"I Have to Tell You, Your Yiddish is Very Strange": Speaking Yiddish with Hasidim

[@alanshore2275]

I had such an experience in Romania a couple of years ago, when I met with the remnant of the remnant of the Jewish community in Botoshani on erev shabbos at the only remaining functioning synagogue. I was there to rendezvous with the head of the community, who had consented to give my brother and I a tour. He was detained, and there I was with about a half dozen elderly men who spoke no English. I speak no Romanian. So, I tried my university Yiddish. The first thing they did was huddle together in a corner, where I overheard one say, "What kind of Yiddish is this guy talking?" Another replied, "Oh this is what they teach at the university." I butted in, "Look, this is not Yiddish I learned at my mother's knee. But I understand you and you seem to understand me, so let's go on from there." And so we did.

[@SnapCracklePapa]

lol loved that story

[@frosibald81]

In my home we called a window ”a fenster”. We spoke the Yiddish that were spoken by millions of European Jews before the khurbn (shoah). It was a living Yiddish with a rich litterature. I hope it can be preserved.

[@OffbeatsMusic]

❤

[@danschneider9921]

I speak fluent German (my parents are German Lutherans from the Wilhelmshaven area) and my wife is Jewish and speaks semi-fluent Yiddish. We have alot of fun trying to compare and contrast the two languages though she says her language is "spicier" lol

[@diosnoexiste898]

Luther, the ultimate antisemite, would turn in his grave (if he had any consciousness, which , of course, he has not).

[@louisdewit4429]

The Williamsburg lady speaks Anglicized Yiddish. There are so many types. I understand that the famous Barry sisters sang in Galician (Polish) Yiddish. When i was on the kibbutz Yad Mordechai in 1977 we had elderly from Poland and Russia. I could, because learned German at school, vaguely understand the ‘Poles’ but not at all the ‘Russian’. They among eachother had no problem understanding eachother and chatting along. Galician was much more Germanic while the ‘Pale’ Yiddish for me a total humbug. Only their sound was the same. From a time gone by. A harsh and rich world totally unique and iconic sadly brutally devastated and disappeared. Shalom from Holland.

[@ernestosimon4268]

I am a Chasidic Jew, but I once had a conversation with someone who spoke university Yiddish and we could perfectly understand each other. Perhaps, universities should somehow show how Yiddish is spoken in Chasidic communities and we, Chasidic Jews, should attempt to speak Yiddish in a more professional way.

[@Philoglossos]

I don't think you should worry about changing the way you speak your native language, but it's definitely nice to at least tolerate people speaking in a different dialect than you. :-)

[@davidpcohen5365]

You may learn much from a. Litvak. Such as YIVO rules for transliteration

[@grayforester]

The professor speaks in a pleasing manner. Wish it were three hours and nineteen minutes.

[@YiddishBookCenter]

The full interview is 1 hour and 33 minutes - not quite that long but still more than this clip! Expand the video description above for the link to the full interview.

[@canal_changeling]

Professor Udel has hours of Zoom Yiddish classes uploaded here.

[@anonnymowse]

My great-grandmother said when the new cousins came even before WW2 that they complained they couldn't understand her Yiddish because she mixed in too much English, and they didn't know those words. This has been happening for a long long time.

[@justamusician7846]

Happens to me as well (a Catholic who learns Yiddish). I have some Hassidim friends and they say: your Yiddish is so archaic and weird! Well, I am learning Hungarian Yiddish, I told them. And then, we laughed a lot. It was such a funny and wholesome experience. I love you all, wish you a lot of love and peace

[@mzk1489]

It reminds me of the old joke in which the daughter of Ben Yehuda (the father of modern Hebrew) speaks her father's Hebrew in modern Israel, and is asked, "are you a new immigrant"?

[@xmoody179]

Although I am Christian, I’d just like to say I love y’all. And I hope you all have true happiness

[@shevetlevi2821]

Thank you Christian brother or sister.

[@shevetlevi2821]

And to you and your family as well.

[@malkaappelbaum6974]

I loveed this story. Yiddish is by no means dying out. It is spoken as the first language by Hasidic children in many communities around the world.

