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Yeshivish
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Yeshivish refers to dialects (predominantly in English or Hebrew and to a lesser extent Yiddish) spoken (mainly) by those who are have attended a Yeshiva. Yeshivish is the primary vehicle of spoken communication in many Yeshivas
resent, only one serious study of Yeshivish has been made, Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish by Chaim Weiser.
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Encyclopedia
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Yeshivish refers to dialects (predominantly in English or Hebrew and to a lesser extent Yiddish) spoken (mainly) by those who are have attended a Yeshiva. Yeshivish is the primary vehicle of spoken communication in many Yeshivas
Definition
At present, only one serious study of Yeshivish has been made, Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish by Chaim Weiser. Weiser maintains that Yeshivish is not a pidgin, creole, or an independent language, nor is it precisely a jargon. He refers to it instead, with tongue-in-cheek, as a shprach, a Yiddish word meaning "language" or "rapport".
Linguist and Yiddishist Dovid Katz describes it in "Words on Fire: the Unfinished Story of Yiddish" as a "new dialect of English," which is "taking over as the vernacular in everyday life in some ... circles in America and elsewhere."
Relation to Other Languages
English
The English variant of Yeshivish consists of grammatical irregularities borrowed from Yiddish, and a vocabulary consisting of Yiddish, Rabbinic Hebrew, and Talmudic Aramaic. The speaker will use those terms in the stead of their modern counterpart, either because of cultural affinity, or lack of the appropriate modern term.
Yiddish
The Yiddish variant of Yeshivish is questionable as a definition in itself, since the grammar remains identical to that of Yiddish. It may be argued that the Yiddish variant of Yeshivish is a new phenomenon, and consists of less Germanic terms and more Aramaic and Rabbinical Hebrew.
Yiddish as portrayed in academia concentrates on the secular and cultural variants of Yiddish, and may be attributed to the fact that YIVO, the forerunner of Yiddish as an academic study, was founded by Secular Jews who themselves were unlikely to be educated in Yeshivas and also removed by one or more generations from Yeshiva-educated speakers (see Yiddishisten),
However, the "Yeshivish" dialect of Yiddish has existed for quite a few centuries among Yeshiva-educated Jews in Eastern and Central Europe. However, as a result of the Holocaust, World War II and immigration, the secular-speaking Yiddish community is very small, and is far outnumbered by Religious Yiddish-Speaking communities in New York, Antwerp, Jerusalem, B'nei Beraq and others, making the predominant contemporary Yiddish Dialect that of the Yeshivish variant.
Hebrew
The Yeshivish dialect of Hebrew consists of occasional Ashkenazic pronunciation and various Yiddishisms within Modern Hebrew spoken among Haredi communities in Israel. While many terms from the Talmud and Mishna exist in Modern Hebrew, their pronunciation is in line with Modern Hebrew, whereas in the Yeshivish Variant, they maintain their Ashkenazic variant.
Although there may also be Yiddishisms present in Yeshivish Hebrew, these are not distinct to the Yeshivish Dialect and can be found in mainstream Modern Hebrew as well.
Secular Jews may use Hebrew Yeshivish terms (sometimes as a pejorative). In this case, the word is written as a foreign loan word from Hebrew to emphasize the Religious Ashkenazi pronunciation: e.g. ????? ("Shabbes") vs ??? ("Shabbat").
Frequency of Usage
Yeshivish is primarily a male spoken dialect, as documented in "Talmid Chachams and Tsedeykeses: Language, Learnedness, and Masculinity Among Orthodox Jews," by Sarah Bunin Benor Jewish Social Studies; Fall2004, Vol. 11 Issue 1, p147-170. Fathers and sons might speak Yeshivish, particularly of teenage years and above, while mothers and daughters generally do not.
Some observers predict that the English variant of Yeshivish may develop further to the point that it could become one of the historical Judeo-hybrid languages like Yiddish, Ladino or Judeo-Arabic. The Judeo-hybrid languages were spoken dialects which mixed elements of the local vernacular, Hebrew, Aramaic and Jewish religious idioms. As Yiddish was to Middle High German, Yeshivish may be to Standard American English. However, the integration of modern-day Jews with non-Jews may keep their speech from diverging as far from the standard language as it did in the past.
