Talk:Chutzpah
|
|
This page was placed on Votes for Deletion in June 2004. Consensus was to keep; view discussion at /Delete.
- Since we're keeping this, can we NPOV it a bit? Something a tad less gushy? NTK 01:31, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- I can't seem to find an authoritative source that "chutzpah" came from Hebrew to Yiddish. Keeping in mind that Ben Yehuda reconstructed Modern Hebrew only at the beginning of the 20th century, and before then Hebrew had been a literary-only language for centuries, the key question is: did this word exist in any form of Hebrew before that time? If not, then Hebrew borrowed it from Yiddish, not vice versa. Queerwiki 01:09, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- Hebrew words are distinctly recognisable. I'm sure a linguist could explain in precise terminology how to recognize Hebrew words; I'm not a linguist, just a native speaker of Hebrew, but I can tell you that suggesting that Hebrew borrowed "chutzpah" from Yiddish makes about as much intuitive sense to me as suggesting that Japanese borrowed "sushi" from English. My little desktop dictionary cites the talmud for some early examples of "chutzpa", I'm sure if I had a hefty etymological dictionary I could trace it back even earlier. It's Hebrew alright. --Woggly 22:34, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)