[@isaacgoldberg5346]

Something worthy to note: there is significant divide even amongst Brooklyn/hasidic Yiddish speakers. The divide is between those from Hungarian background vs those with a polish/galician background. I myself (Galician background) would never use "vinde" or "ge'triedt"

[@MrLaizard]

"vinde" (for venstr/fenster) and "getreid" (for geproft/versucht/getracht) are anglicisms and have nothing to do with he different varieties of yiddish spoken; Greetings from Argentina with besarabian-russian background

[@donnavickers6058]

That ge-triedt phrase made me laugh. I took a year of HS German and recognized the ge as a prefix to a verb. So people speak Yinglish? I've heard of Spanglish and Taglish but never Yinglish.

[@ellemueller]

What gets me about "getreyd" is that is sounds like the past tense version of the word that means "to trod upon" or "to walk/step on". Something like, "A paloni hot mayr az a troybe getreyd, kasher vayn zu mokhn", [Literally: "One Joe Shmo has/had more than one grape treaded/trod/squished-with-his-feet, wine to make"] = "Joe Shmo stepped on more than one grape to make kosher wine." It means something like, "kosher wine comes from stepping on grapes", also something like "a random dude can be involved in causing holy things come from unexpected places", & "The holiest things come from humble places/methods." A more secular, non-Jewish way of expressing a similar idea in English may be a bit like "something good came out of it."

[@ulexite-tv]

@@donnavickers6058 Yinglish indeed.

[@larryglinzman4190]

The lady you were speaking to was speaking Yinglish, the language I grew up with in Crown Heights. Our relatives NOT from New York spoke Yiddish like you.

[@jeffwarschauer]

No, she was speaking contemporary Hasidic Yiddish, as spoken in Hasidic communities in North America. Yinglish is a whole 'nother thing.

[@mzk1489]

@@jeffwarschauer Arguably the Professor is speaking Yinglish. It sounds like my English, the way religious Jews speak (although I have no idea if she is one, and the more modern have now been influenced by Israeli Hebrew, saying Shabbat instead of Shabbos).

[@TheChasamSoda]

@Jeff Warschauer I'm not sure about that. The lady was speaking a more bastardised Yiddish than the one spoken by Israeli chassidim, Belgian chassidim, and English chassidim (this is coming from someone who grew up speaking Yiddish in the English chassidish community, we always say "דער פענצטער")

[@ricosolomon]

Excellent and informative piece. Great anecdotes she shared, attempting to use and expand her Yiddish vocabulary

[@JayYoung-ro3vu]

What a wonderful learning encounter!

[@danielkluge6763]

I’d never tell someone that their language is strange, I’d rather encourage them to keep up their great effort and progress. I admire the professor’s attitude in that she didn’t feel insulted by that behaviour.

[@libafried5840]

Every living language is always about, evolution and adaption. Slavic words were introduced to Yiddish when many European Jews of Germany migrated to and settled in Slavic countries. Today, in Israel modern Hebrew words are used, in US English words are used, and elsewhere local languages are used with Yiddish. To break down Yiddish, approximately 70% of words are from the German language, 10% is Hebrew, 10% is Slavic and another 10% is the local language spoken in the country where the Yiddish speaker lives.

[@yacovlevi]

I am fluent in Hebrew (modern) and English. I absolutely love the way she sounds at the end speaking Yiddish.

[@geraldswartz6531]

My father had this ongoing feud with my mother over how certain Yiddish words were pronounced. For instance, my father's family pronounce kugel as "kiggel" and mishuggena as "mishiggena." I recall once he got quite angry about it. I chalk it up to differences in dialect, but it has confused the heck out of me and consequently, I find myself at odds with Yiddish I hear in the NY area.

[@phillipdarrow509]

me too...same with tchakees versus tchakas

[@IcemanE52]

My grandparents always said mishigga. I think it depend what part of Europe your ancestors came from.

[@westhoboken8167]

@@IcemanE52 Mishigga is Galitzianer as is Kigel.

[@tonnyengert]

What is mishuggana? It is mesjogge, the alef has a latin t under it and that is pronounced as a O not a weard sound and the gg's is not k sound it is a g throat scraping sound. But americans really cant speak it because they never learned the sound off it. It is a ashjkenazim jewish lenguage and we have also many dialect but in Europe the first jewish lenguage and not hebrew

[@justinstewart4889]

@@tonnyengert Meshuggene is very much a Yiddish word.

[@RafaelRabinovich]

It's not about language, but acceptance through tznius wearing clothing. If you're seen as part of the community, you're addressed in the language that identifies the community.

