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Talk:List of English words of Yiddish origin

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Minyan?

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I don't believe minyan is used as an English word. Where can I find an example of it in a thoroughly English context - where it is not merely functioning as untranslated religious terminology, not used with the expectation that the reader will know Yiddish, and where it is used without explanation?

I can imagine it happening. If I saw "We had hoped to play baseball, but we didn't have a minyan so we just went for lunch" written by someone who isn't Jewish and whose readers don't know Yiddish, I would start thinking this could be an English word.

Hanukkah is not even included in this list of English words of Yiddish origin. If there are reasons to exclude Hanukkah from the list, shouldn't all the same reasons apply to minyan (a Hebrew word), only more so?

To put it another way: if "minyan", a religious term in Hebrew - a historical religious language used by many Yiddish speakers - is an English word, then correspondingly, "Filioque" needs to be on the list of Yiddish words borrowed from English. Right? :) TooManyFingers (talk) 17:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Our standard, like that of the rest of Wikipedia, is reliable sources. The Oxford English Dictionary is what says that minyan is an English word. The reason Hanukkah isn't on this list isn't because it's not an English word, but because reliable sources don't say that it comes from Yiddish (just Hebrew), whereas for minyan the OED says that it comes from both Yiddish and Hebrew.
The word is religious terminology, of course; that doesn't make it not an English word. It's used in contexts with the expectation that the reader will know what the English word minyan means—but that doesn't mean with the expectation that the reader will know Yiddish. AJD (talk) 21:34, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Minyan" is a Talmudic Hebrew term so no way it is of Yiddish origin. In this respect "Hanukkah" is of no difference. - Altenmann >talk 00:07, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The word minyan entered English via Yiddish, though, which is the criterion used on this page. By the standard you imply, words such as latke and knish wouldn't be of Yiddish origin either (they're from Polish prior to Yiddish); and even a native Yiddish word like lox could be described as being of Old High German or Proto–Indo-European origin. AJD (talk) 00:22, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And why are you sure that 'Hanukkah' did not enter into English via Yiddish? Why do you think that 'minyan' had a different way into English? - Altenmann >talk 19:23, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Again, we're depending on what reliable sources say. The primary reliable sources used in this article are the Oxford English Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary. None of those three sources mention Yiddish in their etymologies for the English word Hanukkah. Personally, I think that seems like an omission; my opinion is that Yiddish probably was involved in the borrowing of the English word Hanukkah at some stage. But my opinion doesn't matter; what matters is what reliable sources say about the question. AJD (talk) 06:54, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merge from Yiddish words used in English

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The title of the grossly unreferenced list Yiddish words used in English is splitting hairs so thin that even Great Rabbi Smallman cannot do. Who decides which Yiddish words are used in English? I use the words 'freylikh', 'kabtzon', 'sprakhe', Pollak', 'shnei', 'Glupsk', 'mamele', 'veld', 'gibn', nemn', and thousands more in my makaronishe sprakhe - so they are Yiddish words are used in English, right? Are you saying it is only me who is using these words? Well, ask google and see google uses them as well. If you dont believe google, go listen some of Yiddish comedians who do some routines in Englisch. Therefore the list Yiddish words used in English is not only hugely unreferenced, but also hugely indiscriminate collection, which wikipedia is not.

