Yiddish as a Second Language: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"If you live in New York, even if you're Catholic, you're Jewish."''|'''[[Lenny Bruce]]'''}}

{{quote|''"I grew up in an Italian family... you know, the strange thing about Italians -- they're so Jewish."''|'''Kaye Ballard'''}}

This trope goes back quite a ways in American televisionentertainment, almost to the point of being a [[Dead Horse Trope]], without passing through the stages of Clever Idea -> Trope -> [[Subverted Trope]] -> [[Discredited Trope]]. (Mainly because its roots are another fifty years back, in vaudeville[[Vaudeville]].) The characters -- somecharacters—some portrayed as being Jewish, [[Ambiguously Jewish|some not]] -- will—will pepper their dialogue with words and phrases in Yiddish (or more specifically, in Yinglish). Translations and subtitles are not provided, and meanings must be inferred from context. This occurs in both dramas and sitcoms, sometimes without regard to the setting city of the show, though it most often appears in shows set in [[Big Applesauce|New York]], where it's most common in actual speech, and [[Los Angeles]], where ''schmooze'' -- a—a Yiddish word if ever there was one -- isone—is a way of life. The criminal argot of East End [[London Gangster|London Gangsters]]s has also absorbed a few Yiddish words.

Thanks to this trope, however, several Yiddish terms have become a standard part of American English vernacular. Concentrated in large American cities and spreading out worldwide, common Yiddish terms like "putz," "schmooze," "[[Word, Schmord]]," are slowly becoming standard English words. This trope evolved from the early movies and TV -- censorsTV—censors were aggressive in editing out curses, sexual references, etc. However, most of these early censors did not speak Yiddish, so the writers, actors, and producers ([[You Have to Have Jews|who often did]]) used Yiddish curse words as a way of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]].

A rather interesting survey on the [[Real Life]] spread of Yiddish words and phrases, Hebrew words and phrases, and New York regional features, both within and outside of the Jewish community, can be found [https://web.archive.org/web/20131005184649/http://huc.edu/survey/09/ here.]

=== {{examples|Moshln ===}}

** This song turned up in ''[[Ghost in the Shell: StandaloneStand Alone Complex]]'', as well.

** And the manga of ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]''...

* One of the best examples is [httphttps://wwwweb.archive.org/web/20160305073222/http://mahnishmah.com/system/scripts/modules/admin/pages/show_page.cgi?p=13241 this scene] from the opening of the 1932 [[Warner Brothers]] picture ''Taxi'', in which a Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrant is frustrated in his attempt to communicate with a policeman, until [[James Cagney]] interrupts in fluent Yiddish to offer the man a lift. Supposedly, the scene was actually improvised, to take advantage of the fact that the Irish-American actor [[James Cagney]] had [[Irishman and a Jew|learnt Yiddish from his playmates]] while growing up in [[Big Applesauce|New York City]]. The presence of the perplexed [[Officer O'Hara|Irish cop]] only makes it ten times funnier.

{{quote|'''Lars Olfen:''' The ''naches''<ref>joy</ref> that I'm feeling right now... 'cause your dad was like ''mishpoche''<ref>family</ref> to me. When I heard I got these ticket to the Folksmen, I let out a ''[[Squee|geshreeyeh]]'',<ref>squee</ref>, and I'm running with my friend... running around like a ''vilde chaye'',<ref>wild beast</ref>, right into the theater, in the front row! So we've got the ''shpilkes'',<ref>nervousness</ref>, 'cause we're sittin' right there... and it's a mitzvah,<ref>good deed</ref>, what your dad did, and I want to try to give that back to you. ''Okeinhoreh'',<ref>not the word he meant to use; ''alav hasholem'' means "rest in peace," this is more along the lines of "knock wood"</ref>, I say, and God bless him.}}

** The Yiddish-speaking Indian chief in ''[[Blazing Saddles]]''. His headdress actually reads "Posher l'Kesach" in Hebrew: roughly, "Posher for Kassover." When he meets Bart's family, he says in Yiddish, "Blacks!" When one of the other Indians raises his tomahawk, Brooks says, "No, no, don't be crazy. Let them go!" After Bart's family has ridden away, Brooks mutters, "Have you ever seen in your life?" He finishes in very Yiddish-accented English, "Dey darkuh den us! Wuff!"

* Both of the old comedians in ''The Sunshine Boys'' (played by [[George Burns]] and Walter Matthau) liberally use Yiddishisms. Both of them are veterans of the old [[Borscht Belt]] comedy circuit.

* ''[[Top Secret! (film)|Top Secret!]]'' uses Yiddish dialogue and signage to stand in for [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign|actual German]].