[@haroldgoodman130]

Vinde was used in American Yiddish back in the 1920s. Same for many other things which YIVO doesn't use. Real Yiddish doesn't exist accept in the mind of people who are judgemental. Whatever Yiddish is spoken by the population with which you speak, that is what you need to learn.

[@LittleImpaler]

Harold Goodman Yiddish changes in the place where you live.

[@timokohler6631]

And fenster, prüfen geprüft is simply german.

[@arielschant9841]

די דײטשמעריזמען זענען נישט שלעכק, איך גלויב אז זיי זענען זייער עלעגאנט.

[@morehn]

I know a Satmar woman from Belgium who makes fun of American Chassidish Yiddish, calling it "fake" Yiddish. At least she grew up on Yiddish, and it's just more European and authentic to her. However, for someone who learned Yiddish from a textbook to call American Yiddish "fake" is a little funny.

[@jaymylotto8134]

So for 1000 years the word was "fenster", but in the pidgin-yiddish in the US it became "vinde". They would laughed at by European Yiddish speakers if they were still alive.

[@AnnaMishel]

Hi Miriam, Very funny story. Great to see you. Anna ( from the summer program)

[@brendanriley2908]

hahahaha, this is a lovely story..... very similar experience in Ireland, where people in the Gaeltacht, the Irish speaking areas bend English words into Irish ones, but people from Dublin etc who learn Irish in the class, learn the "proper" forms

[@canal_changeling]

One of my aims in casually learning Yiddish was to reinforce my German vocab-or at least to compare Yiddish with Hochdeutsch in a way that makes the latter more memorable-so to hear that “der Fenster” and “geprüft“ aren‘t modern, living Yiddish bums me out a little.

[@H.J.Fleischmann]

Not modern and living is not actually accurate. There are different dialects of Yiddish with different levels of anglicisation, russification, and so on, so while the woman mentioned in the video might be right for her area, that is not actually the case everywhere. Far from it.

[@VictorLepanto]

Yiddish is a peculiar (in the sense of rare & unusual) dialect of German, English is also an unusual dialect of German, one which had long been cut off from the main spring of German culture & is also heavily influenced by Gaelic, French & Latin. Really, it is quite natural they would blend very easily, they have a natural affinity for each other.

[@raymondkidwell7135]

English and high German came from the same root language. In some ways English is closer to that language and some ways german is. Yiddish is actually closer to it than either English or standard german being based on a more archaic german.

[@tylersmith3139]

You're right about Yiddish (although many people a distinct language because it's grammar is simplified compares to standard high German), but Germanic and German is a different thing. English is a Germanic language, meaning it has the ancestor language as German(it comes from the Latin term Germania and the people living there whose languages eventually became English, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian etc.), but it's a different language from German. English is an older than German, it's why Dutch has features of English and German. German/ High German to be specific only became a language after several sounds had changed in speech. The "p" started to shift into "f", hence English and Dutch "apple/appel" and German "Apfel" or English and Dutch "Weapon/Wappen" and German "Waffen", "t" started to shift into a "tz/z or s" sound so English and Dutch "two/tvee" became "zwei" in German or "Better" in English and "Besser" in German. There are many languages that share a common ancestor with German, but aren't German. Yiddish meanwhile is the dialect of German spoken first by German living in Rhineland who moved to other parts of Germany and then to Eastern Europe.

[@kiri101]

Influenced by Gaelic? As someone with a bit of Irish I'd love to hear about that

[@יעקבחייםדנציגר-ב6פ]

That's just American Yiddish. Amongst Yiddish speakers in Israel, these words aren't understood. An American in Israel knows full well that it isn't standard Yiddish, so they revert back to the norm.

[@mzk1489]

In Israel they generally throw in modern Hebrew words, like agalah for baby carriage - of course the word already existed in Yiddish as ba'al agoloh - wagon driver (both words from Hebrew).

[@haroldsteinblatt2567]

The difference is not only that the Boro Parkers she met included a lot of English words in their Yiddish, but that people who learn the language in classrooms sound as if they learned it in a classroom - speaking in a somewhat stilted academic fashion very different from “street” or conversational fashion, with accents that doesn’t sound like anything spoken by native Yiddish speakers from Eastern Europe - educated YIVO Litvaks among them. It’s like the difference between the blues playing of John Mayer and, say, the late B.B. King - you can instantly tell which is the real deal.