Distinct Features
Vocabulary
The vocabulary and grammatical structure of Yeshivish is drawn primarily from the speaker's native language (see above), although it includes scholarly jargon, primarily from the Talmud and Acharonim in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic. In many sentences however, the grammatical and lexical features of the speaker's native language is slight and sometimes even lacking altogether.
A distinguishing feature of Yeshivish is that its speakers knowingly apply highly technical and literal written language to a colloquial language and in common day usage, similar to Modern Hebrew, for example:
"He caused a lot if Nezek, but L'bsof was Modeh B'miktzas but claimed he was Shogeg"
Nezek in its original context refers to the Talmudic notion of Tort law, and Modeh B'miktzas (???? ?????) refers to partial confession of a defendant. ((L'bsof means "Eventually"), Shogeg in its original context means an incident which was caused unwillingly, but was a result of partial negligence.
Despite its heavy borrowing of technical and legal terms, the above sentence would be understood clearly by speakers of Yeshivish as "He did a lot of damage, he admitted that he did it, although he claims it was accidental"
Note in the above example that Shogeg does not have the same meaning in Yeshivish as it does in its original context, wherein it implies negligence. Ones would be the correct technical term, but it may be argued that there is less preference for Ones in Yeshivish due to its meaning in Modern Hebrew of Rape.
In the English variant of Yeshivish, grammatical features of English can be entirely absent from a sentence, for example:"I left my Tallis] Tallit] by my seat in [[Shul]]", where the speaker replaces the English at with Yiddish bei, but uses the English spelling.
Grammar
In general, the grammar of Yeshivish is English grammar. Thus, a non-Yeshivish English-speaker who hears a Yeshivish sentence will perceive a normal English sentence with unknown vocabulary words as the "ikar" (most important [part]) of the sentence. The English is used to set the sentence structure with the Yiddish, Hebrew, or Aramaic words used to fill in the blanks.
This often leads to words of non-English origin being given plurals and verb tenses inconsistent with their language of origin. Most often, the singular form of a Yeshivish noun becomes a plural by adding an "s" to it, as in English, even when the base word is not an English one. Thus, the plural of "yeshiva" is "yeshivas," not "yeshivos" or "yeshivot" (although these may be corruptions of the Hebrew plural where -os becomes -as due to its similarlity to English plurals).
Hebrew nouns ending in "-us," which in Hebrew become plural by changing the ending to "uyos," merely have an "in" added to their ending in Yeshivish. For example, the plural form of "shlichus" (mission) is "shlichusin." The plural of "Mashmaus" (implication in Mishnaic Hebrew, meaning in Modern Hebrew) is "mashmausin." Note that in Hebrew the proper form would be Shlichuyos and Mashmauyos. This may have evolved from Aramaic where "in" is added to make a noun plural, but is more likely to have come from from German, through Yiddish.
Verbs in past tense ("I already davened mincha.") or present ("Quiet, I'm davening.") are commonly used, even though these verbs (daven = "to pray") are not of English origin.
Some verbs, particularly those of Hebrew origin, are often treated as participles, and inflected by English auxiliary verbs, in the same way that "periphrastic verbs" are constructed in Yiddish. Thus, for example:
- "He was moideh that he was takeh wrong."
"He was" puts "moideh" "to admit" into the third-person singular past tense, creating the present meaning of "He admitted that he was takeh (indeed, actually) wrong."
- "We'll always be soimech on Rav Plony's p'sak that the eruv is kosher."
"We'll always be" puts "soimech" "to rely" into the first-person plural future tense, creating the present meaning of "We'll always rely upon Rabbi So-and-So's ruling that the eruv is usable."
For a more in-depth discussion of Yeshivish grammar, consult the explanation "The Grammar of Yeshivish," found at the start of Weiser's dictionary (see reference below).
See also
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