Jewish English
Description by Sarah Bunin Benor
Comedic representation of Orthodox Jewish English
Video lecture: Jewish English is a Jewish language
Today, in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, South Africa, Australia, and Israel, millions of Jews speak Jewish varieties of English, with influences from Textual Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, Yiddish, and other languages. There is a great deal of variation according to region, ancestry, generation, religiosity, and gender, but all varieties of English spoken by Jews can be discussed together under the umbrella of "Jewish English."
The difference between general English and Jewish English can be as small as the addition of just a few Hebrew or Yiddish words (e.g., Hannukah, matzah ball, shlep), or it can be as large as multiple influences from Yiddish in syntax, lexicon, phonology, discourse, and prosody. The former is common among Jews with little or no religious practice, and the latter is used today mainly by Orthodox Jews (and in the past by immigrants and their children, sometimes referred to as "Yinglish").
Among Jews outside of New York, New York linguistic features are common, such as pronouncing "orange" like "ahrange" and a high-engagement conversational style (including cooperative overlapping). Descendants of Ladino speakers often maintain some Ladino words, and descendants of Judeo-Arabic speakers often maintain some Judeo-Arabic words. The Jewish English Lexicon offers a crowdsourced database of many Hebrew, Yiddish, and other words used by Jews within English:
Quick facts
Names of language:
Jewish English, Judeo-English, Judaeo-English, Yeshivish, Frumspeak, Yinglish, Hebrish, Hebraized English, אנגלית יהודית
Territories where it was/is spoken: United States of America, Canada,
United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Israel
Estimated # speakers:
- 1900: 1 million
- 2019: 3 million
Vitality:
Vibrant
Writing systems:
English writing system, occasionally Hebrew words inserted in Hebrew letters, English words have only rarely been written in Hebrew letters
Literature:
Periodicals, liturgical translation, drama, poetry, prose, film
Language family/branch:
West Germanic
Orthodox Jewish English includes hundreds of loan words from Hebrew and Yiddish, including baruch hashem 'blessed is God', blech 'metal stove covering that facilitates cooking on the Sabbath', bentsh 'bless, say Grace After Meals', dafka 'specifically, really, to make a point of', and kippah 'skullcap'. Some loan words have specialized meanings or uses: leyn ('read Torah' < Yid. 'read'), as do some English words: "learn" ('learn Jewish texts').
Other features of Orthodox Jewish English include quasi-chanting intonation contours and other distinctive intonation, loan uses from Yiddish ("I'm eating by her"; "He doesn't know from that"; "I want that you should see this"), frequent word-final /t/-release ("night" rather than "nigh'"), and Yiddish-influenced periphrastic constructions: "I'm not mekabel that" ('I don't accept that'); "We do all that shtik to be mesameach the chatan v'kala" ('We do all those routines to entertain the groom and bride'); "Before I knew that he had said it in shiur, I was mechaven to the Rosh Yeshiva's pshat in the Gemara" ('Before I knew that he had said it in class, I found myself agreeing with the head-of-the-school's interpretation in the Talmud') (Weiser 1995:59).
Orthodox (and many non-Orthodox) Jews are aware of the existence of Orthodox speech styles, especially the registers associated with the predominantly male learning institution, the Yeshiva. Many community members talk about "Yeshivish," as we can see in the title of a popular book, Frumspeak, and in the song Yeshivishe Reid by the Orthodox band Journeys.
Jewish English provides an excellent laboratory for understanding how Jewish languages develop. It has the components laid out by Weinreich (1980): a co-territorial base language (English), a previous Jewish language (Yiddish and other immigrant languages), and a Hebrew-Aramaic stratum, which overlaps greatly with the previous Jewish language (see this video lecture on how Jewish English compares to other Jewish languages). In addition, Jewish English has a Modern Hebrew component, which is likely to be present in all Jewish languages developing in contemporary times. Jewish English seems to be following the progression explained by Fishman (1985), in which a group of Jews moves to a new land, picks up the local language, and speaks progressively more distinctly over time. In the early 21st century, speakers of Jewish English tend to be fluent in the local non-Jewish variety and shift styles according to audience, setting, and topic. The fact that Jewish English is not written in Jewish characters is related to this bi-dialectalism, as well as to the landscape of widespread English literacy in which this language is developing.
Joshua Fishman asks: "Is it possible that a Jewish Language is being born before our very eyes but that few are aware of it?" (Fishman 1985:15). Yes, it is. And in order to understand more about the development of Jewish languages, now is the time to research Jewish English.
Jewish English lecture from Torah Ohr Yeshiva, at KolHaLashon.com
Jewish English lecture from Matan Women's Institute for Torah Studies
To cite: Benor, Sarah Bunin. n.d. Jewish English. Jewish Language Website, Sarah Bunin Benor (ed.). Los Angeles: Jewish Language Project. https://www.jewishlanguages.org/jewish-english. Attribution: Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 International.