nice to know we're above Jewish stereotyping on this forum.

― PC gonna getcha, Saturday, 16 July 2005 23:16 (twenty years ago)

i watched an old eddie cantor move recently, he says ay veyshmer a lot

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Saturday, 16 July 2005 23:40 (twenty years ago)

Kenneth Rexroth says somewhere that the Yiddish (possibly anarchist?) literary journals in the U.S. published translations of modern (or anyway late Symbolist) French poetry before the English language ones did.

― Yo soy Rockist Scientist (RSLaRue), Saturday, 16 July 2005 23:52 (twenty years ago)

I've always thought that was a little bit interesting.

― Yo soy Rockist Scientist (RSLaRue), Saturday, 16 July 2005 23:53 (twenty years ago)

They had a whole segment about Ladino on NPR recently.

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Sunday, 17 July 2005 00:48 (twenty years ago)

my great-great-uncle wrote the first hebrew-yiddish-english dictionary, it's still in use, and when i've mentioned this fact to yiddish scholars they go nuts with the nachas.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 17 July 2005 01:59 (twenty years ago)

omg jody the guy on that site with the mp3s is so annoying!

don't blame me, i didn't post that link!

re tunisian jews: nick valensi from the strokes!!

― jody heatherton (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 17 July 2005 17:12 (twenty years ago)

s1ocki -- that's the coolest thing ever. What was his name?

― 30 Bangin' Tunes That You've Already Got ... IN A DIFFERENT ORDER! (Barry Brune, Sunday, 17 July 2005 17:20 (twenty years ago)

aleksander (avram) harkavi!

we have a movie of a trip he made back to the shtetl in the 20s/late teens!! it's crazy!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 17 July 2005 18:19 (twenty years ago)

five years pass...

nocturnal - nakhtish (נאַכטיש)

― kid 606: the nultness (nakhchivan), Friday, 18 March 2011 13:25 (fifteen years ago)

three years pass...

oy, you want i should translate some phone-call transcriptions?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/nyregion/malcolm-a-smiths-bribery-trial-held-up-by-recordings-in-yiddish.html?hp

― I dunno. (amateurist), Thursday, 12 June 2014 23:29 (twelve years ago)

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