Yiddish in Ireland

riffmongous wrote: »

I took an interest in Yiddish recently, it was always something I was aware of but never knew anything about beyond it being a language of european jews and a few songs I heard years ago (and as I found out later, from The Simpsons!), but since I started looking up a bit about it I have been fascinated by it. Then I saw an article on RTE today about the Jewish Museum in Dublin and thought it would be interesting to find out if anyone spoke Yiddish in Ireland? I assumed at first they would speak Hebrew and English, some possibly Irish but then I read that there was a large influx of Russian jewish immigrants at one point and would it be correct to assume their language was Yiddish? If anyone knows anything about this topic I would love to hear it!

It's many years since I was in the Jewish Museum. I got there a pamphlet on the Yiddish language in Ireland. One very interesting fact in it: James Connolly stood in Dublin Corporation elections in 1904, and printed some election literature in Yiddish. It also referred to a Jewish couple from Ireland holidaying on the continent in the thirties, meeting a Jewish couple from another country, and being unable to communicate until they all realised that they could do so in Yiddish. If you want to hear Yiddish today you'd better go to New York.

riffmongous wrote: »

No I realise that at this stage its pretty unlikely there are many speakers left in Ireland, but I think the history of it in Ireland could be interesting, the Connolly story certainly sounds so. I also think I have heard that anecdote about the holiday couples before too.. I hope I have time to visit the museum next time I am in Ireland if it is open.

I would think the history of Yiddish in Ireland is pretty straightforward, in that virtually every Jewish immigrant to Ireland from say 1880 to 1950 was a native Yiddish speaker. They were all Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe. A few Sephardi came to Ireland before then, including a mayor of Youghal.

Almost all the Jews whoncame to Ireland in the late 19th century were from one village in Lithuania whose name escapes me, but it's well documented.

You need to read the great little book by Leo Rossen 'The JOYs of Yiddish'. Very funny and very thought-making.

tac, Jewish but not Yiddish.

riffmongous wrote: »

I think I saw the german translation of it today in a bookstore, it's like a glossary right? (Same author, but it was just called Jiddisch)

He's written several books about Yiddish, including Hooray for Yiddish and The Joy of Yiddish. The latter is more than just a glossary, it's an amusing history of the language along with several anecdotes to explain the etymology of certain words, including the famous story about the stolen camel to explain how the word shmuck evolved from meaning a piece of jewelry to being a term of contempt for someone you may have little time for.

Yiddish or Jiddisch is simply a transliteration of the German word Jüdisch, meaning "Jewish". Yiddish is after all essentially a dialect, or several dialects, of German with a significant imported vocabulary from Hebrew and written in Hebrew script. Much of it is mutually intelligible by German speakers, so long as they don't have to read it.

I know this is an old thread so sorry for bumping it. ( I HATE when people bump old threads and here is me doing it!)

My maternal great grandparents spoke it as their first lingua franca.

She was actually a jew from New York he was a jew from Ukraine. She came to study nursing in Dublin he emigrated here. They met and married. He spoke Russian as well as Yiddish she spoke hasidic yiddish he spoke eastern yiddish. There are lots of different dialects.


There was actually an Irish dialect of yiddish separate to the dialects my grandparents spoke. You are correct though to say its hardly spoken now.

There is a chabad community in Ireland they use litvish Yiddish. Rabbi Zalman lent is the leader.

The diff in dialects can be vast. My grandfather's yiddish was very influenced by Russian and Ukrainian. And my grandmother's very germanic.

Irish Yiddish is called Hiberno Yiddish.




Benny cake is partially correct.

Israel is 50% mizrahi jews(arab jews) and 10% sephardi. There are also beta Israel (Ethopian jews)

Sephardi jews spoke Ladino and Mizrahi jews spoke/speak arabic.

Obviously they all had a basis in bibilcal hebrew so modern hebrew was invented.

Russian though and arabic is still spoken at home by many in Israel.

So inclusivity was a motivator. But also to a lot of non yiddish speakers some dialects sound very like German. I think that played a part too.

The largest speaking communities in are New York today with some in Israel.

I can't speak it at all. But its still being learnt.

