Yiddish

Yiddish has come up in brief blog conversation between me and my buddy, Underachiever.

I love the language. It just sounds fun to use.

He pointed me in the direction of a website of common Yiddish words. I decided to post a brief history of the language...

"Yiddish language, member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Although it is not a national language, Yiddish is spoken by about 4 million Jews all over the world, especially in Argentina, Canada, France, Israel, Mexico, Romania, and the U.S. Before the annihilation of 6 million Jews by the Nazis, Yiddish was the tongue of more than 11 million people. Yiddish, although it is not a national language, is spoken by Jews all over the world. It arose (c.1100) out of a blend of a number of German dialects in the ghettos of Central Europe, and from there it spread to other parts of the world. Phonetically, Yiddish is closer to Middle High German than is modern German. Its vocabulary is basically German, but it has been enlarged by borrowings from Hebrew, Slavic, Romance languages, and English."

http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Yiddish/English/yiddish.html

As I was looking over the list, I found "shlemil" and "shlemazl". Sound familiar? No?

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Schlemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated."

That's none other than the intro of the Laverne & Shirley theme song. Not sure what the "hasenfeffer" means. However, "Schlemeel" means dope or fool and "schlemazel" means unlucky person. That's the duo for ya. I miss watching L&S. That was a good show. Haven't seen a re-run in a few years.

http://www.cfhf.net/lyrics/laverne.htm

I will now share a few of my favorite Yiddish words with y'all-

kibitz (to meddle)
zay gezundt (bless you)
shlekht (bad)
shlemil (dope or fool)
shendrik (fool)
shiker (drunkard)
shlemazl (unlucky person)
kakameyme* (crazy)
khazer** (pig)
shlep (to drag)

That's the end of today's language lesson, kids!



* i use this word and never knew it was yiddish.
** "kh" is pronounced "ch"