2639: Ladino Use for Solitario (Extra Hebrew Diacritics) Mar 9, 2022

Solitario and Rashi script uses diacritics for sounds not represented in a script normally intended for Hebrew. This is also the case in modern Hebrew writing, but not as much in Yiddish, which used digraphs etc., possible inspired by German which has many of the same. Presently, Hebrew only has one digraph, which is נג <ng> like it is found in English, German, and Yiddish for the [ŋ] sound. In Solitario used for Ladino, this was not the convention, and diacritics were added to letters. For instance, the [dʒ] sound in the word 'Jump' or 'Giraffe' is written ג׳‎ or גﬞ from the basic ג [g], but in Yiddish this is written -דזש <dzsh>. The only similarity between Ladino and Yiddish conventions when it comes to non-Hebrew sounds is that Yiddish also used פֿ to represent [f] as opposed to [p].

Overall, not including the ones used in Biblical Hebrew (of which there would be an additional 5), Solitario used the added forms:

זﬞ for [ʒ] (like 'viSion' or French 'Je')

טﬞ for [θ] as in 'THree'

גﬞ for [dʒ] as in Jump

2636: ernten, earn, אַרן Mar 6, 2022

Though the closest language to German is Yiddish, there are many Yiddish words of Germanic origin that do not have similar meanings. For instance, the Yiddish word אַרן (arn) means 'to bother; to be annoyed', but the Modern German 'Ernte' means 'a harvest'. Both of those are also related to the English 'earn'. The root of all of these did likely mean 'harvest; reap; labor', and each word in the different languages sprung off of a different definition. The meaning was kept more literal in German while it meant 'toil' and then just 'be bothersome', whereas in English the idea of 'reaping' and perhaps even 'deserving' is what held.

2573: chutzpa Dec 29, 2021

The English word 'chutzpah' is from Hebrew via Yiddish meant, 'insolence' or 'audacity', but took on meaning more of 'grit' or 'moxie' as time went on. This is not entirely always negative, but does connote a strong sense of arrogance. Meanwhile, the Arabic cognate حصافة (ḥaṣāfah) means really the exact opposite with 'strong judgement'.

2265: Disparity in Yiddish Use between Men and Women Feb 27, 2021

These days, more men speak Yiddish than women. In certain communities of course, everyone speaks Yiddish often monolingually (or along with being able to read Hebrew). Still, for those for whom it is a second language, because much of modern Yeshiva study—exclusively for men—is still taught in Yiddish while women's seminaries generally use Modern Hebrew, there is a notable disparity.

אַ פֿרײליכן פורים

2261: Yiddish Masculine for Feminine Hebrew Loanwords Feb 23, 2021

Yiddish, a Germanic language, contains many Hebrew words with Hebrew plural forms, though it does not treat these the same as in actual Hebrew. For instance, the Yiddish form for both שבת (Shabbos) i.e. 'sabbath' and טלית‎ (tallis) '[prayer] shawl' use the masculine plural ending ־ים (-im) even though in Hebrew they both pluralize with the feminine ending ־ות (Modern -ot, or Yiddish -os). In truth, these actually are masculine, and just take usually-feminine endings due to phonological reasons and a little bit of chance. Thus there is the Yiddish שבתים (Shabbossim) but Hebrew שבתות (Shabbatot). Notably perhaps, שבת clearly shows up as masculine in the Bible but only in the singular.

שבת שבתון הוא לכם

"It [masc.] is a sabbath of complete rest for you all".

2108: Mixed Origins for Yiddish Gender Terminology Sep 22, 2020

Yiddish vocabulary is at least 80% Germanic but the more technical or academic terms tend to come from Hebrew. The words for gender come from Hebrew, but Hebrew only has 2 grammatical genders whereas Yiddish has 3. In Yiddish, the word for 'masculine' is זכר (zokher); 'feminine' is נקבה (nekeyve), both of which are Semitic, whereas the term for the neuter gender is נײטראַל (neytral). Someone familiar with this alphabet could tell this without even needing to know Yiddish or Hebrew because Yiddish adopts the spelling for Hebrew loanwords, whereas for any other word, such as with נײטראַל, the vowels are included.

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1715: Diminutive Suffixes in German Dialect Aug 25, 2019

About 80% of Yiddish vocabulary is from German, more or less depending on dialect, but when it comes to grammar the number is harder to discern. For instance, it is common for Yiddish to have the diminutive suffix -l (ל-), even using this in place of the word for small 'kleyn' (קליין) as is the case in German. For instance, 'city' in German is 'Stadt' (pronounced like SH-t [ʃt]), and in Yiddish it's 'shtot' (שטאָט), but a town—when not a village—is sometimes 'Kleinstadt' or just 'kleine Stadt' in German but 'shtetl' (שטעטל‎) in Yiddish. However, this Yiddish feature is Germanic, not Slavic or Hebraic, and does appear infrequently in some dialects. For instance, the Austrian town Neustadtl an der Donau (literally: New Little Town on the Danube) uses this convention, which is not really standard for German.