[@grigoriyshlemas2387]

Perfect parallel with blues performers,adank.🔯✡️🔯✡️🔯✡️

[@rhapsag]

This is interesting. My maternal grandparents spoke Yiddish to one another (only when they didn't want the children to know what they were talking about, so my mother never learned it - and unfortunately, my grandfather died before I was born, so I never heard them speak it). My grandfather was a Galitzianer; my grandmother was born in England, to Galitzianer and Litvak parents. Apparently, my grandfather used to laugh at my grandmother's Yiddish because of all the English words she used.

[@prettythings89]

This is sad... yiddish will definitely die out if the older generation refuses to practice with anyone who isn't word-perfect. :(

[@alenciis8212]

True, but it’s like Latin - it’s a useless language nowadays

[@derpayatz]

yall there are a million speakers of yiddish alive and well who are speaking it at home with their children... those are the people she's talking about

[@giladwasheretravel3553]

It's not only that. Brooklyn Yiddish is not even the "correct" Yiddish as she points out, it's just a dialect.

[@meirhalfon9613]

Actually not true every kid in Williamsburg speak Yiddish, every hassidic school in Brooklyn and Israel speak Yiddish thats generations forward that their main language is Yiddish.

[@michaelserebreny454]

Charlie Walker you're both out of your mind. They refuse to speak to those who are outsiders. There is nothing dead about Yiddish whatsoever. It is spoken in all orthodox Jewish communities in the US and the rest of the world daily and almost exclusively; so much so that the American born Jewish youth in such communities have Yiddish accents, not American.

[@ulexite-tv]

My mother was from Munich and spoke Bavarian German, but when she came to America in 1938 she befriended many New York Jews who spoke Yiddish and they understood each other well. In fact, they were her bridge to speaking English. She used the word "fenster," both in German and Yiddish, but she told me that the proper German articles -- i.e. das fenster -- were not always found in Yiddish, and so de fenster would be okay. And i remember her laughing when a Russian Jewish friend born in New York, said "de vinde." She thought that was so funny, like something a Jewish comedian, like Gertrude Berg, would say to get a laugh.

[@journeymancellist9247]

Her Yiddish is German Yiddish. Except “Der Fenster” is Good German for “the window”, and De Vinde is good English for “the window” Gosh I wish I knew more than a smattering of Yiddish. And Russian Yiddish vs German/Polish Yiddish and I guess American Yiddish. Was anything I just said even valid? I know no Yiddish so I’m not really sure, but what a great subject. For once a “recommended video” was right!

[@nqh4393]

Das* Fenster.

[@journeymancellist9247]

@@nqh4393 oops, yes you are correct. My bad.

[@hveddrek7422]

is it still the same language if the words change from der fenster to di vinde? like scots and english is similar but different language altogether, just like catalan and italian

[@justinstewart4889]

There are different dialects of Yiddish. You have the right idea, but Yiddish dialects in the old country were divided up according to geographical points that today make less sense given how Europe's map has shifted over the past 200 years.

[@justinstewart4889]

@@hveddrek7422 Yes, *of course* it is still the same language. It is just dialectal. Australians and Americans have all kinds of different words for the same thing. Americans can have huge differences based on region, and British people sometimes are barely mutually intelligible. It's still English.

[@snoogkies]

I’d like to learn Yiddish one day, my 2x or 3x great grandparents from Russia spoke it.

[@naukumaija7056]

You should get duolingo on your phone, they have a course in Yiddish now.

[@krishnar1182]

Does anyone know what the third Yiddish-speaking community is that she mentions? She mentions Williamsburg, Borough Park, and something that sounds like "Homilak". Thanks!

[@benzo2211]

It's the Homowack, which was a popular hotel in the Catskills.

[@DTRSO8]

I visit Stamford Hill in London regularly and speak Yiddish with Hasidim on a regular basis...we most definetly would use "pruv/gepruv" for "try/attempt" and "fenster" for "window".. The Hasidisher woman speaking like "vindeh and getried" is not speaking Yiddish

[@TheWegeg]

+DTRSO8 Americans can't speak any language other than English, and apparently that even includes Hasidim :/

[@countchocula2169]

PieMan no they speak a living Yiddish. Which is a dialect of German. Think about it.

