Enough with the Yiddishisms Already!
By
Howard
Richler
Fewer than one-third of English words stem from the
original Anglo-Saxon word stock and to some extent the language's
ascendancy lies in the internationality of its words. Even with
its grammatical irregularities and illogical pronunciation and
spelling, English is best suited to be the world’s bridge tongue
due to its welcoming, absorbent nature. From aardvark which comes
from Afrikaans to zebra which we received from Bantu, English has
taken words from virtually every language in the world. While other
languages treasure chastity, the English language tends to sleep with
whomever it finds most attractive. In the 20th century, one of is
most common bedmates has been Yiddish. Countless Yiddishisms, such as
“bagel” and “kibbitz” now pepper the mainstream vernacular.
Still, even as a Jewish person, I am sometimes surprised
by the extensiveness of these Yiddish inroads. Last month in this
column I touched on the ubiquitous use of “chutzpah” ; actually
this is but one of many Yiddishisms that have wormed their way into
English. The following are but a few examples.
A
February 2005 edition of Time
magazine featuring a story written by JFO Mcallister on the upcoming
marriage of Charles and Camilla said, “Last week there were a few
signs of apathy in the sea of schmaltz
(sentimentality) about enduring love.”
Montreal Gazette
staffer Don MacPherson wrote on
August 21,1999, “Perhaps {Lucien} Bouchard was just trying to avoid
unnecessary tsuris (worries) at
the next meeting of the PQ national council.” Last year, in an
interview in the New York Times,
Robert Deniro
characterized Silver
Lining Playbook
director David O. Russell's “lovable craziness” as messhugas.
Some years ago, I phoned a non-Jewish Gazette
editor to see if he had received the controversial book I wanted to
review. He told me he had and that in his opinion “it looked like a
bunch of dreck.” This surprised me, but not because I held a
contrary view of the book. What surprised me was the editor’s
knowledge of the word “dreck” - a word of Yiddish derivation
that means “crap” or ”worthless thing.”
Ultimately, “dreck” is a word of German derivation
where it referred to excrement. According to Leo Rosten's
The Joys of Yiddish, In English, the word
“dreck” has a particular application to the arts. So the
editor's use of the word to describe a book was bang-on. I was amazed
to learn that “dreck” found its way into English dictionaries as
far back as 1922. The first OED
citation is from James Joyce’s Ulysses: “Farewell. Fare thee
well. Dreck!”
Occasionally, we even see a word with Yiddish pedigree
achieve lexicographic recognition that conveys a concept not having
an English synonym. Such is the case with naches
which was added to the OED
in 2003, where it is defined as “Among Jews, a
sense of pleasure or pride at the achievements of one’s children.”
(I would add “or grandchildren.”)
I suspect, however, that many Yiddish words get
absorbed into English not because they introduce a new concept in
English but because they’re fun to say. After all, English has
many derogatory words for people but, “schlemiel,” “schmo,”
“schmuck,” “schmegegge,” “nudnik” and “meshugenne”
roll off the tongue with glee.
Yiddish terms have found surprising English homes. We
see the word nosh being used in England in the 1870s but with the
idea of it being a meal not a snack; this usage only became prevalent
in North America in the 1940s. The term
shicker, “drunk.” is also listed in the
OED as an Australian
and New Zealand coloquialism. A 1970 citation from the New
Zealand Listener says, “After midnight,
Jerry got so shicker that he was quarreling with everyone.” Up to
twenty years ago, the term shicker was a very common term for a
drunk Down Under.
Israel
Zangwill’s 1892 work Children in the Ghetto
is the most prolific source of cited Yiddish words in the
OED. Along with nosh and shicker, all the
following words are first mentioned in Zangwill’s work: schnorrer,
“beggar”; shlemiel,
“blunderer”; nebbich, “non-entity”
; shiksa, “gentile
girl”; schmuck
“contemptible person” ; rebbitzin,
“rabbi’s wife”; narrischkeit,
“foolishness”; chutzpah,
“gall” and the interjections nu and
oy.
A
century later the program Saturday Night Live
made popular the usage of two unlikely
Yiddish candidates. In a segment entitled Coffee
Talk, Canadian Mike Myers played the
character Linda Richman who was prone to using the words shpilkes,
“nervous energy” and farklempt,
“all choked up.”
It is difficult to escape one’s roots. I had used the
phrase “go know” several times to a non-Jewish business
associate before he informed me that he had never heard the
expression . I checked in a phrase book which showed ”go know”
as Yinglish, from the Yiddish expression gey vays (meaning,
“go know.”) It explained that the expression could mean “How
could I know?”, or “How could you expect me to know?” So go
know, I had been using the perfect Yiddishism unknowingly!
Go
figure?
Howard
Richler's book How Happy Became Homosexual and
other mysterious semantic shifts was
published in May 2013.
hrichler@gmail.com
