Yeshivish
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Yeshivish is spoken mainly by English-speaking Orthodox Jews who have attended a yeshiva (an institute for higher Torah study), and is, indeed, the primary vehicle of communication in major American Litvish yeshivas. One serious study of Yeshivish has been made by Chaim Weiser, who says that it cannot accurately be called a jargon, pidgin, Creole, or an independent language; he instead refers to it as a shprach (which basically means "language" or "communication" in either Yiddish or German).
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Comparison with Yiddish
Although it may not yet be a pidgin, Yeshivish may someday be analogous to English in the way that Yiddish is to German. The comparison provides a good way to help clarify its nature.
Yiddish use developed among German-speaking Jews with the addition of words from other languages known to them; the same goes for Yeshivish and Jewish speakers of English. Yiddish and Yeshivish each have native lexical and grammatical features not found in the languages they draw upon.
Yiddish evolved into an independent language; thus far Yeshivish has not. Speakers of Yiddish may not understand German; speakers of Yeshivish invariably understand English. (The reverse, however, is not the case.) Yiddish has existed for over ten centuries; Yeshivish, only a few decades. Yiddish uses the Hebrew alphabet; Yeshivish primarily uses the English alphabet.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary of Yeshivish is drawn primarily from English, although it includes terms from other languages, especially Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic. In some cases, words are used in different ways than they are used in their language of origin. For example, "Lichora, the hava mina of the Rosh was kneged Tosfos" (trans. "Apparently, the initial assumption of the Rosh was contrary to the view of Tosafot"). "Hava mina" is a noun in Yeshivish, despite being a verb phrase in Aramaic, and the sense of "keneged" meaning "in opposition" exists in Yeshivish, but not in classical Hebrew (where it means "concerning"). Similarly, the preposition "by" can be used in Yeshivish where "at," "among," "beside," and "with" would be required in English, as in "I ate by my brother last night."
Grammar
As a general rule, 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."
For Yeshivish rules regarding verbs -- as well as other parts of speech -- the serious student of the shprach is advised to read the explanation in "The Grammar of Yeshivish," found at the start of Weiser's dictionary (see reference below); briefly, Hebrew verbs in Yeshivish tend to be treated as participles, which are inflected by English auxiliary verbs.
Thus, for example:
- "He was moide that he was wrong."
- "He was" puts "moide" -- "to admit" -- into the third-person singular past tense, creating the present meaning of "He admitted that he was wrong."
- "We'll always be soimech on Rav Plony's p'sak that the eruv is mutar."
- "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 permitted."
Culture
Yeshivish can also refer to the culture of the yeshiva system. As yeshiva students are typically in their late teens and early twenties, it bears strong parallels to students' culture in universities. Objects can be yeshivish if they are typically associated with students; a yeshivish car is a jalopy, as nobody expects anybody from a yeshiva to be able to afford better. On the other hand, as with the parallel term "collegial," the term also appeals to standards of conformity. These competing strains are reflected in the dictionary definitions for "yeshivish": "conservative"; "indecorous"; "cheap"; "typical, hackneyed"; "adherent"; and "geshmak" (itself defined as "delightful").
References
- Weiser, Chaim M (1995). Frumspeak: The first dictionary of Yeshivish. Northvale: Aronson. ISBN 1-56821-614-9.