Germans and Yiddish

[South]

Good morning Alan,

The last time I lived in Indonesia there was only 1 Chinese newspaper left. The other Chinese language newspapers left the scene because of deliberate and decisive government efforts to stop the use of the Chinese language. Besides the newspaper issue, no Chinese character advertisements on the sides of buildings can be seen now. I believe that last Chinese newspaper was allowed to remain as a government planned "safety value" for elderly ethnic Chinese Indonesians until they, too, leave the scene. I view this as akin to eg Stalin closing "all the churches", but a couple of places-still drained of their wealth-were allowed to remain open for the very elderly.

As an aside - or perhaps to focus on Yiddish, Virginia's famous explorer, Daniel Boone, was commissioned and funded by 2 Richmond, Virginia merchants, Isaiah Isaacs and Jacob Cohen, to explore the western counties of Virginia. This was probably for land speculation. Daniel Boone's receipt for cash payment for exploration/supplies was dated and noted by Isaiah Isaacs in Yiddish.

Warm regards,

Bob

[Sewer King]

That's very interesting, Bob, and glances at what I had meant.

It also comes back to the cant that the overseas Chinese are the "Jews of Asia." In many nations across the region they are eminent in the professions, but are not so likely to be heads of state. Overseas Chinese can be resident citizens for many generations in those countries, but remain unassimilated minorities. But they and their language have been steadily present everywhere for so long, that I would scarcely imagine even thinking to deliberately try and to stamp it out anywhere in Asia.

I myself am Filipino, with several Chinese relatives. Filipinos are close ethnic relatives of Indonesians, and since you have traveled in Asia you may have heard some of the small social prejudice against overseas Chinese in parts of it. It is admiration and resentment mixed together. I have heard it within my family, even with our Chinese members agreeing -- distantly comparable to anti-semitic social sentiment in old Europe. But deliberately edging out and expropriating a whole Chinese community over time is something I hadn't followed In Indonesia, and can't picture easily or elsewhere. The nearest thing I have heard, and that unsourced, was local suspicion of Dutch East Indies Chinese as pro-Japanese collaborators during the war.

So far as I know, Yiddish itself never served as a target or trigger for anti-semitism. It would be spoken only within the ethnic family and community, not where anyone hostile (or snobbish) to them would go. Of course, people themselves are targeted rather than their language. Social prejudices are far enough apart from active discrimination and persecution, by which time those people are naturally worried more for their lives than their language -- or whatever social status the latter gave in peacetime.

The biggest difference for overseas Chinese is their strong sense of cultural security in themselves and their language, regardless of their political minority. Their language has never "needed" an army or insurgency as we joked earlier, and although it and they may have been driven down in Indonesia I don't see what the latter's regimes think this will actually benefit their country in the long run. Any more than the expulsion of Jews did for old Spain, or their flight from a rising Nazi Germany; or attacking Indians did for 1970s Uganda, or persecution of Ibos did for 1960s Nigeria.

I hadn't heard of the small connection of Daniel Boone to anything in Yiddish until now.

-- Alan

[Mafiozo]

very interesting discussion here.

as an Israeli I must say that Yiddish, while not fluent amongst the general population, is still tutored and spoken among various cliques, mainly Holocaust survivors, Europe-Departees, and young people who wish to preserve the language.
I myself grew up learning Hebrew ofcourse, but throughout the years learned quite some yiddish as well, from my grandmother (an auschwitz survivor). yiddish is also the main source for some slang and other day-to-day expressions in hebrew.

things like "dreck", "Shmates", "Tararam", "zbeng", "frayer" are very common amongst the daily dialect of israelis, and not only among descendants of european jews, but also those who came from eastern-asia (arab countries).

also the suffix of many titles gains itself from yiddish. if you'd want to say that someone does nothing (nothing=klum), then you'd say he's a Klumnick.

one must appreciate the deep influence yiddish has on the hebrew language, a semitic language getting lots of flavours from arabic but also from german.

[Grisu]

things like "dreck", "Shmates", "Tararam", "zbeng", "frayer" are very common amongst the daily dialect of israelis, and not only among descendants of european jews, but also those who came from eastern-asia (arab countries).

Mafiozo, would you care to translate these expressions?

[Borys]

Ahoj!
The -nik suffix is probably from Slavic languages.
Two of those slang expression look quite familiar to me, a Polish speaker (Warsaw dialect).
Shmates = rags - probaly "loose women" or something of that ilk.
Frayer = probably "guilable", "sucker".