1631: dreidl Jun 2, 2019

Following yesterday's post about the folk-etymology surrounding dreidls, if someone needed further evidence that they're not of Semitic origin, it would be as easy as going to ask a child. 'Dreidl' (דרײדל‎) comes from 'dreien' meaning 'to turn', like the German 'drehen', but in Hebrew the word is 'sevivon' (סביבון), and this was invented by the 5 year-old son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who had invented Modern Hebrew. It is based from the Semitic root meaning 'to turn', but at the time, another word from Hayyim Nahman Bialik, "kirkar", was in use, based on the root for "to spin" but this did not catch on in spoken Hebrew. Many other words were used in Yiddish dialects too, based on Germanic or Slavic words.

1268: Irregular Spelling: Yiddish May 31, 2018

There are a lot of reasons why english spelling is so irregular, but one of them is that historically some words were adopted in (more or less) their original forms but not pronounced the same as in the native language. This happens still, especially with place-names. Nevertheless, English is by no means the only language to do so. While some languages such as Finnish borrows a lot of new words from English, the spelling always changes to fit the orthography, in other cases, such as Hebrew loan-words in Yiddish they retain their original spelling. In fact, because of this, the letter ת (taw) in Hebrew is usually pronounced as [t] but in Yiddish its an [s] among other differences, such as אמת (true) pronounced 'emet' in Hebrew but 'emes' in Yiddish. This is also a problem for reading Yiddish, because while Yiddish always represents vowels, Hebrew does not often.

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1258: Creoles vs Languages May 20, 2018

What separates creoles and pidgins from whole languages with heavy influence from other languages?

Some languages are very pure in their grammar and vocabulary, such as Icelandic which stays incredibly true to its Germanic roots, and other languages take elements from all over, such as Haitian Creole, which uses French as the lexifier language (i.e. where it gets its vocabulary) but with a lot of influence from West African languages. However, what separates a language like Haitian Creole from a non-creole language like Yiddish, is that while Yiddish has a lot of influence from Hebrew and Slavic languages in its vocabulary, phonology, and morphonology (which includes affixes and things like that) but its core vocabulary is Germanic, and so is the grammar. This definition has historically raised a lot of questions about English.

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1252: Triple Entendre (bei mir bisti sheyn) May 14 2018

People often talk of double entendres (except the French who don't use this French phrase). This only means that a word or phrase has two meanings but it isn't too difficult to find words with three or more meanings. For instance, the Yiddish song "Bei mir, bisti sheyn" (בײַ מיר ביסטו שײן) is easily translated into German "Bei mir bist du schön" but notoriously hard to translate into English. Though it is usually written "to me you are beautiful", "bei mir" means all of "to me", "by me" (i.e. "beside/near me"), and also "compared to me". While the final meaning-option is least likely given the context it is still a consideration. This makes the phrase "bei mir" a triple entendre. If you can you think of other triple or quadruple entendre, in any language, write it in a comment.

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1249: Semantic Diversion: verklemmen, farklempt, and clam May 11, 2018

To see effect of time and culture on language, loot how one root develops in two languages; this is best exhibited with English's 'black' and French's 'blanc' (white) coming from the same origin. Less directly than that, though still notably, the Germanic 'klammjan' lead to the Modern German 'verklemmen' meaning 'to jam/press', the Yiddish 'farklempt' (ווערקלעמפּט) meaning 'grieving' (although in Jewish English it only means 'emotional'), and the English 'clam'. All of these go back to a root that meant 'block', but were taken different ways. The original meaning was probably closest kept in German, but in English it was applied to an animal with a tightly shut shell. The meaning in Yiddish, however, emphasizes the emotional side to this word, and it is by no means the only one; other terms in English such as 'choked up', or indeed 'clam up' convey the sense of having a sort of emotional or mental blocking up. Ironically, there is the expression "happy as a clam".

1241: History through Prefixes: 'ver-' / 'far-' / for-' May 3, 2018

Looking at other, related languages' evolutions can offer great insight into their history; indeed, this is why so little is known about Basque, which has no known relatives. However, there is a lot to see with the history of Germanic languages. For instance the prefix 'ver-' in German 'vergessen' ('forget') or Dutch 'verliezen' ('lose'), the English 'for-' as in 'forgive' or indeed 'forget' and even the Yiddish 'ver-'/far-' depending upon how it is written in the Latin script, or '- ווער' when it is written in Assyrian letters, as in 'farklemt' (both emotionally 'depressed' and physically 'pressed') all come from the same origin. The root for all of these had the effect of adding intensive force, semantically speaking, in the same way that 're-' does in 'remember'. Nevertheless, in all four languages 'ver-'/'far-'/for-' gained a negative connotation, and will express renunciation such as in 'forgo', prohibition as in 'forbid', or simply undesirable things like with 'forlorn'. Only looking at this in English [4], it could be thought of as an English phonomenon, but looking across languages we see that this pattern is much older.
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