* In ''[[Robin and the Seven Hoods]]'', Frank Sinatra at one point feels like he's being noodged. "It's an old Italian word."

* In ''[[City Hall]]'', Mayor's aide John Cusack (who's supposed to come from Louisiana) mispronounces "schtick" as "stick", prompting Bridget Fonda to snap at him to "get the cornpone out of your Yiddish" if he's going to get anywhere in New York City politics.

* This abounds in the works of [[Harry Turtledove]], most prominently in those sections of his ''World War'' series featuring the Russie family, and also in several sections of his American Empire trilogy. While what they say always fits with the meaning of the word, they are sometimes idiomatically incorrect -- noincorrect—no one would actually use the word the way the character does.

* On ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|M*A*S*H]]'', Hawkeye sporadically uses Yiddish words.

** In facefact, almost every member of the Fine family uses Yiddish words at one point, especially Sylvia and Yetta.

*** Subverted when Donna -- aDonna—a blonde Midwesterner -- tellsMidwesterner—tells Toby that Josh is recovering from being shot, and he doesn't need Toby "going over there and getting him ''fuhtushed.'' Toby, a New York Jew, corrects her pronunciation of "''fartoost''" and tells her, "don't bring the Yiddish unless you know what you're doing."

*** Subverted when Toby goes into a monologue about how a particular night is special, CJ interrupts "We dip twice and eat gefilte fish?" He replies "Suzie Creamcheese, do not attempt the Haggaddah" and she responds "I know how to bless the soup, too."

*** Subverted somewhat in flashbacks about Toby's father, showing him fully conversant in Yiddish as a member of the Jewish Mafia.

* Munch only occasionally used Yiddish on ''[[Homicide: Life Onon the Street]]'', although he did once teach it to Kellerman for his own amusement. It did, however, come in handy after he switched over to ''[[Law and Order SVU]]'', when they suspected a Rabbi of sexual misconduct and he fled New York to a Jewish community upstate where even the cops were Jewish and decided to shelter him. When Munch and Stabler arrive their local police contact is told (In Yiddish) to keep them away from the synagogue, and Munch overhears and thus deduces where the Rabbi is being hidden.

{{quote|''One, two, three, four,

''Five, six, seven, eight,

''Schlemiel, schlmazel,

''Hassenpfeffer incorporated! }}

* ''[[Seinfeld]]'' has 'The Yada Yada' episode, where Tim Whatley converts to Judaism for the jokes. He uses a few yiddish words in the episode.

{{quote|What am ''I'', chopped [[Hold Your Hippogriffs|flarn]]?<br />

* The assorted Jewish gangsters of ''[[Boardwalk Empire]]'' are conversant in Yiddish. Manny Horvitz in particular is fond of it, [[Verbal Tic|boychik]], though Arnold Rothstein doesn't seem to be.

* In an early episode of the ''[[Law and Order]]'' mothership, Cragen responds to his detectives reporting that their last lead failed to pan out with "What's less than nothing? Minus zero? Negative ''bupkis''?"

** Quite a bit of Yiddish vocabulary (along with a handful of Romani words) passed into everyday German via ''Rotwelsch'', the argot of small criminals, beggars and vagrants (which also influenced the language of wandering journeymen craftsmen). Yiddish also preserves a few features that fell into disuse in Modern High German, such as the word "Tate" (two syllables) for "father" and one has to wonder if the use of at least some German words in Yiddish in American English (e. g. "schmaltz", spelled "Schmalz" in modern German) may not have been reinforced by the presence of large numbers of German-Americans. Usages in German and American English can differ quite markedly - in the US, "schmuck" is seen as semi-obscene, while its German version, "Schmock" it is harmless and is sometimes used in the meaning "snob".

* New York Senator Al D'Amato is widely believed to have lost his Senate seat because he, as Toby Ziegler might put it, "brought the Yiddish without knowing what he was doing." In the closing days of a tight race against then-Congressman Charles Schumer, D'amato publicly referred to the Jewish Schumer as a "putzhead," without apparently being aware of what the word "putz" ''means'' in Yiddish. <ref>"penis," with similar connotations to "prick."</ref> The resultant furor alienated the state's large Jewish community, which had previously been very supportive of him, and he lost by a ten-point margin.

* Being that Yiddish, and not Hebrew was the everyday language of the Jewish people for centuries, a lot of young Jews in America are learning it again in order to connect to their history.

* Hacker parlance is absolutely ''full'' of Yiddish, as well as various other languages. See the [http://www.catb.org/jargon/ [Jargon File]] for examples.

[[Category:Yiddish as a Second Language{{PAGENAME}}]]