#Der Grammeister

[unsolicited-opinions]

I love this, @jewishgay4il, because some words can be all three!

Take "Chutzpah," for an example of a word which is Hebrew, Yiddish, AND English.

It's a word from Mishnaic Hebrew which is written the same way in Yiddish: חוצפה

The word has enjoyed such utility in the Anglophonic world that is has absolutely become an English Language cognate, appearing in all major English language dictionaries, including the OED.

Here are some broad strokes for those interested (I'd welcome additions/corrections if I get anything wrong here!)

Yiddish is mostly High German, with a lot of vocabulary borrowed from Hebrew and Aramaic, some Slavic influence, and a smattering of Romance languages, but spoken Yiddish can be mostly comprehensible to a native speaker of modern German. However, because Yiddish is written using Hebrew characters, written Yiddish is unreadable to native readers of German.

I remember being in Hebrew school, coming across a book written in Yiddish, and trying to sound out the words as I would with Hebrew. This baffled me until I realized it was using Hebrew characters to represent the phonemes for pronouncing Germanic sounds/words.

Okay, just a little trivia about a distant relative who was, it seems, beloved in US Yiddish culture: Zvee Scooler.

If you've seen the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof, you've seen Zvee. In this scene, Zvee plays the Rabbi of Anatevka, and offers a blessing for the Czar:

Zvee acted in both Yiddish and English theater, television, and film, but my grandmother told me she was especially fond of hearing her cousin Zvee on WEVD Yiddish radio as he presented, every Sunday from the 1930s until at least the 70s, a 10-minute Yiddish-language segment made up of news and commentary in rhyming Yiddish verse, called "Der Grammeister" ("The Rhyme Master") on the radio show, Forward Hour.

The Forward Hour was produced by The Jewish Daily Forward, a daily, socialist, Yiddish-language newspaper founded in 1897. In the 1920s the circulation of The Forward was greater than that of The New York Times.

The English version of the Forward started in 1990. Since 2019, The Forward publishes only online, in both English and Yiddish.

Jewish culture is...infodumping about Jewish culture...?

not knowing if some words you say are hebrew, english, or in yiddish

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