[@Laivy]

We say Probeeren here in New York for "to try", not prooven

[@Rochi_isnt_cool]

The American Hasidic yidish is literally saying English words in yidish Grammer. They don't know yidish that well.

[@bizh7715]

yes, pruv is more like testing

[@hsage1]

Miriam, זייער גוט. גיב נישט אויף. Stay confident. from a former Sholem Aleichem Yiddish school student.

[@ezetanz]

You can notice what she says on the series Unorthodox, an English-influenced Yiddish.

[@Rolando_Cueva]

I like the fossilised version more haha

[@SnapCracklePapa]

Humility is very attractive.

[@Superrichy261985]

„Fenster“ is the modern German word for window. But it comes from Latin „Fenestra“ actually.

[@LydlDrakhe]

In my dialect we say „דאס פענסטער“ („Dos fenster“), but i can't with the Yinglish. Lol.

[@jaywho476]

Native contemporary Chasidish Yiddish speaker here: Fenster is definitely still widely used. And to try or tried is Prebir Or Prebirt, not Prufen. Prufen means test. As in German. Her Akademisch Yiddish leaves a lot to be desired. It's contrived and technologisch.

[@rozelliotvogelfanger1655]

Fenster is window and finster is dark. Finsternish is darkness.

[@ArletteNL]

Hi, can anyone out there help me translate a hand-written Yiddish letter from my grandfather into English? I can help you in exchange with English, French or Dutch!

[@shhiknopfler3912]

If it's clear enough I probably can

[@noamto]

If you still need help I can.

[@sheikowi]

Your English is very Yiddish.

[@LydlDrakhe]

Even though I found it very funny, I would hate to see Hungarian Yiddish become 90% English and 10% some Germanic words of what was once Yiddish. We should stay away from Anglicisms, I prefer Daytshmerish to that.

[@rw1815]

Go to Antwerp, Manchester, London, Stassbourg, Berlin, maybe Amsterdam for a answer.

[@trevhill9069]

Serious question. Doesn't Yiddish differ across the different communities? "Fenster" is German, "Pruvn" might come from Slavic languages (Próbować in Polish). I assume if you were somewhere like America there would be different Yiddishes which blended together. If there were different words for something maybe they used the "American" word.

[@BM-is5ei]

I think pruvn comes from some old form of "probieren" which means to try in modern german.

[@pawel198812]

I think it's more likely it's an old Romance loanword. There are a couple of them in Yiddish, after all.

[@mzk1489]

There is also a Western Yiddish; don't know if too many people speak it. In Israel they throw modern Hebrew in. Of course, any Yiddish has a lot of Hebrew/Aramaic in it. And there are a lot of "Yiddishes" - Judeo-Spanish, Judeo--Arabic, Judeo-Slavic (known as "Cannanite") going all the way back to the Judeo-Aramaic (with a lot of Greek and Latin thrown in) of the Talmud. In fact, a lot of those Greek, Latin, and Aramaic words are now considered to be Hebrew.

[@Ragkaka]

In Dutch, a germanic language: proeven (pruvn) and venster (Fenster)

[@rhapsag]

'Prüfen' exists in German (meaning 'to check' in modern usage). It is related to 'probieren' but not exactly a form of it: both come from Latin 'probare', but 'prüfen' comes via Old French, whilst 'probieren' is a direct Latin loan.

[@AtlantaBill]

Emory University is my alma mater. It has a great Yiddish collection in its main library. My father's forebears were Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsylfaanisch Deitsch) and came more originally from the same area around Mannheim, Germany where Yiddish also developed from Westmitteldeutsch. Mannheim today (Deitsch: Schtadt vun Monnem, Yiddish: שטאָדט פון מאָנהײם) has a section on its official website dedicated to the indespensible (unverzichtbare) contributions made by the Jews of the city to its historic social and economic development. www.mannheim.de/tourismus-entdecken/juedische-geschichte pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannheim Not found in Wikipedia Yiddish pages, but has a page in the Hebrew pages (it's a sister city with Haifa)!: he.wikipedia.org/wiki/מנהיים

[@frumamohrer9863]