So I say, merge what is referenced and reference what is unreferenced and merge it as well.- Altenmann >talk 19:19, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a good idea. It might be worth leaving an article on "Yinglish" as a sociolinguistic phenomenon, but there's no reason for that to be a list of words such as exists currently over at Yiddish words used in English. AJD (talk) 06:56, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While it may seem like a trivial technical distinction to the fleeting layman observer, there is a major difference between Yiddish words used in English and English words of Yiddish origin: The former are, for the most part, not recognised as English words, and their use with English to some extent involves code-switching and is often shibbolethic. The latter have completed the transition and have been successfully introduced into the English lexicon as loanwords, even if still "ethnically coloured". It is true that sources and authorities may differ on whether a particular term properly belongs to the former or latter category; to some extent, that ultimately is a linguistic or lexicographer's judgement call. That does not however take away from the fact that these groups of expressions are categorically distinct. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 11:15, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was addressed in my nomination: the former is extremely vague; these words can pop up arbitrarily, in huge numbers, and as I said, wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate information. Therefore it make sense to put several notable examples in the article Yinglish, just like in other pidgins, creoles other and mixed languages. But here is the problem, most notable examples are definitely in the latter group. On the other hand "Yinglish" article may benefit from more detailed description of its peculiarities, most notable being word order in the sentence influenced by German, see article "Runglish" about a similar phenomenon, and with the same issue: there is List of English words of Russian origin, but I can collect an enormous list of Russian words used in English by scarping google. - Altenmann >talk 19:38, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Scarping Google sounds a lot like making it wheelchair-accessible. ♫ It's all about makin' that ADA. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 09:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With regards to there being "no reason" for "a list of words such as exists currently over at Yiddish words used in English": Every entry is a plausible search term and a potential entry point, including for those not in the ingroup. One reason however why Deletionists may wish to make entries much harder to google might be that obscurity increases the utility of ingroup jargon as a shibboleth/cant. The motives of Deletionists not even interested in transwikiïng, but interested in quick-and-dirty deletion are at least questionable. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 14:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Every foreign word is a plausible search term, but belongs to dictionary. You are welcome to transwiki. The obscurity is actually argument not to list in wikipedia. - Altenmann >talk 17:00, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Translation: "Don't mind my taking the Zippo to this article real quick. You are welcome to do the work of pulling the chestnuts out of my fire if you want."
Comment: The topic and title of the article on the pyre is "Yiddish words used in English". Not every foreign word is used in English1. (Not every foreign word used in English proceeds to enter the English lexicon as a generally-recognised loanword either, but that's why that is a different —inherently easier to source— category and article.)
I take a more lenient (enwp != paper) view, but even if —arguendo— you were right in this long-term consensus-created content being somewhat too dictionary-like not just for your taste but for Wikipedia, you should still not play Zippo squad slash Alexandria Library with accumulated cultural knowledge, but address yourself to the task and do the work of transwikiïng – rather than burning "misfiled" books before even persons who might be interested in refiling can see or read them. Of course just burning cultural bridges instead of relocating and rejigging them is much less work for the lazy arsonist – present company excluded as a courtesy.
Speaking of burning alleged dictionary content: Of all the books you might consider burning2, the burning of dictionaries —those being cultural bridges— is just about the secular equivalent of burning religious texts, at least in terms of being in a similar category of severity. Heck, if a given civilised person is not a believer, they perhaps might be expected to value dictionaries more.
—ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 09:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
fn 1: at least to the extent where it becomes a plausible search term
  2: and I can think of admittable reasons to burn some books; say it's 1942, you're freezing in Leningrad, and you can't digest cellulose
Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, WP:RS, WP:CITE, WP:BURDEN. What you see as Alexandriua Libray, I see as a stack of love letters tied with faded ribbon of someone's grandmother's sweetheart perished in American Civil War. I am pretty sure there letters store a wealth of info about the events of the time and someone will cry rivers not to burn them, but it is not my pain. - Altenmann >talk 17:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Respectfully, what you're doing there is peculiar, but I have to assume you don't realise it, because if you did, that would imply at least a modicum of bad faith, which I shan't assume. So I will spell out how this comes across here: It's a neat lawyer trick to flood the zone with reams of case law and/or appeals to various and sundry Amendments, and to then say (or not even say, just imply), "I have all these on my side, so there." The thing is, the interpretation and application of such precedent and good law is rarely as cut and dried as the expensive pinstripe suit would have you the jury believe. Maybe the suit(-wearer) genuinely believes in his client's case and thinks all they're flooding the zone with only allows for one interpretation—his—no elaboration necessary. But it is often a dead give-away of (wiki)lawyering if none is actually offered. A related lawyer stunt popular with politicians and pro-regime "journalists" is to extract or demand agreement with a general headline/slogan, and then again go, "so there, I'm right", because obviously the person pulling that stunt expects to set the Overton window; no disagreement or alternative interpretations allowed. You just have to agree with the principle, so then I have won – leaving unstated that I claim a monopoly on interpreting and applying the principle for you. On social media, this can "work" even better if I have a clone army of, say, 51 hype men backing me up, going "Oh! Burn!!"
I mean, I could have been similarly self-assured in a belief in the correctness of my interpretation and in having the law on my side, especially on your original actions, and I could've gone "edit summary: rvv", and proceeded to plaster your Talk page with various condescending cites, officious notices and templates, but I didn't. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 18:26, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that we are entrenched in our positions, so let's drop it and let other people have a say. - Altenmann >talk 18:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The requirement "used in English", at least as it's being dealt with in this article, is so vague and general that nothing can logically be excluded from it. Many Yiddish speakers also speak English, and of course they can (and should) say any words that they want to say, in either language and at any time.
It is reasonable to assume, based on the number of people who speak both languages and the length of time they've been doing so, that every word of Yiddish qualifies for this list, or at least every commonly used one. That makes the whole article useless; the information it contains is already available, in a much more comprehensive and consistent form, in [insert the name of any good Yiddish–English dictionary]. There is nothing in here, and nothing that potentially could be in here, that isn't already covered far better by such a dictionary.
The other Wikipedia article on a similar theme is worthwhile because it covers a reasonable topic, which for the moment I will jokingly re-name as "Yiddish words that cowboys in Montana and auto workers in Michigan seriously claim as English words". That is an interesting topic, and one that cannot be discovered simply by reading a Yiddish–English dictionary cover to cover, as this one can. TooManyFingers (talk) 17:23, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I should add that in my opinion if there are parts found valuable in the running text of this article, they could be merged into the other article; however, this article's list is just a defective dictionary and should not be kept. TooManyFingers (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
NOTE: Where I put "this article" I was actually referring to the "Yiddish words used in English" article. The current article, "List of English words of Yiddish origin", is in my opinion the better and more useful one. TooManyFingers (talk) 23:21, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with ReadOnlyAccount that there is a difference between the article and the list. There could be an article on Yinglish or Yiddish loanwords in English alongside a list. Therefore I oppose the merge on principle, certainly unreferenced material should be removed. And the criteria for what should be included on this list should be oriented around what references exist to substantiate them. Similarly, the criteria for the article should be whether reliable sources exist to create the meaningful and accurate historical or contemporary narrative that would summarize such phenomena. Andre🚐 22:23, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unsupported by cited sources

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@Altenmann's recently added the following three words to this list, citing sources as listed. However, none of the cited sources actually support the inclusion of the words on this page.

  • chesed, citing OED. OED says chesed is borrowed from Hebrew, not Yiddish.
  • gesundheit, citing MW, AHD, and OED. All three dictionaries say gesundheit is borrowed from German, not Yiddish.
  • lechaim, citing OED. OED says it's borrowed from Hebrew, not Yiddish.

I'm removing those (and also restoring various other minor cosmetic fixes and accuracy improvements that Altenmann reverted. AJD (talk) 16:14, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oy gevalt!

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@Altenmann, I'm not sure about oy gevalt. The only one of our dictionaries that mentioned it is MW, and it labels it with the heading "Yiddish phrase", which suggests it's not claiming oy gevalt has actually been borrowed into English. Contrast this with MW's treatment of oy vey, which is simply labeled "interjection". So I'm not sure oy gevalt belongs on this list as far as our cited sources go. AJD (talk) 17:39, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Removed. - Altenmann >talk 17:42, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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