Again sorry for bumping the old thread. You can lock or delete this if you want

Here is a funny video of James Cagney speaking Yiddish

Funny fact James Cagney was actually fluent in Yiddish. He learnt it from the jewish kids he used to play with.




Pretty AWFUL stereotypical Irish cop character which annoys me of course!

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I used to work with few Jewish colleagues in NYC and had Yiddish words explained to me - I have no idea of how much Yiddish is spoken in Europe, but it’s influence is widespread in NYC. Considering the levels of immigration there are few Irish but many Yiddish loan words in American English in daily use. No doubt there are more but these few come to mind - klutz, spiel, schmuck, kosher, schlep, mentch, glitch, chutzpah, schmaltz, schmooz, schtick. Just watch an episode of Seinfeld or Sex in the City. And klezmer music is becoming more common.

Klezmer music is HUGE in Europe...

This is Dobrovnotch covering Du Hast by Rammstein.



These guys are Russian obv but are based in the EU.



Daniel Kahn and the painted Bird do a lot of Yiddish mixed with English songs

Daniel Kahn and the painted Bird are American but based in Berlin.







Daniel Kahn covering Lenard Cohen's Hallelujah" - in Yiddish



Spock speaking his mother tongue

:P

riffmongous wrote: »

I was first introduced to it be some non jewish german friends who sing some of their songs

"Bei Mir Bistu Shein" better known by the Germanized title Bei Mir Bist Du Schön became a smash hit in Germany in 1938 and hugely popular in the German expat community in the US as it was assumed to be an uncontroversial song in a southern German dialect, uproar occurred when its Jewish provenance was abruptly discovered, widely publicized by the press and promptly banned by the Nazis.

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

Ashamed to say i know very little Yiddish

It is written in English. The capitalising of the letters OY in joys is deliberate. I guess you don't be's around us Jews much, eh? Oy.

Gevalt.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

No big surprise there Tac. Although the Jewish population in Ireland has increased by more than one third since 2000, the total number is now about 2,500, more than half living in the Dublin area. That gives a national ratio of about one to 2500 non-Jews. We goyim rarely get to meet a mench!

The increase was a lot of immigration of Jews from elsewhere. Israel (mostly IT people or finance) and eastern Europe.

tac foley wrote: »

What's that? Jews LEAVING Israel to work in Ireland? What next?

I know. They all seem to work in IT or finance. Also some poles.

I am not sure if they will stay it seems to be projects they come over for about 2 yrs and then back to Israel some stay obv.

feargale wrote: »

It would be interesting to know if Yiddish developed any distictive features in Ireland, such as borrowing local words etc. I'm sure it would be over the top to talk about an Irish dialect, given its relatively short life and the small number of speakers. Nonetheless.......

It would be litvish ....it does have a lot of borrowed words. But not just from English. Some particular to wherever the person was from or their background.

So no not exactly an Irish dialect. Most hassidic communities use litvish chabad etc. Rabbi Zalman lent is a chabad rabbi.

My grandad used to call an umbrella a zont. That is not yiddish as far as i know its russian.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Considering the levels of immigration there are few Irish but many Yiddish loan words in American English in daily use.

You might be wrong there. There is a fascinating book called How the Irish Invented Slang which attempts to attribute many slang terms in modern English, both British and American, to Gaelic Irish roots.

Among these are familiar ones like "brogue" from bróg meaning a shoe and "dig", meaning to appreciate or to empathise with something from tuig, meaning to understand, both of which are I believe uncontroversially attributed to Irish roots.

However he claimed as Irish in origin many other familiar terms such as "spick and span" from spiaca 's bán meaning brilliant and white. And "putting the kybosh" meaning to put a stop to something as coming from an cap báis meaning the death cap that a judge used to wear when handing down a death sentence.

I say you "might" be wrong because the author was not a qualified linguist; he was merely an Irish American who was fascinated by some of the slang terms his Gaelic speaking grandfather had used and through gathering terms in English dictionaries for which the origin was unknown, he matched them to potential Gaelic expressions from which they might have been derived.

As a consequence he was roundly denounced by many academics in the linguistic field because, as you probably know , specialists HATE it when amateurs encroach on their patch and offer their own suggestions and explanations.