Actually, I can only speak my best French and Hungarian if I am speaking to French and Hungarian natives who speak English with difficulty. If they speak a perfect English I am unable to muster my best French or.Hungarian because the situation is clearly artificial. I am not satisfying my interlocutor's natural need, to be spoken to in French or Hungarian. But if I meet someone from Hungary who knows no English, my best Hungarian just comes out naturally and flowingly because I am communicating with a real needed purpose and satisfying someone's real neef. Same if I speak to a native French speaker who knows no English or little English. My best Yiddish conversations have been with Holocaust survivors whose Yiddish surpassed their English by far. They had a need to be spoken to in Yiddish. There are and were survivors in Williamsburg who spoke Hungarian in prewar period ( primarily women, the men knew Yiddish from Yeshiva) and learned Yiddish after the war. But amongst themselves, having had all their schooling, sometimes pretty advanced, in Hungarian, they spoke Hungarian, the language most natural to them. Their written and spoken Hungarian was very advanced and sophisticated, as per the educational system in Hungary and education was strictly administered in Hungary. They had studied Hungarian literature and poetry, written essays, studied all subjects including math in Hungarian, not in Yiddish, despite living a strictly observant Jewish life. They also studied German at a pretty sophisticated level, grammar and and all, a remnant of the Austro Hungarian Empire. The linguistic situation among Hungarian speaking survivors is therefore actually much more complex than at first blush. So their not automatically speaking Yiddish is due to multiple linguistic, historic and cultural causes. I refer to those from Central Hungary. Those women from the borderlands often spoke a fine rich native Yiddish, equal in range of vocabulary to anyone else's Yiddish. But one cannot assume that someone in Williamsburg automatically spoke Yiddish as their first language from home. Central Europe was multi linguistic and multi cultural.

[@shmuli9]

Oh, I am know EXACTLY what she meant... I speak it "come here, come there". But I don't speak it fluently... I make up words that I THINK are Yiddish, but are actually combos of German and Dutch... people UNDERSTAND me, but they think I am "amusing"...

[@shhiknopfler3912]

Come here Kim aher...

[@fennecabumukallalabdulmasi3867]

Shalom Miriam, es iz dor azoy, doss es hot dialekte in Yiddish vi oif Daytsh aukh. Yiddish iz a oids, ouroids, Shvebish vun vor 1618 un es iz vellik normal, doss a Polisher, a Russisher, a Shvebisher un a Elsesser hom nit dosselbe Yiddish. Yiddish in Stuttgart, Paris odr Strasbourg klingt oifakh weniger Russish ois Yiddish in Lvov, Sevastopol oder Woronyezh. Un wos dos Yiddish in di Bronx ongeyt: Dos iz oyft azoy vi in dos Lidele "16 tons", wos in am franzezisher Film mit Louis de Funes a Rebbe nent: "Yingale, Du bishd yo velig ameriganisirt, a Yankele bishd gworn!" ;-) Do helfd nor oyns: Ven a Russisher English lernd un a Yankele Russish... Odr bayde lernat Ladino Andaluz, do send di nit azoy farshidn. Odr ir woard bayde inner Yeshivah un kennt bayde oif Ivrit oiswaykhn, so vi Du. ;-) Blaybd zhye mir gezind! Yevarakhekha et Adonayi Eloheynou!

[@tonnyengert]

Jiddisch in Europe was spoken in poland, rusia latvia, germany and the netherlands, tjechoslowakia and in Europe it is an official lenguage of the asjkenazim jews

[@HebrewStudent]

There is a great video on KZbin titled Yiddish vs German. They have two young men one who speaks German and one who speaks Yiddish. The person doing the interview in English asks each one to say a particular phrase or word. Thus the do a comparison. The Yiddish is about 75-80% German. Of the remaining 20% it is mostly Ashkenazic Hebrew. It's very interesting as well and it reminds me of how languages are constantly changing. Just look at how much Yiddish has made it into main stream English in America. In this video the word fenster is mentioned. It means window in both German and Hebrew. When I was a boy fenster was often used to refer to darkness. There's a connection between windows and darkness but they don't mean the same thing. Yet usage can change. If you speak German or Yiddish you can communicate with each other pretty well. Sometimes the word is the same but with a heavy accent. All interesting things to study.

[@zaashtill1542]

Fenster, is not the Hebrew word for window?

[@YiddishBookCenter]

"finster" also exists in Yiddish as a separate word that means "dark."

[@ramonek9109]

There is no connection between window and darkness. Fenster is Latin derived (fenestra). Finster is a germanic word for dark. The similarity is accidental.

[@Spritz86]

my grandmother always used the word finster to mean window. Note: I grew up in France.

