Jul

19

Word Of The Week: July 19th, 2008

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

July 19, 2008 |

There are numerous Yiddish words that have been appropriated into English, from putz to schmooze to maven (see, for example, my very entertaining colleague The Movie Maven who lives up to the meaning of the term “maven” which comes from a Yiddish word meaning “expert”). Native Yiddish speakers could be forgiven for thinking this appropriation isn’t kosher, or, at the very least, that goyim have a lot of chutzpah for doing it. This kind of appropriation does, sometimes, spell the end of one language as a small number of words are absorbed into another that’s more widely spoken. In an essay in Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams And The Diet of Worms Stephen Jay Gould describes finding, by accident, the former home of a Yiddish publication, Farvarts–”Forward”–and he reflects on extinction. He says, “If we regard the details of diversity as precious and glorious…then the profession of preservation becomes one of the most noble callings that a person can undertake for a life’s work.”

Yiddish, like many other languages, may be gradually dying out as its speakers disappear and are not replaced, but to forget it completely, and to forget its contributions to the English lexicon, would take some serious chutzpah. I started out wanting to write something funny, but, reflecting on the disappearance of linguistic diversity, I found that very hard to do. Instead I’m using the word chutzpah with a sense of seriousness, with a sense that no English synonym–impudence, brazenness, gall, nerve, audacity, shamelessness–carries the same significance.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Peptodismal on July 19, 2008 5:16 am

    Shazbat isn’t Yiddish, but it missed a good opportunity.

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind

<< Post Navigation >>

« « Peter Pan’s Dark Side. | Book ‘Em: The Mind of the Machine. » »