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> ...which leads to another thought, not unrelated. How many words in current usage in the English language have their origins in Yiddish? In England (London especially) 'Nosh' is a Yiddish word for food. Used mostly by Cockneys it was borrowed from the many Jewish immigrants in London at the end of the last century (we haven't reach the end of the 20th century yet - if anyone wanted to take me up on that point)  There are a few others but, for the life of me, I can't think of them.
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Translations, schmanslations.
You want I should elaborate, already?
Yep. We in the US (mainly New York, of course) enjoy a lot of Yiddish influence, not only in our words, but also in the syntax. Colorful stuff. I love it.
Brick, I am waiting for the start of the new millennium.
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Over on the expletive board, Brick tells us this: >>The renowned poet - Seamus Heaney (who I have had the pleasure to have met) used the 'f' word many times in his poetry which he read to an audience of visiting tourists in Dublin recently. Not many were shocked.<< Heaney's new translation of "Beowulf", the first (and only extant, to my knowledge) poem written in "English," is selling well... yes, even here in the colonies. It's next on my reading list. Takes a poet to translate a poet (even an anonymous one )
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Anthony Burgess was the scholar who provided the rhyming subtitles for Cyrano de Bergerac.
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> Anthony Burgess was the scholar who provided the rhyming subtitles for Cyrano de Bergerac.
Thanks for that, Paul. It was just after I posted that last notice that I discovered an old programme of that play, which I saw last year, in my desk drawer. There, clearly written, was translated by Anthony Burgess.
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>And if Yiddish words are being used freely in English, how many of them are being used in, say, Spanish?
When I started finding such words as ‘chutzpah’, ‘schmuck’ or ‘yenta’ in books and magazines I had this same thought, where are our Yiddish words?. Then I remembered that by the fifteen century the Jews were expelled from Spain. A thing that, as you can see, contributed to increase our cultural richness.
Juan Maria.
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>>Then I remembered that by the fifteen century the Jews were expelled from Spain<< Not quite right, juanmaria  - the Jews expelled from Spain would have spoken a language that had its origins in the Latin languages, and not Germanic/Polish, from which Yiddish derives. The "Sephardi" (Latin) Jews are a different group from the "Ashkenazi" (Middle and Eastern European). Their practises, liturgy, and even foods are influenced by their respective regions. In addition, spoken Hebrew, the language of prayer, is clearly distinguishable between the groupings. Many Sephardi Jews speak Esperanto, or Ladino, as well as English and/or French. Very few of them (if any) use Yiddish. I've gone off-topic again!
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Oops!.
I thought that Yiddish was synonym for Hebrew. My knowledge of Jew culture, as you can see, is very limited. There are not many Jews in Spain, almost all the things I know about them come from watching American films or telefilms.
Anyway, I keep thinking that the expulsion of Jews was an error that impoverished our country in many aspects.
Thank you for the information I’m here, among other things, for learning.
Juan Maria.
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An example of correct translation...WRONG!
In the movie "The planets of apes" a tailor is measuring the chest of an ape (human size) and he says "forty"; in the Italian version he says "quaranta"(=40); it seems correct, but an Italian tailor would feel that it is wrong... because forty (inches) means ...100 (centimeters)!
Ciao
Emanuela
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>>Many Sephardi Jews speak Esperanto, or Ladino, as well as English and/or French.... David, Your comment sparks my curiosity. Esperanto is a made-up language, made up by a Polish (i.e. Ashkenazy) Jew. I studied it one year, many years ago. Tell me more about why Sephardis in particular speak it ... has it become a lingua franca among them? I'd never heard this before...
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