Borys

[Mafiozo]

Borys was spot on! Shmates is "rags", "worthless things".
Frayer is "sucker", one who will pay 15 shekels for a shawarma when two blocks away there's better shawarma for 5 shekels.

Dreck is the german work for "faeces". the equivalent of "sh*t". - "he's a dreck".
Tararam is an expression for something that made lots of noise, but usually used in the context of "it wasn't such a big deal", for example : "Yitzhak criticized savta's (grandmothers) Knedialach in the passover night. Everyone made a big ta-ra-ram, but all yitzhak said was that it needed some more salt!"

zbeng is like the sound of a "hit/blow/smack". if someone want's to describe how he got hit by something : " i was walking in the street, suddenly a man walked out of nowhere and "zbeng" i got smacked in the head. it was a powerful zbeng".
zbeng can also be used as an expression that says "Zbeng ve Gamarnu" which means "Zbeng - and we're done", which is said when someone thinks he has the magic formula to solve a big problem, with only one action. - "we'll go in there, give them the money, and zbeng - we're done".

another expression i really like is "Loksch". it's like a noodle, it's usually used in an expression that says " don't feed me with loksches" - meaning, don't tell me all kinds of fairy tales. don't embellish the truth, don't try to go round and round.

another expression that i've encountered alot in the army is "DUCH". it's really gotten into the language. it's derived from the german language (in german it's DURCH), which says "go in a straight in a line". for example, a commander who tells his soldier "go to the base DUCH. no shortcuts!".

also, in the past "fresh' soldiers were called "Helmut". it originated from german jews who made alliyah to israel and drafted to the army, and they acted like they are in "shock" in the first days of the army. the hebrew name for shock is "helem". so conscripts were often called "Helmut". though today it's rare, this was more common during the 1980's.

[Annelie]

I am going to pay attention from now on to see if someone calls me a "frayer".
I am sure they thought that of me when I was shopping in Munchen for shawarma

I hear dreck all the time but I imagined it meant "its no good or terrible" something to that effect.

Thankyou for the language lesson..

[Sewer King]

Ahoj! The -nik suffix is probably from Slavic languages.

Don't some Polish surnames connote professions? as in English ones like Smith, Carpenter, Tanner, Cooper, Baker, or German ones like Zimmermann, Eisenhauer, Lederer, Steinbrecher, Schuhmacher. There was a famous US film producer David Selznick, also the infamous SS officer Odilo Globocnik. Does -nik always refer to a person but not necessarily a profession? Though common in Yiddish and Slavic use is there any German equivalent?

In American usage (directly from Yiddish), -nik has been used to label or characterize someone, as -ite in English. Originally it may have been an intelligentsia term in the US, such as in the 1950s social-bohemian term beatnik, but is more widely recognizable in calling a war protester a peacenik, or in the political term refusenik, etc.

In Samuel Katz' book The Israeli Army after 1973 (Osprey Publishing Ltd), I have seen an IDF term jobnik which the author said referred to a rear-area noncombatant soldier. I suspect Yiddish has no original, basic military terms even for "soldier," for which the national language would be used instead, although I would expect there might be Yiddish for "police."

Shmates = rags - probaly "loose women" or something of that ilk.

Borys was spot on! Shmates is "rags", "worthless things".

I have heard the term mostly from women about some piece of clothing worn just for dirty work, and should not be worn otherwise. Also, about some such garment of mine my wife says is too far worn out even for that

Kurveh is one Yiddish term for a "loose woman," more literally a prostitute but probably graded in meaning like "slut" in English.

zbeng is like the sound of a "hit/blow/smack". if someone want's to describe how he got hit by something ...

I thought that was the Yiddish frask? My wife thinks zbeng may be a more modern term, and Israeli as such. It sounds close to the English whiz-bang, but since I have not heard of English slang making its way into Yiddish I would take it as coincidental.

Dreck is the german work for "faeces". the equivalent of "sh*t". - "he's a dreck".

I hear dreck all the time but I imagined it meant "its no good or terrible" something to that effect.

Dreck is more literally "filth" but certainly has the same meaning as "sh_t" (Ger: Scheiss well-known here) when applied to a person. More like calling someone scum or slime in English. Like Annelie I had always thought dreck was just as commonly said of things, like "nothing on TV but dreck."

-- Alan

[Borys]

Ahoj!
Some professions/trades do carry a -nik suffix - "złotnik" means goldschmidt, from "zloto" = gold +nik.
And is used in various word constructions - taxpayer is "podatnik" (podatek = yax), summer tourist = letnik (lato = summer), a small mess can be called "bałaganik".

