40
votes
Is Chutzpadik a common German word?
I’ve never heard or seen the word chutzpadik in German. Chuzpe, on the other hand, is well-known. It’s not a word that the average German is using in everyday speech, but it occurs occasionally, say, ...
- 10.4k
38
votes
Accepted
What is a "Schnorrbrief"?
Schnorrbrief is the combination of Schnorrer (or from the verb schnorren) and Brief (letter).
Schnorrer is also explained in the English Wikipedia:
Schnorrer (שנאָרער; also spelled shnorrer) is a ...
- 9,274
21
votes
Accepted
Is Chutzpadik a common German word?
I am a historian and I had never encountered chutzpadik in German sources. I have found the word, however, in a Jüdisches Lexikon published in Berlin in 1927:
Ein chuzef, auch chuzpenik oder ...
- 326
13
votes
Accepted
Etymology of "Mohn"
A quote from DUDEN Das Herkunftswörterbuch Etymologie der deutschen Sprache, 3. Auflage, 2001. ISBN 3-411-04073-4:
On Page 536:
Mohn: Der Name der alten Kulturpflanze (mhd. mān, māhen, ahd. māho,...
- 122k
12
votes
Is Chutzpadik a common German word?
I’m a native speaker and I have never heard that word.
Perhaps it is a bit more common in other regions then the one where I have grown up and live. There are local differences concerning the ...
- 121
9
votes
Accepted
Yiddish: "װאָס הערט זיך?" — "Vos hert zikh?" — What is the German origin?
Das wird kommen von
Was hört sich?
gleichbedeutend mit "Was hört man?", oder wie man heute sagen würde:
Na, was gibt's Neues?
Die im Deutschen eigentlich "falsche" reflexive Verwendung von ...
- 31.1k
9
votes
Is Yiddish a dialect of German?
Here is a typical Yiddish sentence taken from a literary source (in Latin transliteration; Yiddish has always been written in Hebrew characters):
MAIN EYDIM IZ NEBAKH GIVEN A PROSTER BALMELOKHE, VOS ...
8
votes
Is "Säegermacher" the Yiddish word for "watchmaker"?
זייגערמאַכער is pronounced in Standard Yiddish as /zeɪgərmaxər/ and is a composite word with both components being of German origin: זייגער and מאַכער. They also exist as separate words and both have ...
- 184
7
votes
Accepted
Was ist mit „Wie bist die gewesen vor Prohibition?“
It's mostly Yiddish written in a Germanized orthography, which only serves to obscure the meaning.
Wie -- this is the word װוּ "where", cognate with German 'wo'
bist -- ביסט, same meaning as German
...
- 86
7
votes
Yiddish phrase for "turn out the lights and go to sleep"
A better Yiddish speaker than I recently apprised me of the fact that there is indeed such an expression in Yiddish as "machn nacht," meaning, roughly, "get ready for bed." "Mach nacht" is the ...
- 295
6
votes
Accepted
Yiddish phrase for "turn out the lights and go to sleep"
Answers to your questions:
It would be “Mach Nacht und geh’ schlafen”
Yes, the literal translation is “Make night and go to sleep”.
But: Mach Nacht makes — as the English translation — no sense. In ...
- 196
5
votes
More on Ambiguous Diminutives
There is no such thing as a standard diminutive -el in Bavarian. Even though I'm from Bavaria I'm not an expert in all Bavarian dialects. However, in the Bavarian dialect you usually hear in the ...
- 15.8k
4
votes
Is Chutzpadik a common German word?
Native speaker (Rhineland) here. I know and understand
jmd. hat Chuzpe (allgemein gehalten)
jmd. hat die Chuzpe, etwas zu tun (auf einen speziellen Fall bezogen)
and I know that other native ...
- 291
4
votes
Etymology of "Mohn"
The current thinking of students of Indo-European (IE) is that the Germanic words for “poppy” derive from proto-IE *meHk-n- (with an a-colouring laryngeal), the source also of Greek μηκων. IE *k gives ...
- 3,328
2
votes
Is Yiddish a dialect of German?
I believe Richard Zuckerman's answer calls for a bit more of a rebuttal than I can give in the comment field. I said he was "cherry-picking" when he gave an example of Yiddish that would be ...
- 2,657
2
votes
Translate this quote from The Producers?
Alle menschen mussen machen Ieden tag ein bisschen Poppikachen. To me he was trying to say "All men must make a little poppycock every day." Of course the grammar causes the words in different order. ...
- 21
1
vote
What is the origin of "sich überbeten" in Yiddish?
I don't know anything really similar, I can't exclude that there once was a similar word either.
Grimm's Wörterbuch knows a verb überbitten with the meaning of being successful in asking/pleading ...
- 25.6k
1
vote
Is Chutzpadik a common German word?
The -dik ending is Yiddish, meaning "having this characteristic" and generally used to make an adjective from a noun.
Chutzpah is something one can have, a noun. Chutzpadik is an adjective meaning "...
- 19
1
vote
More on Ambiguous Diminutives
I don't know about dialects but in standard German, a small rabbit would be das kleine Kaninchen. Same goes for das kleine Mädchen etc. The German Wikipedia article on diminutives has a section that ...
- 446
1
vote
Yiddish phrase for "turn out the lights and go to sleep"
I do not think, that "Mach Nacht" makes no sense as @geruetzel says. It is just very unusual and you may never hear it in everyday language. There are other expressions like "Feierabend machen", "...
- 14.2k
1
vote
Is Yiddish a dialect of German?
Jiddisch hat seine eigene hochentwickelte Phraseologie, die mit deutschen Ausdrücken nichts zu tun hat. Die Grammatik, der Satzbau, der Wortschatz, und sogar die Aussprache des Ostjiddischen sind ...
1
vote
Spittings, shellings, etc
Takkat has offered "kehricht" (sweepings) as a possible example of a construction similar to the Yiddish "speiechts" (spittings). But I recently came across "Dickicht" (...
- 2,657
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