Yiddish as a Second Language: Difference between revisions

 

== Heitln (Film) ==

* A wonderful instance appears in the film ''[[A Mighty Wind]]'': Ed Begley Jr. plays Lars Olfen, a first-generation Swedish-American Public Television executive who nonetheless laces everything he says with a vast amount of Yiddish:

{{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.}}

{{quote| '''Stewart:''' What's with the Yiddish tonight? What's with the -- "shmaltzy", and the "just gave me a little schpilkis, but" -- "I took my punim over there", bing bang boom -- <br />

'''Williams:''' Joey Bishop, ladies and gentlemen. }}

* Carl Kolchak recognizes Yiddish words in ''[[Kolchak the Night Stalker]]''. He's an ex-New York reporter working in Chicago. So...

* Parodied in the episode of ''[[Frasier]]'', "Merry Christmas Mrs. Moskowitz," where (as part of a [[Fawlty Towers Plot]]) Frasier needs Niles to pretend to be Jewish for reasons too complicated to explain. Niles takes the job to heart, liberally injecting common Yiddish words into the conversation.

*** And, in a funny aside, ''a lot'' of words that Americans perceive as intrinsically Yiddish, are actually Russian (or Polish), as eastern Yiddish dialects for their part ''also'' experienced an enormous influence of the local Slavic languages.

* Dutch from Holland, especially Amsterdam, has the [[Bilingual Bonus|mazzel of being very Yiddish-influenced, which is rather tof.]]

** 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.

[[Category:A Nice Jewish Index]]

[[Category:Yiddish As A Second Language]]