"Kurveh" also looks very, very familiar. From Latin, curva, i.e. "bent", "crooked".

Borys

[Mafiozo]

yes, dreck doesn't have to be applied on a person, but can also be applied on objects like "everything on the tv tonight is dreck".

frask is a direct expression of a "slap in the face" if i'm not wrong. zbeng is generalization for all smacks and strokes.

regarding jobnik - you are very right. jobnik is a term for non-combative soldiers, those who do not always wield weapons or do not participate in combative situations. here - another beautiful integration of yiddish and english, in a term which is WIDELY used in israel. Job - comes to outline the fact that the soldier is not a combative soldier, so he does some kind of job (fix cars, clerk, quartermaster, etc..) and the "nik" is what we've already spoken about.

[Karl]

Ahoj!
The -nik suffix is probably from Slavic languages.
Two of those slang expression look quite familiar to me, a Polish speaker (Warsaw dialect).
Shmates = rags - probaly "loose women" or something of that ilk.
Frayer = probably "guilable", "sucker".
Borys

In American usage (directly from Yiddish), -nik has been used to label or characterize someone, as -ite in English. Originally it may have been an intelligentsia term in the US, such as in the 1950s social-bohemian term beatnik, but is more widely recognizable in calling a war protester a peacenik, or in the political term refusenik, etc.

That is great.

Mafiozo wrote:Dreck is the german work for "faeces". the equivalent of "sh*t". - "he's a dreck".
Annelie wrote:I hear dreck all the time but I imagined it meant "its no good or terrible" something to that effect.

Dreck is more literally "filth" but certainly has the same meaning as "sh_t" (Ger: Scheiss well-known here) when applied to a person. More like calling someone scum or slime in English. Like Annelie I had always thought dreck was just as commonly said of things, like "nothing on TV but dreck."

brought up with the understanding that it simply meant 'dirt' (but colloquially it is quite eh...flexible )

another expression that i've encountered alot in the army is "DUCH". it's really gotten into the language. it's derived from the german language (in german it's DURCH),
Mafiozo

....as in the prep 'through'.

I myself am Filipino

Hats off to your linguistics Alan.

Annelie you are funny

Regards.

Karl

[Simon K]

Interesting comments from our Israeli colleague.
As a Londoner, my grandmother used Yiddish and much old East End London slang, the Yiddish mostly monosylabically till her death in 1984. She was 90. She was born 5 years after the Ripper murders, and about a hundred yards from the last murder site in Dorset Row.
Has Yiddish "altered" in any way in Israel? Some of your terms are different from what I recall.
Schmutter - old rag, poor or cheap piece of clothing
Schlepper - traditionally a man who would hang around Schmutter shops - employed by the owner, to drag (literally) potential "customers" into the shop, with protestations of the womans immense taste, and physical beauty. More modernly, its used as a alternative as a menial gopher, a all purpose junior or elderly employee.
Shiksa - A non Jewish woman. not insulting usually used if she has a Jewish boyfriend, and who usually ended up as in-laws.
Schmuck - A fool
Schlemiel - A fool
A good rule of thumb to diifferentiate between the two. A schmuck and a schlemiel in a bar. The schmuck is the type who would knock over his beer. The schemiel is the type that the beer would land on.
Lokshen - soup noodles. Also makes a pudding with sultanas and sweet spices. Lokshen pudding.
Kopf - Head
Mischiguna - Mad person
Mischigus - A madness or obsession.
Polka - A chicken drumstick.
Schmaltz - clarified chicken fat, used in cooking. Excellent but suicidally high in cholestral.
Gribbuna (?) fried onion. often combined with the Schmaltz in the rendering process. Superb mixed with mashed potato.
Knenadlech - A dumpling made from schmaltz, matzo meal and egg. God its good. A cholestral mills grenade.
The Yiddish I recall came from Austria Hungary. My maternal Grandfather came from Vienna and my Grandmother from Galicia. Both were born in London however, so this was family speak. So Grisus' contributions may be pertinent.
I will try to remember more.

[Simon K]

Just one more Nazi "achievement" The near destruction of an ancient language and its speakers, poets, playwrights and authors.

[Sewer King]

Ahoj! Some professions/trades do carry a -nik suffix - "złotnik" means goldschmidt, from "zloto" = gold +nik. And is used in various word constructions - taxpayer is "podatnik" (podatek = yax), summer tourist = letnik (lato = summer)

Since it's Slavic it would naturally be common enough in Russian then? The only Russian one I've heard is robotnik.

frask is a direct expression of a "slap in the face" if i'm not wrong. zbeng is generalization for all smacks and strokes ...

