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This is a list of words that have entered the English language from the Yiddish language, many of them by way of American English.There are differing approaches to the romanization of Yiddish orthography (which uses the Hebrew alphabet); thus, the spelling of some of the words in this list may be variable (for example, shlep is a variant of schlep, and shnozz, schnoz).
An English sentence that uses either may be described by some as Yinglish, [1] though a secondary sense of the term describes the distinctive way certain Jews in English-speaking countries add many Yiddish words into their conversation, beyond general Yiddish words and phrases used by English speakers. [citation needed]
Yiddish words used in English were documented extensively by Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish; [113] see also the list of English words of Yiddish origin. In 1975, the film Hester Street, much of which is in Yiddish, was released.
The Yiddish and Ashkenazic pronunciation of mazel has the stress on the first syllable while the Modern Hebrew word mazal has the stress on the last syllable. Mazel-tov is also used as a personal name. The phrase "mazel tov" is recorded as entering into American English from Yiddish in 1862, [2] pronounced / ˈ m ɑː z əl t ɒ v,-t ɒ f / MAH ...
Being Yiddish, the meaning can change by the use of gestures and a change in tone, so that tsatskele can become the favorite child. Leo Rosten , author of The Joys of Yiddish , combines the two main meanings and gives an alternative sense of tchotchke as meaning a young girl, a "pretty young thing".
According to etymologist Douglas Harper, the phrase is derived from Yiddish and is of Germanic origin. [4] It is cognate with the German expression o weh, or auweh, combining the German and Dutch exclamation au! meaning "ouch/oh" and the German word Weh, a cognate of the English word woe (as well as the Dutch wee meaning pain).
The word derives from the Hebrew ḥuṣpāh (חֻצְפָּה), meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". Thus, the original Yiddish word has a strongly negative connotation, but the form which entered English as a Yiddishism in American English has taken on a broader meaning, having been popularized through vernacular use in film ...
This is a list of English words of Hebrew origin. Transliterated pronunciations not found in Merriam-Webster or the American Heritage Dictionary follow Sephardic/Modern Israeli pronunciations as opposed to Ashkenazi pronunciations, with the major difference being that the letter taw ( ת ) is transliterated as a 't' as opposed to an 's'.