"Schmutz" is German for dirt or filth. Yiddish is mostly a dialect of German, with a bunch of Hebrew thrown in for flavor, along with bits and pieces from other languages. The term "Yiddish" is in itself a variant of the German word for "Jewish."
The term "Yiddish" is in itself a variant of the German word for "Jewish." I didn't know that. Thank you, Blacksmith, and welcome aBoard.
Yiddish is mostly a dialect of German, with a bunch of Hebrew thrown in for flavor, along with bits and pieces from other languages.
Like many other German dialects, Yiddish developed out of Middle High German. While the grammar is mainly Germanic, the vocabulary has a large amount of (mainly religious terms) from loshen-koydesh (holy languages) of Hebrew and Aramaic; there are also traces of Romance languages (e.g., tsholnt[/i] 'stew' is related to the French word chaud for 'hot'. There are also quite a few Slavic words. Although Yiddish started out in North-Eastern France and Germany it spread to Eastern Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, and Hungary). Western Yiddish (Netherlands, Germany, Northern France) died out because Western Jews assimilated in the 19th century and adopted the spoken standard languages in their respective countries.
For people used to the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew, most of these Hebrew-Aramaic terms sound very different from the traditional Ashkenazic pronunciation of the same terms in Yiddish. Examples such as Seph. H. shabbát vs. Ash H shábes 'Sabbath, Saturday', toráh vs tóyre. There are even dialectal differences within Eastern Yiddish: Polish Y git 'good' vs Lithuanian Y gut (cf. German gut.
The term "Yiddish" is in itself a variant of the German word for "Jewish."
True. The Yiddish word yidish 'Jewish' is related to the German word jüdisch.
The first documented use may be in 1968, but I knew the word well before then. I grew up in a mostly Jewish and Catholic suburb of St. Louis. I remember friends using the word when I was in high school, and I graduated in 1967. While the definition given is dirt or filth, I recall it being used strictly as an epithet aimed at people.
Jewish/Catholic neighborhood in the 1950's: I heard it used
in reference to people as well.
>I recall it being used strictly as an epithet aimed at people.
are you possibly thinking of schmuck, which while similar, is an other word entirely?
A nudnik would, when complaining about this week's vocabulary, wander off to describe the sodium content of Israeli kosher food. Why stop at "kosher"? Anu Garg pointed out that "naches" is simply the Ashkenazy pronounciation of the Hebrew "nakhat"
It's schmok, male genital, not schmuk. Schmutz has its own sphere of targets.
>It's schmok
yeah, well 'correctly' englishing Yiddish is much like targeting that ol' rolling donut.
schmuck
Well , I guess if you can adress someone like : 'You filth!' as I read in books sometimes, you can also adress someone as : 'You schmutz!'
It's also that plain current German word (as said above). Der schmutziger who- or whatever.
'correctly' englishing Yiddish is much like targeting that ol' rolling donut
Yes, Yiddish שםאָק (shmok) > English schmuck /'ʃmʌk/ 'prick; fool'. You see the same thing in Yiddish פאָץ (pots) 'penis' > English putz /'pʌts/ 'prick; fool'. I have seen the same sort of thing in German where English punk (either the music or one of its fans) > German Pank.
It is interesting that in Yiddish these two words for the male genitalia have become so much more used for foolish persons that new terms for penis have developed: shmekl and petsl, with diminutive suffix -l.
a little of the subject I know....
but the word 'prick' came up in conversation the other day..with some (African) people and we googled it because the innuendo was new to them. Well there were over 1000 meaning for the word penis. Why so many!!