My wife confirms this, frask im pisk is literally slap to the face.

Hats off to your linguistics Alan.

Thanks, but it's not really any particular linguistic ability -- I grew up in a New York neighborhood in West Harlem where the last of old Jewish immigrant families were leaving by the early 1970s, although some few schoolteachers and storekeepers held out a short while longer. The middle and high schools I went to uptown had a sizeable Jewish student body, but they certainly no longer do today. I met my wife at the latter. Much of this came naturally through contact, and New Yorkers (Filipino ones included) picked some of it up in general.

As a Londoner, my grandmother used Yiddish and much old East End London slang, the Yiddish mostly monosylabically till her death in 1984...

Even to someone who first learns anything about it, it's immediately apparent that Yiddish is a very earthy language of working class Jews. It is full of wry, sarcastic, biting, funny, warm, happy, and sad things. Would I be right to assume that therefore Yiddish should have fit right in the East End? When Yiddish was widespread in old Europe and later with immigrant Jews, Hebrew remained in a sort of solemn stasis in its liturgical use. However, Hebrew is now a living language, and to me Yiddish seems to be the one that may decline over time.

Schmuck - A fool

I understood this to be the Yiddish term for calling someone a schlong, literally "penis," and so equivalent to calling him a "prick." But since even this was well understood for what it meant, and it too became somewhat rude in post-immigrant usage. Reportedly a third term schmo (or schmoe) came about that could be said in polite company.

... A good rule of thumb to diifferentiate between the two. A schmuck and a schlemiel in a bar. The schmuck is the type who would knock over his beer. The schemiel is the type that the beer would land on.

Rather, the one who spills it the schlemiel and who gets spilled on is a schlemazel. This is a standard explanation which I have heard on TV more than once, and which is naturally in the Leo Rosten book. It's usually soup rather than beer but since you're a Brit, beer will understandably answer for it. See? You yourself have put a local twist on a traditional Yiddish explanation.

Mischigus - A madness or obsession.

In the US this is typically spelled mischegoss, also applied to a messy and bad situation; something troublesome; unnecessary or unavoidable trouble.

My maternal Grandfather came from Vienna and my Grandmother from Galicia.

By some stretch of imagination your grans could be long ago related to my wife's family, who were Galizianers as I mentioned earlier. Her grandfather fled conscription into the Austro-Hungarian Army. She would like to do some research on the genealogy.

Just one more Nazi "achievement" The near destruction of an ancient language and its speakers, poets, playwrights and authors.

In New York City (I don't know much about other US Jewish communities, many though they are), Yiddish survived of course, but like Mafiozo said it was mainstream with the oldest generation, whether in New York or in Israel. And like all elders they scoff at the liberties that their juniors take with the cultural heritage, if they do anything at all with it.

One of the best Israeli ethos is "where are the Roman emperors, the czars, and Hitler? We, the Jews, are here. Where are they?"

But in contrast, I think that Yiddish may dwindle over time -- because so have the original working-class communities for which it was a pillar of culture. What continues of it today will certainly not have anything like the vibrance that we look back to from before the Holocaust, or in 1900-1950s America.

-- Alan

[Borys]

Shiksa - A non Jewish woman. not insulting usually used if she has a Jewish boyfriend, and who usually ended up as in-laws.

To me the root of the words seems to be Polish, either "sikać" - to squirt, to pee, or "siki" - piss.

Mischiguna - Mad person
Mischigus - A madness or obsession.

The root of meeshuge/meeschugene is the German word mischung - mix/to mix.
Enjoy:
http://www.meshuggabeachparty.com/meshugga/index.htm

Schmaltz - clarified chicken fat, used in cooking. Excellent but suicidally high in cholestral.

From German. Used in Polish as well. And this can be ANY fat. I love the oink-oink variety with onions and cracklings!

Ahoj! Some professions/trades do carry a -nik suffix - "złotnik" means goldschmidt, from "zloto" = gold +nik. And is used in various word constructions - taxpayer is "podatnik" (podatek = yax), summer tourist = letnik (lato = summer)

Since it's Slavic it would naturally be common enough in Russian then? The only Russian one I've heard is robotnik.

Yes, common in Russian. Off the top of my head:
- dorozhnik - railroad worker
- dvornik - janitor
- kokoshnik - henhouse

Borys