[@zdzisawszulc7042]

Yes, fincster istead fenster.

[@bobthebuilder4939]

@@zdzisawszulc7042 fenetre

[@arthurkurtz2448]

Does this word in Yiddish also mean "dark?"

[@mzk1489]

My father - who, like me went to a Hebrew school in Boro Park and was unusual for not knowing Yiddish - pointed out that the term "defenestration" (currently being revived by Putin) is related to finser/fenster.

[@gellyweinberger7323]

@@arthurkurtz2448 No. Tinkel means dark; refered to nightime dark. Shvartz as in looming or impending. Es is gevorn shvartz for aim-It became an impending doom for him.

[@mzk1489]

With the Russian government again praciticing defenestration , the word "fenster" is very apropos.

[@wisemanspoke]

So…in both examples words originated from German moved towards English? Window and ge-tried?

[@tonyclifton265]

"dont say geprufen, say getried" LOL modern yiddish has taken on a lot of English influence then

[@XiONtv]

I'd get annoyed seeing multilingual gov't posters without Yiddish but then I started seeing Yiddish so I'd try to read it but can't understand a damn word. It's so bad that Williamsburg Yiddish speakers would rather read the English or even Hebrew if available. Which begs the question: who is this really for, the Yiddish speaking constituents who can't understand textbook Yiddish or the native English speaking academics gatekeeping the Yiddish language?

[@Danielseven-ir2mq]

Hybrid Yiddish is everywhere. The same with other languages. It becomes hybridized.

[@bjm3348]

Very interesting

[@РоманЦиперштейн]

פאר וואס זאגט זיך וואס דאס יידיש, נאר רעדט מען אין ענגליש?

[@mesfromusa]

We need a pure Yiddish, one that is Yinglishfrei or Yinglishrein. Also academicyiddishfrei. Only then will Yiddish takes its rightful place among the elite languages of the world!

[@Dave-lr2wo]

Isn't there a standard YIVO Yiddish dictionary and grammar? Isn't it authoritative in the way an OED and Chicago Manual of Style are? Most people don't speak and write English fully in line with the OED or the Chicago Manual of Style, yet those works are still authoritative and can be referenced.

[@gellyweinberger7323]

Yiddish has always been a language mixed in with words of the local language. My Hungrian grandparents ate Bundash (Hungrian word for french toast) and I ask my children if they want French Toast. My mother in law uses Germen words to refer to certain things when she speaks yiddish. My Israeli niece uses the word pach (garbage) and Bet Hasefer ( school) when she speaks Yiddish Garbage-mist in Yiddish, School-shcule in Yiddish. I still say fenster for window but I am an exception; not the rule.

[@justinstewart4889]

"a pure Yiddish" lol What are you even talking about

[@lawrencegillig3643]

@@gellyweinberger7323 bundáskényér means French toast but it is the kényér part that means bread

[@koshersalaami]

You might try to find pure English. You can’t. English takes from everywhere. That’s why spelling is so inconsistent and why there are alternate words for everything. In fact, English even takes from Yiddish. Why shouldn’t it go in two directions?

[@hannahw90hw]

i Don't know ONE Jewish person! I wish I did :(

[@shamhverona7921]

Here is your opportunity.

[@mzk1489]

Although your name is from Hebrew.

[@mzk1489]

@free citizen01 Maybe one will marry a Yemenite :-)

[@fennecabumukallalabdulmasi3867]

@@mzk1489 Oy vey, muz ikh denkn an Ofra Haza. Hob ikh lang broukht om Troshd tsom findn in Yasmin Levy un Elihana Elia...

[@fennecabumukallalabdulmasi3867]

@free citizen01 "ashkephardic"??? LOL, bro, that's a nice word! I really like it! Never read this before... Reminds me the nice story of Yossele who tries to convince his Kibbuz to sell a cow so that he can get the 30 silvercoins for his Shefzibah cuz his future yemenite Shveger is "stoggkonservativ" ... BTW: There are more strange mixtures on this world as I'm "frengerman" myself (frenchman & german with one national service valid for both nationalities) & this issued from two families, where the fathers of the grandfathers already made war to each other and the grandfathers generation did too. This proves that not only peace in the sense of no war, but in the sense of real love is possible just 1 single generation after a war. Only if people are not too conservative & not too stubborn to interdict to their kids to learn the former foes language and to marry one issued of the former ennemies of course. Otherwise, the kids have to be more stubborn in their love than their parents in their hate... ;-)

[@phillipdarrow3081]

what YIVO yiddish?

