YIDDISH USAGE

By Shlomoh Sherman
September 4, 2020


HOW DO YIDDISH SPEAKERS FEEL ABOUT NON-NATIVES TRYING TO SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE?
Nechamah Goldfarb, answered on QUORA

As with most topics, I don't think there is a uniform response. For instance, I speak Yiddish and I think it is great when people try to learn and speak Yiddish.
On the other hand, my mother and grandmother used to laugh at me when I spoke Yiddish because I didn't have the proper accent. My mother called me a greenhorn, which is kind of funny; it means a foreigner/new immigrant, and the Yiddish-speaking immigrants who came to the USA a hundred years ago spoke English with such an accent that they were greenhorns. I, on the other hand, sounded like a foreigner/immigrant to the world of Yiddish-speakers!
Sometimes people will use Yiddish to show that they are members of the tribe, Unfortunately, some people who are not Jewish will use the phrases and it just feels messed up to me. But for Jews who wish to belong or show that they belong, and especially if they wish to recover that which was lost in their heritage, I feel a welcoming pride.
However, I do not like it at all when people use Yiddish phrases and Yiddish curses, especially mixed in with the English.


I don't agree with Mr Goldfarb. I always like it when nonJews use Yiddish words.

In 1919, H L Menken, a famous American journalist, and cultural critic wrote a multi-volume work, THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE, about how English is used in the United States, in which he prophesized that if Yiddish disappeared in America, many Yiddish words would enter the American English language. Although Menkin was a racist and an avowed antisemite, he allegedly wrote an angry letter to FDR, denouncing him for not allowing Jewish refugees asylum in America who were fleeing Nazi Germany.

Menkin's prediction has come true. Hollywood and Show Business, in general, have introduced America to many Yiddish words which have now become part of our dictionary. I have heard Yiddish words used on CNN among other places without explanation as though the audience is supposed to know their meanings. I asked friends how people in Alabama or North Dakota are supposed to know what TSHATKES means. They said people in those places don't watch CNN. But sophisticated people are expected to know these words and know they come from Yiddish. There are also people who know them but don't realize they are of Yiddish origin.

This is also true of many Germans. I served in Germany in the early 1960s and when speaking with Germans, heard them use Yiddish words while they were unaware that they came from Yiddish.

One of my favorite stories which I shared with Rabbi Riskin involves a mother and so on a bus in Israel. The mother is speaking to her young son in Yiddish when another passenger objects. He says, "Why are you speaking that language to the boy? This is Israel and we speak Hebrew here". The woman replies, "I am speaking Yiddish to him because I want him to remember that he is a Jew.


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