I love Yiddish. The words sound so rich and the combinations of vowels makes Yiddish a far more interesting and fun language than English. As someone who is half-Jewish, I wish I knew Yiddish. While I don’t, I do often use Yiddish words that are firmly entrenched in spoken and written English as well as in pop culture.
Below are my favorites as a group.
Which is your #1 favorite? Vote!
Shtick. I’m neither jewish nor a native English speaker, but I use it rather regularly.
I blame Asimov for this. I devoured his books as a kid and now I tend to use these kind of terms every now and them
Paul,
I grew up on Long Island ( Emphasis on Looong), in a bedroom community for Garmento’s working in the rag trade in the City on Broadway. I often attended Hebrew School at the age of 12 years old. Obviously not a requirement for a catholic boy, but by choice because all my play friends were studying the Torah for their Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s and if I wanted to play ball, I had to wait till Hebrew School was out.
Now that said, although your list is great, it would not be complete with the 2 most famous (Middle America) words in Yiddish, shameal and shamazel, made famous on the hit TV show Lavern and Shirley.
PS: I just loved the word Schmuck, until my mom found out what it meant…I think I had a soap sandwich that day!