[@HamletsUnderstudy]

Getried! :)

[@Mikemugee]

yinglish

[@hershyfishman2929]

Fenster was probably not the example she gave. That's normal.

[@annemburada6265]

what does one call something that is not kosher: treifel?or something like that? A dank.

[@YiddishBookCenter]

Yes, "Treyf" is the word.

[@igorjee]

In Hungarian you can say tréfli or tré if something is of bad quality. Or even bóvli, from Yiddish bovel (Babel) :D Up till the 70s you could also say kasa (kasha) for something good. However, Yiddish words are more typical of the slang of Budapest than other parts of the country.

[@jacobmandelblum6644]

A play by the late Hershel Bernardi ridiculed the Yiddish this lady is talking about... These Jews were creating a new Yiddish, this time "anglicanized" aa a window was not 'a "fenster" as in real Yiddish but a "vindow" and so on

[@imisstoronto3121]

I LOVE Herschel Bernardi! My father brought home a comedy record (it was a LONG time ago!) that we all fell in love with. Both my parents spoke yiddish as first their language, and I went to Borochovshule where they taught yiddish and I used FENSTER for window. This was in Toronto. Of course I do remember my father answering my baba with this sentence when she called and asked what he was doing: Ich vatch television.

[@vttcascade]

​@Jean Kennedy Yiddisher I know says "bulbes" for potatoes. "kartofeln" looks german

[@derpayatz]

@Jean Kennedy People said that back when we moved from the Rhine to Poland and started introducing verbs like 'probirn' and 'iberbetn', not to mention nouns like 'tate,' 'bobe,' and 'zeyde'...

[@mzk1489]

@Jean Kennedy Yiddish was always a polyglot, varied language. And please realize that in many cases we have people whose first language is English or Hebrew, but their children speak mainly Yiddish.

[@gotpowerwashing90]

ווי אזוי זאגט מען א שיינע ווייבעל אויף ״ ייודש״?

[@argonwheatbelly637]

איך ווייס נישט.

[@shhiknopfler3912]

One track minded קדושים תהיה..כי אני ה'

[@Lagolop]

The real Yiddish is "real", the other is Yinglish.

[@jacobmandelblum6644]

+Lagolop RIGHT ON...! ! ! !

[@countchocula2169]

Lagolop no it's not. Language changes. Especially Yiddish which was never formalized by its speakers and is such a heimishe language. If you learn a 100 year old language in college it will be a frozen stilted old fashioned language. Like when I learned Biblical Hebrew and then went to Israel. You're speaking a child's Hebrew, even though it's "technically" more "correct". Even though Biblical Hebrew is just a 3500 year old snapshot in the evolution of ancient Phoenician , which of course is just a snapshot in itself.

[@plauditecives]

Actually, wasn't it the hybrid speaker being a trifle judgmental of Ms Udel? How about equal tolerance for all language variants?

[@justinstewart4889]

Literally not how language works

[@SztypeL]

a hutzpa of the woman to correct you to the incorrect yiddish

[@zaashtill1542]

Neder Rosenberg There is no “correct” way. It’s like if a British person spoke to an American, you aren’t going to say “ the British speaker is speaking it correct, the American is speaking an Americanized English”. No even though they used to be the same dialect, languages evolve. That’s why we aren’t speaking like ״art thou hungry?”. A language is what the people speak. If everyone uses a different word then it becomes part of the language. If not we’d all be speaking Latin. And the fact is Hasidic Yiddish is by far the more spoken one, by a landslide.

[@ramonek9109]

Isnt it a rather strange request from an american jew to ask others to anglicize their Yiddish variant. I am German speaking standard high German. If, for example, a Texas German would tell me my German was strange, I would not take this very serious.

[@justinstewart4889]

This is just human. Don't overthink it.

[@NativeVsColonial]

Sanskrit!

[@scottadler]

Finster is the Yiddish word. It isn't "strange."

[@AlexToussiehChannel]

גוט

[@ewanfresco3498]

getried!!!

[@LydlDrakhe]

xDD

[@dlandis8146]

Shmeckle in the tukkus oh vey

[@eleje7222]

....

[@iusifshirinov640]

Yiddish culture was disappear you must understand it