I have looked through his book and attempted to find alternative explanations for some of the terms he has studied and sure enough, my old OED has offered "origin unknown" in most if not all cases.

Some of his claims are far-fetched but he has convinced me in the majority of cases.
As one amateur to another

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

For example the kibosh/ceap b notion has been around for quite a while and much debated. Its original use, in the early 19th century, neant ‘to castigate, overwhelm (a person or political party such as the British Whigs, who were criticized for failing to outlaw flogging in the military), perhaps originally meaning simply "to flog," from kirbaj, a whip (Arabic) [American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition.]

So he might have been right then? I note in particular that the usage of kybosh is often "to put the kybosh on.." something, which I would suggest strengthens the case for the Irish interpretation.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I recall the book claims that ‘snazzy’ was an Irish loan word, from snas, meaning polished/ornamented. However ‘snazzy’ was first recorded in the 1930’s, which is very late for an Irish language import; also US lexicographers assert it is a combination of ‘snappy’ and ‘jazzy’, which fits the period accurately.

Snazzy was one of the cases in which I thought he was stretching a point, FWIW.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I suggest the reason why Irish immigrants had little linguistic input in colloquial American English is due to culture. Most of the Famine-Irish who arrived in the US were rural, unskilled labourers; many were monoglot Irish speakers, but they were fast to learn and assimilate. Many of the Mittel-European Jewish arrivals often had trades (e.g. tailoring, retailing, jewellery) and ‘group work’ held them closer together socially/linguistically.

Well I think that was just the point the author made: the Irish occupied the lower levels of society, at first, and therefore Irish words made their way into street talk, ie slang. Also, he claimed a lot of Irish words made it into the lingo of street crime and gambling. "Phoney" for example, he suggested came from fáinne meaning a ring, and it referred to fake items made of low-grade metal that Irish rascals would try and pass off as being valuable.

Another example was ríomhadh meaning an act of reckoning, arranging or setting in order, from which the modern Irish word for a computer ríomhaire comes. He reckons (baboom) that this is where the word "River" as used in Hold 'Em poker originates from. The River card is the one that announces the final "reckoning" or decision on how strong a hand you have.

Plausible?

Another case, in which I suspect he was reaching a bit was when he claimed that the game of Poker itself comes from the Irish póca meaning a pocket. The implication being that in poker each player is playing against others as an equal and one's ability to stay in the game depends on the contents of one's own "pocket", instead of other games like blackjack where you are playing against the house and your bet is limited at the start of the game. Certainly you can raise your stakes during it, but that is your choice and you can not be forced out by an opponent outspending you because his póca is bigger than yours.

Sure, pocket, is a reasonable etymology but in how many other languages does it sound like "poker"?

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Also, their language, used in religious ceremonies, was a binding factor, whereas the Irish had Latin.

Woah! I don't think Yiddish was/is used in religious ceremonies. I thought that was exclusively Hebrew.

I have only the most layman's knowledge of the revival of Hebrew as a vernacular in Israel but I believe it was chosen over Yiddish (amid much controversy) because all Jews would have been familiar with Hebrew at least as a ritual ceremonial language, albeit one which had to be modernised considerably for everyday use. Although Yiddish would have been a more widely spoken vernacular among early Zionist settlers, it was exclusively for the Ashkenazim (or Eastern European) Jews.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Yiddish, along with German, Dutch, Flemish and Scandinavian languages are from one branch – Germanic, whereas Gaelic is from a distinctly separate branch, Protoceltic, which separated from the main ‘European’ branch at an earlier stage. Would it not be easier for the sounds of a loan word to transfer within the Germanic languages than for one to migrate across the linguistic barrier, from Celtic to Germanic?

Not sure what specific point you are making here. There are several examples of words from around the Empire from languages with little or no link to European tongues that have entered English through familiarity. They include shampoo and khaki (from India) and "Karzi", meaning a toilet, from either Zulu or Swahili. Although the latter is less well known and more common among military personnel, who would have had more contact with Zulu and Swahili speakers than civilians.

I remain curious and open minded about much of Mr Cassidy's efforts, while readily admitting that he probably stretched the case a bit in some instances to pad out his book.

I also enjoy the wind-up effect he has had on specialist academics which is an interesting topic for these times but probably deserving of its own thread