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The word has migrated as a loanword into American English, where a mensch is a particularly good person, similar to a "stand-up guy", a person with the qualities one would hope for in a friend or trusted colleague. [4] Mentshlekhkeyt (Yiddish: מענטשלעכקייט; German: Menschlichkeit) refers to the properties which make a person a mensch.
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).
Publication date. 1968. The Joys of Yiddish is a book containing a lexicon of common words and phrases of Yinglish —i.e., words originating in the Yiddish language that had become known to speakers of American English due to the influence of American Ashkenazi Jews. It was originally published in 1968 and written by Leo Rosten. [1][2]
kosher – Yinglish, not in its religious or Yiddish meanings, but only in five slang senses: authentic, trustworthy, legitimate, fair, and approved by a higher source. Its pronunciation, as "kōsher", is another distinguishing factor, as in true Yiddish it is pronounced "kūsher" or "kösher" mensch – a person of uncommon maturity and decency
Yenta or Yente (Yiddish: יענטע) is a Yiddish woman's given name. It is a variant form of the name Yentl (Yiddish: יענטל), which ultimately is thought to be derived from the Italian word gentile, meaning 'noble' or 'refined'. [1][2] The name has entered American English only in the form yenta in the senses of "meddler, busybody ...
Shiksa. Shiksa (Yiddish: שיקסע, romanized: shikse) is an often disparaging [1] term for a gentile [a] woman or girl. The word, which is of Yiddish origin, has moved into English usage and some Hebrew usage (as well as Polish and German), mostly in North American Jewish culture. Among Orthodox Jews, the term may be used to describe a Jewish ...
Yiddish orthography is the writing system used for the Yiddish language. It includes Yiddish spelling rules and the Hebrew script, which is used as the basis of a full vocalic alphabet. Letters that are silent or represent glottal stops in the Hebrew language are used as vowels in Yiddish. Other letters that can serve as both vowels and ...
Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (1988) Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to the language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata, and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect ...