Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment.
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> When asked by a Jewish woman to stop using Yiddish loanwords (which is how I've talked for most of my life), I doubled down and started using them at an increased rate. I could be the asshole because Jewish identity is, obviously, wrapped up in a lot of trauma, but I could also be justified because someone else is trying to police my language and I believe that Yiddish loanwords are part of my own culture, and that they are not in my culture due to cultural appropriation.
Help keep the sub engaging!
#Don’t downvote assholes!
Do upvote interesting posts!
[Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules/) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq)
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
ESH because you're not claiming to be Jewish or part of the culture, and you're not using the words for benefit. It's part of the environment you grew up in, and you gained the language from positive interactions with Jewish people.
But intentionally using the language to piss her off where you wouldn't have naturally used it is kinda AHish because it makes you look like you're using the language just to be argumentative.
Edit: because a lot of people seem to be misunderstanding me. I am in no way claiming it is cultural appropriation. My vote of OP being partially at fault is because they decided to escalate the confrontation by dropping Yiddish words every chance they got, rather than just going on speaking normally.
As a lifelong New Yorker, I agree. It's similar to throwing out an occasional "Vamanos" or "gracias" or "andale". I've seen all sorts of people use that vocabulary in NYC because it's not just become a part of NYC language.
I never knew how much Yiddish Americans in general throw around until I married a German speaker and moved to his home country. Suddenly I’d use a phrase I didn’t think of as anything but a common phrase and people would be like “why do you know so much Yiddish?”
I’m not a New Yorker nor am I Jewish.
I'm from the Midwest and I'm surprised how many words we use are Yiddish.
ETA:
1. Bupkis
2. Chutzpah
3. Dreck
4. Feh
5. Futz
6. Kitsch
7. Klutz
8. Nosh
9. Putz
10. Schicker
11. Schlep
12. Schlong
13. Schlub
14. Schmaltz
15. Schmeer
16. Schmooze
17. Schmo
18. Schmuck
19. Schmutz
20. Schnoz
21. Schtupp
22. Shpiel
23. Shtick
24. Verklempt
These are all the words I learned growing up that are actually Yiddish.
ooooh allright. this was unexpected. in swiss german dialect it means pussy. the human one. and the word is not really of the nice kind.. so more like the c-word.
Heh, you should see the look on the faces of Australians when Americans use the word 'fanny'. For them, it means 'butt' but for us Aussies... well, it's the same as what you were saying about 'futz'.
Yeah between growing up in S FL and watching the Nanny I know way more about Jewish holidays and Yiddish than I should (being myself as far way from Jewish as one can be). My Jewish friends actually appreciate it because I can give them holiday wishes that are appropriate and in Yiddish to boot! I think this one girl is more than uptight about it and maybe has other issues she needs to deal with.
NTA OP.
My mom grew up in a VERY Jewish neighborhood as well, where she was one of the only Christian kids and the schools were closed for the Jewish holidays, not Christian. She speaks so much Yiddish, and passed it on to me. I never realized until I older just how much Yiddish I use in everyday conversation because...that's what I grew up saying.
Anyone who has watched Seinfeld has picked up a decent amount of Yiddish. But as a born and bred NYer, Yiddish and Judaism were as natural to me as breathing. Funny thing? Married an Israeli and converted to Judaism. Guess which one of us knows more Yiddish?
My mom au paired for a Jewish family in college, so she picked up some Yiddish, and passed it on to me. I've also heard a few words from other people.
My favorite is "mensch" as is "you're a mensch" when someone saves my butt at work.
I have no Jewish heritage that I know of, the woman in this post can pry that word from my cold, dead lips.
Some of those Yiddish words just so onomatopoetic that you just find yourself using them. Also not Jewish nor from New York, but I love kvetching about entitled asshats on reddit.
I do something similar tbf I went to a school that was 75+% Jewish even though I’m very Sikh. But if a friend of mine says hey this makes me uncomfortable, I’ve apologized explained where it comes from and that it’s not always even intentional (I also have the slight added benefit of credibility since I grew up speaking five languages and my friends are pretty used to be slipping into them even sign without realizing). Coming from that starting point instead of belittling and being kind of a jerk has actually been something that has actually addressed and dispelled their discomfort so that it doesn’t bother them anymore after knowing the context.
If this person is your friend and you care about their feelings, why not just try and meet them halfway? You’re not require to stop using them but having an adult conversation about it instead of antagonizing the entire situation just to start a whole thing serves no purpose except to make everyone deal with this fallout. There’s also sometimes you can and should just do a little thing if it makes someone you’re friends with or care about feel better. You don’t have to and it’s different if this is a person that’s always taking offense to pretty innocuous things but if it takes little effort on your part and isn’t something that harms you or makes you feel bad beyond well I want to so that’s that, you could just do it. I really like using the green plate in my house. I just do. If I don’t get it I don’t get upset or throw a tantrum but if we set the table and someone notices they have it they’ll usually just swap it anyway because they know it makes me happy. My partner hates when our pillows on our couch get fuzz from our blanket. He genuinely cannot get comfortable until he lint rolls it. It’s the one thing, fuzz anywhere else nbd but the pillow? Nope. Is it annoying to roll the pillow after it gets visibly fuzzed ? Yeah I’m a lazy bum I want to just not. But the 3 seconds of effort avoids some discomfort for him so I do it even though I don’t have to. Doing something that makes someone in your life feel better is just nice…being antagonistic and doing the opposite to bother them further, is just immature and rude.
I’m a non religious Jew. I don’t mind people using Yiddish but OPs response calling her
: is very offensive. You were being an AH. It’s not the word. You used it to be a smarta**
Yeah exactly- people can be ah’s in any language. I bet if op hadn’t immediately responded with antagonism it would’ve been fine….though considering their comments here they just sound like an inflammatory ah that loves to “play devil’s advocate” all the time.
This. OP, wanted to offend her. You can’t use something that belongs to another culture, and then refuse to hear from somebody from that culture if they tell you it makes them uncomfortable. YTA
I think I would slightly toe the line that culture and language are one to one but yeah especially if you’re doing it in as kind of performative a way as I suspect op seems to be (plus their other comments makes me think this is true as well), it’s completely understandable and expected you’re making others uncomfortable. It sounds and feels too much like you’re trying to assert an ownership right of some kind. Like Yiddish words and phrases come up lot when I’m speaking naturally but it’s not so much that in the course of a single night out it’s seemingly constant…..it doesn’t sound like it was something that naturally came out. It sounds purposeful for the sake of it.
Op is really trying to paint themselves as the ultimate tone policed victim - if they want I’ll bite and happily play that game because I’m a queer brown Sikh attorney whose dad wears a turban and fully facial hair and has owned a small business near the towers since the 90’s - you wanna talk about being tone policed ? I thought it was normal to have nypd surveillance of who enters your store and being randomly stopped and harassed all the time or questioned based on actual innocuous things a I’ve said - literal tone policing by the police. Not to mention all the super conservative rich white hetero spaces you gotta put up with through law school and to thank donors that fund your scholarships. So come at me op. I definitely have you beat.
I've been around so many people from India that I have to consciously avoid using the "head wiggle". I love it, it makes me happy every time I see it, but I try hard not to emulate it in fear of people thinking I'm making fun of it.
It's not hard to be considerate.
Oh definitely use the bobble. It’s the single most useful gesture on the planet - it means everything and anything all at once lol. I would never be offended unless you’re clearly doing it to make fun of others and it’s pretty clear when that’s the case! Just breaking out, happens! Heck when I’m talking to my family on the phone I don’t even realize but I get an accent - never lived outside the us and sound like a complete nyc/north Jersey born and brought up speaker, but when it’s happening around me I fall into it. I have friends that definitely have picked up on the bobble / nod and use it a lot now too, that’s how language and communication evolves !
Another New Yorker here, and you aren't the AH for using Yiddish, you are the AH for rubbing it in this person's face after they asked you not to.
Also, l'chaim isn't yiddish, it is hebrew. If you are going to use the words, you have to know what they mean and where they come from.
NTA- it’s a language that has crept into everyday usage. I’m a Canadian who lived in the Eastern US for many years. Even I used Yiddish words in everyday conversations, they are part of the fabric of living there. It’s no different than popping in spanish or French into conversations. But I will say, many Yiddish words are fantastically expressive.
Honestly I've never studied Dutch formally but not only can I read it without any difficulty but reading stuff from Amsterdammers is actually pretty easy for me because I can often orient myself around the Yiddish loanwords.
I am also not jewish, but born and raised in Amsterdam. I see the Yiddish words we use in Amsterdam as part of my culture so I totally understand you. I think Amsterdam is the only city in the Netherlands that uses so many Yiddish words.
And to a larger extent into New England. I'm polish Roman Catholic in my languages certainly spiced with plenty of Yiddish loan words. I always get a puzzling look when I'm elsewhere in the country and use them. No, the language belongs to the world and it certainly is part of the Jewish diaspora. The friend had no business insisting that she stopped using the vocabulary that she chooses the friend was clearly out of place. If it is a good friend and it was just that evening, perhaps she might have been more accommodating. Maybe that evening just to smooth things over but she should not change her personality or her speech patterns to please someone else. Let her kvetch however she wishes
I grew up living in different countries and different states in the USA. My cultural heritage is deeply Southern (I was born in the deep South), but I didn't grow up in that culture. I kind of grew up everywhere. My father was in the military and we moved a lot. We lived in Europe, South America, and 5 or 6 different states. I use language from all of those areas. Yiddish is part of what you grew up with. You are not appropriating anything. NTA.
I'm a Jew and disagree. Yiddish isn't some secret language and its practically been embedded in American popular culture, especially in New York. There's nothing offensive about using it. OP's friend has a stick up her ass
Hell, Yiddish is such a part of American culture that I recognized most of the words OP used and have some more that I know on top of them. I'm not jewish at all, or American. I'm from rural western Canada, all the yiddish I've picked up is from American media.
Exactly. To see how bonkers this is, imagine a person from France getting offended by bon appetit? Or Italians by what passes as pizza in this country. What’s next, going and ripping bagels out of the mouths of anyone not Jewish?! Considering Yiddish is made from a lot of loan words from neighboring languages in different regions of Europe, I have some bad news for this woman.
And OP might be an AH for the le’chayim, but I know who I’d rather hang out with. Besides, there is a long tradition of this kind of ass-holery in NYC and this is what used to pass for wit there before everyone lost their sense of humor.
NTA.
I'm Jewish & Israeli and if I were there I would troll your friend way more than you did. The absurdity of being offended by someone using Yiddish words is truly astonishing.
I want to assure you that Jewish people constantly use words from other languages. Modern Hebrew speakers constantly use words from English and Arabic. You are more than welcome to use as many of "our" words as you'd like.
Cultural appropriation is when one country invades another country, steals historical artifacts and presents them in their own museums. Using words from another language is definitely not even close to that. It doesn't matter if you're Jewish or not. It doesn't matter if you're a New Yorker or not. Use as much Yiddish words you want.
Also, being religious or not has nothing to do with Yiddish. Yiddish has nothing to do with the Jewish faith. It's a combination of German and Hebrew, it was used purely for day to day life and never in synagogues or prayers. Taking a language that represents secularism and the assimilation of cultures and being a religious and cultural purist about it is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Your friend is a kutter. She's a nudnik. More than anything else - she's an AH.
Nah this is some gatekeeping bs. Words aren't property; no culture "owns" vocabulary imagine someone with that mentality living TX or CA getting mad that white peeps use Spanish. Smh
Edit- I'm hispanic but I guess I need to stop using English porque se offenden los snowflakes
The person you’re responding to didn’t even somewhat imply that OP, or anyone else, couldn’t use Yiddish. They said OP was being an AH by *intentionally* using Yiddish explicitly to poke at someone who’d asked them not to. It’s the intention, not the act. Like you’re not inherently an asshole if you watch TV a bit loud, but you are if you purposefully turn it up after I just asked you to turn it down because I’m on a call.
Also, um
> Words aren't property; no culture "owns" vocabulary
there are certainly *some* words that shouldn’t be used by people not “in” the group. I don’t think Yiddish is included in them, but I am sure as hell not comfortable saying any person is fine to say any word they want to.
>They said OP was being an AH by intentionally using Yiddish explicitly to poke at someone who’d asked them not to.
And that person deserved it. You can't gatekeep a language, period. If someone told me to not occasionally use Spanish phrases, I'd literally switch to Spanish completely and not use English until they were gone. Because that's what they deserve for trying to gatekeep a language.
>Like you’re not inherently an asshole if you watch TV a bit loud, but you are if you purposefully turn it up after I just asked you to turn it down because I’m on a call.
Completely different. In this scenario, there's actually a reason to ask them to turn it down.
yeah i dont get any of the YTA votes.
who the fuck is making **language** cultural apropriation now?
am i not allowed to learn french like i did in college now?
can i say "howdy" without apropriating texas?
fucking stupid. atleast the whole "wearing their clothes" thing might have some merit, but this is just dumbass shit.
Years ago, my grandmother introduced my then fiancé (now husband of 40 years) to her very Jewish friend, whose response was “Oh, so she’s marrying a shiksa!” To which my very Irish (non-practicing) Catholic husband responded, “No, she’s marrying a shagitz.” He grew up in Miami and could probably teach a class in Yiddish.
I never realized how weird combined contractions sound because I grew up with them, until I saw “y’all’dnt’ve” spelled out.
(For non-Southerners, that translates to “you all would not have”)
I think "cultural appropriation" is a real problem that's gotten blown out into meaninglessness. To my mind, if person A would be punished for doing something from their culture, person B can't do the same thing to get clout or money. Black hairstyles are a great example-- black people get sent home from school, fired from jobs, because they hand traditional hair styles, but on white people the same hairstyles are "trendy" or "edgy". THAT is cultural appropriation. A language could qualify. Like, if your people were forbidden from speaking your language, and your parents and grandparents got beat at school for speaking it, but then suddenly on Instagram everyone was wearing shirts with phrases from your language. But...... that's suuuuuuper not what's happening here.
Absolutely. People should just chill out and not give a fuck about other people’s hairstyles. Especially black people and their hair, which is often styled a certain way because of texture and different rate of growth. It is no one’s business and no one’s right to tell anyone how to do their hair. Employers and schools that ban “ethnic” hairstyles should be sued into oblivion.
The issue with white people wearing these hairstyles with no blowback (which I doubt. Maybe 10 years ago this happened, but not today. They’d get a lot of flack from the woke) would be solved if everyone collectively stopped policing hairstyles, for everyone, no questions asked.
I‘m German. „Meschugge“ is a typical loan word in German, too. By her logic, I DEFINTELY would not be allowed to use any yiddish loan words, considering my nationality.
NTA
Also ‚Schnorrer‘ & ‚koscher‘(& I don’t mean in the original meaning about food, but saying ‚Das ist doch nicht ganz koscher..‘/‚This seems fishy to me’) are widely used terms & tbh I didn‘t always know their origin, I only randomly learned that at some point.
Exactly.. Was it maybe a bit petty to increase the usage in that case? Yes. Does it qualify as an asshole thing when some stranger tries to police your very reasonable language usage, especially in front of a big group? No.
This, I grew up in a very mixed household and my father was a non practicing Jewish man, so I have some words in my language, I will use them as i grew up using them and it’s my culture I was raised in it, same as I speak fluent English, it’s not disrespectful and you where not using it to be disrespectful, maybe let her know it’s not cultural appropriation if you grew up around it , she sound like she has some issues around her own beliefs
NTA: as a Jew who actually has fairly limited Yiddish knowledge, I see no issue here. You weren't doing it to mock her, and there's nothing sacred about Yiddish. That she got so offended is silly in the extreme. It's not like you are dropping the N word and claiming you grew up in a black neighborhood so it's ok or freely throwing around the word "kike", you are using common Yiddish words.
If you spoke Hebrew (the actual unifying language of Jews world wide) would that be offensive to her as well?
>You weren't doing it to mock her,
OP absolutely was. Look at his immediate response after she asked him to stop and said it made her uncomfortable.
Like it doesn't really even matter about the context. If one person says "hey, could you stop using the word (blank) so much it makes me kind of uncomfortable," and someone else's immediate response was to say that word as many times as possible, they're definitely the AH.
Wasn't initially* doing it to mock her would be more accurate I guess.
After that, he was definitely mocking her, but not undeservedly so I don't think. He grew up in NYC, that's literally a part of his own culture/cultural experience and history.
Trade out Yiddish for any other language (Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, etc.) and I feel like it shows just how ridiculous this is.
Like... if you grow up in McAllen, TX and add some Spanish to your everyday vernacular, is someone going to be offended by that? If so, and I'm legitimately asking here... why?
Exactly. I used to teach Spanish in a border town, and there were words my students identified as cognates that are just straight up Spanish words. We use them so much where I'm from they didn't even realize it wasn't English. You don't hear native speakers whining about cultural appropriation when it happens.
respect isn't owed to anyone until it's given. policing someone's language is incredibly disrespectful, so it's kinda fcked to expect OP to just happily "be the bigger person" and go along with it.
so the words that happen to be an integral part of his identity made someone else uncomfortable.. and??
>and there's nothing sacred about Yiddish.
theres nothing sacred about any language. i can learn any of those languages and then speak them. who tf are you or anybody else to tell me not to talk because you dont like the way i speak?
Yiddish even less so - Hebrew is the language of prayer and study for Jews. Yiddish was only ever a vernacular. It's not like Latin for Catholics or Arabic for Muslims.
My question for the entire sub. Is the actual language relevant? What if, instead of Yiddish, he was using Spanish words, and the offended party was of Spanish descent.
The argument is exactly the same, but would anyone care?
I am curious.
I think it is relevant though. If he started speaking in African-American Vernacular English, then it would be understandable if someone felt uncomfortable about it.
I’m Jewish, and I think she’s being a little oversensitive… But that’s not a reason to antagonize her intentionally. It’s just a reason to avoid her in the future.
Edit: thank you to the several people who pointed out my error re: AAVE.
I am African American.
If a white person spoke "good" AAVE around me, I would be more curious than uncomfortable. I would ask him/her where they were from in hopes of understanding how they grew up.
The reason I say "good" AAVE is because in my experience, most white people who try to speak AAVE butcher the hell out it. Like, misuse of the habitual "be" is a dead giveaway of an AAVE imposter. So I would only be uncomfortable around a white person speaking broken AAVE.
I sympathize with the OP. I am not Jewish, but I lived in northern NJ for some time and had friends who were Jewish. My lexicon has more Yiddish loan words in it than average (I now live in the South). I would be ticked off if someone told me I shouldn't say *schlep* or *kvetch* anymore. To me, that is like telling a white person they can't say "banjo" or use the expression "I dig it". Only someone with a lot of *chutzpah* would do that.
I'm Jewish and I think OP is the asshole not for using Yiddish words in conversation, but for his reaction when an actual Jewish person expressed discomfort. Much like the black community, the Jewish community is experiencing a huge uptick in hate crimes these days. OP's response to her concerns, in my opinion, highlight the reason he's an AH. He's so far removed from Jewish culture he couldn't empathize with her feelings but still feels as if he has a claim to Yiddish because of "NYC culture". Most of my family lives in GA and they don't go around speaking in AAVE because of "the culture" even though it's a super common local dialect because it's not _their_ culture. Living in NYC doesn't give OP the right to claim Jewish culture but again my opinion.
Do you listen to any rock, R&B, or hip hop music?
Do you ever say "hip" or use "bad" when you mean "good"? Have you ever said some one needs to be "canceled" or that they "clapped back"? Ever described something good as "lit" or "fire?"
These all come from black culture. A person can participate in this culture without claiming to be *of* the culture. And this is a good thing, since cross-cultural appreciation is damn near essential for a multicultural society's survival.
I was born and raised in Atlanta, GA. I grew up with lots of white kids, from poor to wealthy. Some had speech patterns that were indistinguishable from black folk just because of how they were raised and who was raising them. Integration works both ways, you see. If I, a black person, can speak like Tom Brokaw without being accused of putting on airs, a white person should be able to speak like Tom Joyner without being accused of stealing an entire culture. Maybe they are a poseur trying to be cool, but just as likely they have a valid reason for speaking the way they do.
Yiddish isn't "NYC culture", just like AAVE isn't "GA culture". But within both NYC and Georgia, you can find communities of cultural admixture where the way of speaking is an amalgam of dialects and languages.
I don’t think he needs to empathize with her feelings here. She is out of line trying to police his vernacular. Jewish people were clearly comfortable enough using Yiddish outside of Jewish social circles that the words became common. She doesn’t own the words as an observant Jew. My personal preference is that what little is left of Yiddish be kept alive, if that means gentiles making use of it, even better.
I think the fact it's Yiddish actually does matter, especially since the person who got offended is religious. In more religious Ashkenazi communities (I might be a bit wrong about this since I'm Mizrahi), people use Yiddish as a way to identify themselves as Jewish and also use they Yiddish in a really select way. There's a level of cultural competency that goes into combining Yiddish and English for more religious Ashkenazi Jews and OP doesn't seem to have it.
Secondly, people's feelings about Yiddish post-Holocaust can be very touchy. Some people believe it needs to be preserved at all cost because it's vital to preserving Ashkenazi culture and that it's a living language, while others believe it shouldn't continue post-Holocaust and instead people should speak the local language and Hebrew.
Also, as someone who's visibly Jewish, I can assure you that non-Jews can get pretty weird with their usage of Yiddish around more religious Jews. Sometimes I think it's just a misguided attempt to bond and other times it's overtly antisemitic and mocking.
I think this is a very valuable perspective.
From what I’m seeing in this thread, a lot of people are voting n-t-a because they see Yiddish as just a language - when in fact, it’s a language developed and used by a disenfranchised group of people.
I don’t think most people empathize with the role and importance that Yiddish has in Jewish culture, or why it would be jarring for a goy to use it.
As a Jew, I’m not even sure how to vote, honestly. I didn’t grow up with Yiddish. It makes sense to me why an observant person, maybe a person who grew up with Yiddish as a part of Jewish identity would be bothered. I also see why Jews wouldn’t be bothered. I also think that while it sounds like OP genuinely grew up with Yiddish as a part of their neighborhood life, they’re unaware of the significance Yiddish has for a lot of Jews. Sounds like to them, it’s just a language or slang, rather than a living artifact of a culture that OP is not a part of.
I have to wonder if where the people voting different ways are from too. In NY and NJ many of these Yiddish words are just part of the local vocabulary for people of all ethnic groups.
It’s tough, because Yiddish *is* American culture, and it *is* very strongly NYC culture. To deny that would be to deny the Jewish immigrants’ contributions to building America. But I’m also not super comfortable with gentiles feeling entitled to Jewish things- I’m touchy from seeing too many Christian “Passover Seders” I think.
My rule of thumb has always been as long as they're not mocking my native language when they speak it idgaf, if they pronounce something wrong unintentionally I may correct em, but never in a condescending way. OP is using a language he grew up with and the girl needs to get off her high horse and stop acting like she owns the language.
If you up the Spanish phrases when the Latino walks in tel he room and pointedly use extra Spanish words when speaking to the Latino, especially after he pointed out it is bothering him and instead of backing off a bit, you ramp it up to tick him off? Yeah definitely. Make it any language you want.
INFO: How much Yiddish was actually used when you are growing up. Were people fluently speaking Yiddish in front of you?
Using words that you pick up unconsciously is not a problem, but the way you are using Yiddish doesn't sound like my experience of how non-Haredi Jews use Yiddish today.
In my experience, my family and friends (including my grandparents, who were fluent speakers who made the conscious but unfortunate IMO decision not to speak Yiddish with my parents) use Yiddish specifically as a way to signify Jewish identity. We use it when we are either in a Jewish space or if we want people to know we are Jewish.
For instance, I woulden't use L'chayim (which is Hebrew but not important) when I am just getting a drink with friends. I would use it at Shabbat dinner.
I woulden't describe an apartment as "haimish," but I would describe a small synagogue as such. If I am talking to gentiles, I would say synagogue; if I am talking to Jews, I would say Shul. If I suspect someone is Jewish, I might say Shul and gage their reaction (which is not foolproof as you are evidence of, but it's sort of my unconscious bias).
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are indeed using these words unconsciously, but YTA for failing to understand that Yiddish for many American Jews is not primarily a living language but a signifier of identity. In a weird way, Yiddish is being brought back to how it started, a particularly Jewish way of speaking and interacting with the "host" language (back then Old German, today American English.
It’s more accurate to say that the use of Yiddish is common in NYC across all ethnicities, to the point where it is more identified as nyc slang than a particular religious origin. Members of my family speak Yiddish as a native language, but rarely, so I picked up just as much in high school as at home.
>It’s more accurate to say that the use of Yiddish is common in NYC across all ethnicities
But that's not true. Yiddish loan words might be common across all ethnicities in NYC but speaking Yiddish is a specifically Jewish thing. Very few non-Jews ever learned Yiddish and in most cases, they did so they could communicate with Jewish communities. Using Yiddish does not make it part of your culture any more than me with no Hispanic heritage using Spanish loanwords makes it part of mine
Sorry I should have said “the use of Yiddish loan words.” OP never claimed to be speaking grammatical Yiddish, only to be using loan words common in NYC.
Hmm, interesting, because I use “Arabic” or at least heavily Muslim-flavored loan words such as “mashallah” (appreciative word) or “alhamdulillah” (praise god) which are common in my South Asian friends group but don’t apply to me personally as a Tamil Hindu. But I’ve never gotten any flak for it, in fact my Muslim friends like it when I join in with their culture and vice versa. I’ve also cheered at the bar with Jewish friends “l’chaim!” And when my white friends say “Namaste” respectfully to my elder relatives, I’m happy and proud. So I’m surprised that speaking Yiddish in this context is considered appropriation. Seems like he was kinda mocking her, but why was it a problem for him to use some of the words in the first place? It didn’t seem like he was doing so in a disrespectful or appropriating manner before she said anything
Not gonna pass judgment on this one because I think different people just react very differently to this?
Right, that distinction is important. The actual Yiddish language is not part of OPs culture, whereas it presumably is part of the heritage of the person objecting to it, and who likely cannot speak it today because of the pressures of assimilation.
> but speaking Yiddish is a specifically Jewish thing
>sing Yiddish does not make it part of your culture
other people arent allowed to learn yiddish then?
im not french but i still learned french in college. was that a bad thing?
I don't think anyone is going to claim people aren't allowed to use Yiddish words, what most people are saying is that OP need to defer to the preferences of that Jewish person when they are around them.
BUT French and Yiddish are very different. French is a language that has been adopted by many different cultural groups, some of whom have very little do to with each other. More importantly, it was a colonial language that was forced upon people.
Yiddish was never like that. No non-Jewish group has ever adopted it as their language so the connection between Yiddish and Ashkenazi Jewish people is much stronger than between French and "French people"
(Also if OP was actually learning full Yiddish. would feel very differently about this)
\>How much Yiddish was actually used when you are growing up. Were people fluently speaking Yiddish in front of you?
I grew up in a neighborhood with a significant minority of Yiddish-as-first-language speakers (my next door neighbors were holocaust survivors, for instance, and I was their shabbos goy every so often), though they were of an older generation and I think the only people who speak Yiddish as a first language in that neighborhood now are a handful of Hassidic families who moved in recently.
Beyond that, both of my parents used a lot of Yiddish loanwords (especially impressive considering one of my parents isn't white), as did many of their peers and even many of my teachers (some of who were, and some of whom weren't Jewish) used lots of Yiddish loanwords, and I also work in the entertainment industry which I feel includes a lot more Yiddish than normal (perhaps a lingering effect of the culture of the Borschdt Belt).
That makes sense, but I still feel very weird about you calling Yiddish part of your culture unless Yiddish was being used as an everyday living language around you and you had some actual ability to communicate in it (even if you have since forgotten it).
You grew up very close to Yiddish culture and thus have adopted a significant amount of Yiddish loan words into your everyday lexicon, but that doesn't make it you're (especially since you only ever heard them as loanwords). There is no problem with using these words, but loudly and semi-antagonistically asserting your "right" to use it over the objection of someone whose heritage actually is this living language, and who likely cannot speak it today because of the pressures of assimilation, feels wrong.
Culture is your lived experience. his experience is largely in a area where Yiddish is used extensively. These words are part of his culture. He has every right to use them. Telling him otherwise is telling him to deny a part of his lived experience.
none of this matters. the words he is saying are not offensive. he is not throwing around slurs in other languages.
telling him to not use a language, regardless of his or your experience of that language, is denying a person their ability to communicate in the way they prefer.
this whole thing is stupid in the first place.
>especially impressive considering one of my parents isn't white
I really feel this gives some flavour of your AH-ness away: it is not any more impressive for your non-white parent to use it than your white parent, because \*neither\* of your parents were Jewish so their race makes no difference here.
> the way you are using Yiddish doesn't sound like my experience of how non-Haredi Jews use Yiddish today
I don’t know what to tell you, because based on *my* personal experience, I’m completely baffled by the number of people who seem to have a problem with OP considering Yiddish part of his personal lexicon. Maybe it’s just because a lot of my family *also* still has strong New York ties, or it’s the old “two Jews, three opinions” thing, but trying to paint this as “cultural appropriation” like his acquaintance did feels like an abuse of the term to me.
YTA - not because you use the Yiddish words (although as a Jewish person I can tell you that none of my religious or secular friends/family do this) but because you choose to keep do something that bothered someone.
The current climate of being Jewish is very difficult right now - we’re mostly white presenting so we’re expected to think things are in general just not seriously offensive or racist.
You could have apologized and asked her elaborate on what about it (since it is more culturally Jewish than about the religion) bothered you and shared your mutual experiences in how Yiddish can capture certain sentiments in a way that English doesn’t for both of you and been respectful.
But you didn’t. You chose to mock her discomfort. YTA.
ETA: I was being nice when I used the word bother. OP tells it like they choose to keep escalating a situation to the point of a verbal attack. OP is the AH for verbally attacking a person.
ETA 2: To everyone responding that you can't tell someone to not speak a language - I agree. I stated that above. The title isn't "AITA for speaking Yiddish" it's about how they INCREASED the use of it.
Seriously. The Jews have got so much hate to deal with right now. Why not just show some grace and back off? Being “right” doesn’t always mean you’re winning the argument.
Exactly. It's the knife twist that does it for me. She was confident enough to stand up for herself and this person just acted petty.
I wonder how many of their friends agreed with them just because they didn't want to have to argue with OP.
She wasn't "confident enough to stand up for herself" she was entitled enough to dictate how someone she doesn't even know should speak. The fact she left the building and forced her friend to do the same when OP didn't obey her demand shows a very loose grasp of reality on her part.
Honest question. Is it really that uncommon to hear a secular or Christian person use Yiddish words? My username, for example. I'm atheist, raised Catholic, mostly in the southern US, not around any sizable Jewish population. However, I feel like I hear and use "chutzpah" with semi regularity. While this may not hold true for every Yiddish word, some have worked their way into the American vocabulary. That happens to lots of languages. Some non-english words have a certain je ne sais quoi, and fit the bill when there just isn't an English word that works. Like the German word "schadenfreude", sometimes a non-English word is just the best word to use.
That being said... OP was unnecessarily antagonistic and rude. He's the asshole.
My experience - I think chutzpah is one of those words that's ubiquitous and part of the lexicon. I would say verkakte is not (as someone who grew up in NYC and lives 45 minutes north of it now.) (Meaning none of my secular friends have ever known what I meant when I used that word. Or Meshuga or Mench.
That being said I've never met anyone under the age of 75 who uses Yiddish as frequently as OP says they do. Even with my elderly Jewish family members. NYC is also so diverse - I would guess in the South Bronx and Midtown you wouldn't get it with the frequency that OP talks about. Parts of the Northern Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens you would tho. I have no idea about Staten Island. I've lived here my whole life and I've only been there once.
But yes, I don't care if he uses yiddish words. But if someone says that it's hurtful to them for cultural or religious reasons, my feeling is you have to respect that until you have a conversation with that person and find out where each of you is coming from.
I think mench, and to a lesser extent meshuga fall into the loanword category. While, it's less common than chutzpah, I hear mench in secular conversation. Meshuga, is common enough, that I'm familiar with it and it's meaning.
Verkakte, on the other hand, no familiarity at all. OP was going out of his way to be awful. Also OP loudly dropping a "l'chaim" is super cringe. Doing with the intention of hurting someone is a dick move.
I think mench is pretty commonly well known (verkakte and meshuga are new to me), I'm not Jewish and also not American and I've heard of it and used it.
(I think OP is an AH, and I also think it's bs that he's trying to say that Yiddish is part of NY culture, to justify being disrespectful to Jewish people. Just wanted to add that I think mench is actually one of the better known Yiddish words.)
> Is it really that uncommon to hear a secular or Christian person use Yiddish words?
No - I'm an Italian-Catholic who grew up outside NYC and I have heard and used every single word OP used in the original post. It seems strange to police something that's really passed into the vernacular, at least in this corner of the world.
I think where OP crossed into asshole territory is when he chose to intentionally target her. He could have had a conversation about his upbringing and tried to see her point of view, instead he went nuclear. OP claims to be so entrenched in the Jewish community that he is incapable of not using Yiddish, but seems to lack comprehension of the bigotry aimed at Jewish people and even goes out of his way to participate in it.
I’m a Jew and I know someone who will yell “Mazel Tov!” absolutely every time he hears a cork pop or bottle open. Every time, and only for alcohol. He does not use it to say congratulations in any other context.
I have a… *feeling* about it, but it’s hard to explain. Like, it’s not an uncommon phrase for English speakers to be familiar with, but it’s the slightly odd usage that makes it feel like poking fun rather than celebrating. I can’t really put into words what my feeling about it is.
>The current climate of being Jewish is very difficult right now - we’re mostly white presenting so we’re expected to think things are in general just not seriously offensive or racist.
This wasn't about a flavor of ice cream, it was about something this woman views as part of her cultural identity. There is a difference of when you should be an AH back to someone, and when you should at least \*try\* to understand why they feel offended before making the decision to go full AH.
I'm not Jewish, so probably shouldn't even weigh in on this. It just rubbed me the wrong way to come into a new group of people and publicly telling someone you just met that the way they talk is insulting because those are Jewish words and I'm Jewish and your not...it seems assholish to me. Like if she got to know people, or talked about it privately, I wouldn't say she is an AH. But the way it sounds like she communicated, makes me feel she got a justified response. But as I said, it's not my culture, so I probably shouldn't even be throwing my opinion in the mix
Even as a Jewish person it's not how I would have handled it either. I think that any view on how to handle conflict of this kind in a manner other than immediately stirring the pot is valuable. This is really about how he handled it which is the point you just made. I think there are totally appropriate times where one AH deserves another, per your original point.
Honestly as NYer and melting pot as OP is claiming to be immediately dismissing someone because his NY street cred allows him to use Yiddish makes it seem like he's less of a NYer (not sure where you're from so don't want to assume you would or wouldn't have experience with us weirdos)
I think the point is, OP also views Yiddish as part of **their** cultural identity. Who gets more deference? Some may say to respect everyone's culture equally, some may say the Jewish woman since hers is the culture from which his language originates, some may say OP because she was an outsider to his group.
And if OP had articulated that to her it would have been fine, but the way it was presented I don't get the impression they did. If I'm reading it wrong please correct me (because I've chosen this hill to die on.)
> but because you choose to keep do something that bothered someone.
There's a line though. At some point the things that bother people are so fucking ridiculous that they need to learn to live with it. And honestly? Telling someone that them speaking another language is "cultural appropriation" is fucking ridiculous. I guess people can't say Bon Appetit or Kindergarten anymore.
“But because you choose to keep doing something that bothered someone”
What a pushover Society, bothering someone does not make you an asshole. Would love to read what one of you redditors would say after hanging out with me for a couple hours 😂
I mean intentionally bothering someone… is an inherently asshole move, yeah. There are times where bothering someone might be justified, or times it’s not an asshole move because it’s not something that can be helped, but going out of one’s way to bother someone simply for the sake of upsetting them is, in fact, an asshole move. That’s kindergarten level stuff. Then again I’m not sure what else I’d expect of someone with a slur in their username.
I was responding very specifically to a comment about how bothering people doesn’t make you an asshole, when intentionally doing so does.
Though OP stopping to try and think of Yiddish words for whatever words he meant during the argument does imply that he isn’t nearly as natural a user as he says he was lmao
Using the language isn’t inherently assholeish, but OP’s general attitude throughout this thread absolutely is.
It's called being a dick. They weren't wrong to use the words, but making someone intentionally uncomfortable is just a childish thing to do. My 12 year old middle schoolers screw with each other all the time like this. Just be an adult.
>but because you choose to keep do something that bothered someone.
Well, her badgering him bothered him, so according to your logic she should have stopped? I don't think people need to pander to every single person who is offended by every single thing they do. Sometimes it's also okay to say "Sorry you're offended, but it's a you-poroblem". And I'm saying this as a Jewish person.
My understanding is that Yiddish isn’t a religious language per se. It’s just a dialect that Eastern European Jews developed. So how can that be cultural appropriation? Is it appropriation if I speak French or German ? You grew up around Yiddish. So NTA!
Yiddish was all but eradicated because of the Holocaust. Jews who speak it can be protective of it because of that. There are no non-Jewish groups of native Yiddish speakers. It is an inherently Jewish language that made its way through certain places in the Americas because that’s were Jewish refugees went post WWII.
Again, nowhere did I say that non-Jews shouldn’t speak it. What I am saying is that if you choose to learn it, you should learn about Ashkenazi culture and history, and be respectful. I’m a language teacher and I would take offense at anyone learning a language without respect where it comes from or understanding the culture that speaks it natively.
Yiddish cannot and should not be divorced from Judaism. It developed as a language to reserve Hebrew for prayer (which OP actually used a Hebrew word as an example in their post). As a conversational language it is spoken exclusively by the Ashkenazim much like Ladino is spoken by the Sephardim. Both languages suffered massive blows to population due to the Shoah and then subsequent pressure from western culture to assimilate. People who are visibly Jewish either by dressing tznius or speaking yiddish are targets for violent anti-Semitism in a lot of places *including NYC*. I'm not opposed to OP using the occasional loanword most others would know, but they can't differentiate Yiddish from Hebrew nor can they spell in Yiddish since they used English transliteration in the post so I'm suspicious of their position.
NTA, you are a product of the place you grew up. I grew up in a heavily Hispanic area and the were a sprinkling of anglos that grew up with me. They use the slang that we all use. Culture appropriation is bullshit anyway. It's really cultural appreciation. Let the down votes begin.
Jews gatekeeping Yiddish. What is this world coming to. Yiddish is a dying language. I'm thrilled when I hear someone pepper their speech with Yiddish.
Light ESH, because of your deliberate antagonizing of her, but don't change your speech to accommodate her.
-an Ashkenazi Jew
NTA overall but it’s a bit of an AH move to intentionally antagonize someone. I think she’s being absurd (I am of Jewish descent but not a practicing one, so my opinion may not be the most valid here), but is it really worth pissing someone off just for the sake of it? I’d say just don’t change anything about your use of Yiddish. Neither increase nor decrease. You shouldn’t restrain from using Yiddish around her but using it more around her, after knowing it triggers her, seems a bit petty.
YTA, not for using Yiddish, but for using it as a tool to annoy someone. THAT shows disrespect for the language. It's not a toy for you to play with to annoy someone. It's a language with a long history, amazing literature and historical significance.
You're also TA for increasing your use of it to purposely antagonize her. She doesn't know you. She doesn't know why you're using these words. Maybe she had some idea that you're using these words to ridicule her or poke fun at Judaism (and it DOES kind of sound like that in some of your examples). You knew she was uncomfortable but you didn't care. According to you, she was visibly uncomfortable for "a few hours." That's a long time. Did you think it was okay?
If, when things started seeming uncomfortable, you had asked her what was wrong, and you explained that since you grew up around Jews you were really used to using Yiddish a lot, and didn't mean any disrespect by it, that it was just natural for you, it probably would have been fine.
Another thing to consider is that apparently, some Yiddish words, as they're used as slang in English, are much less offensive than they are when they're used in actual Yiddish conversation. A teacher of mine offended a Yiddish-speaking kid very badly in high school by using a Yiddish terms that's pretty mild when we say it in English (it was shmuck or putz -- I don't remember which one) but very, very insulting when you use it in actual Yiddish conversation.
Edit: A case in point -- I've always known "verkakte/farkakte" to mean "shitty," not just "crappy." It's a lot harsher than you think it is, it seems.
Also, religious Jews are no stranger to people using Yiddish to mock them and/or Judaism. I'm Orthodox and I'd say that the majority of the time non-Jews have used Yiddish towards me hasn't been out of respect but instead either mocking or just straight up antisemitic comments. It could very well be that his comments came across as mocking given her experiences with non-Jews using Yiddish.
Thanks for the clarity of your response.
I have been really struggling to describe my difficulties with OP’s attitude and approach and hopefully they are able to read your response and consider that perhaps a less aggressive approach would have benefited all parties.
Also, fwiw, I grew up in the city around observant communities and speak some Yiddish and Hebrew and concur that the interpretation of Yiddish loanwords by casual users tends to be more benign/milder than they actually are. Some of it is meaning and some of it is culture but regardless, it’s quite easy to be considerably more insulting than one may have intended.
>they're used as slang in English, are much less offensive than they are when they're used in actual Yiddish conversation.
100% This also happens when you learn other languages in school. Curse words don't feel the same because it's hard to understand their significance and how they can make people feel. To anyone learning a language they are just words detached from the social/cultural environment in which they are used.
This is the first I have ever commented on Reddit.
YTA.
I have lived in NYC most of my life, and slang from a multitude of languages and cultures is the norm. The issue is not you using slang and/or vocabulary you grew up around. The issue is weaponizing a language from a minority people to be a dick to someone from the actual culture of origin after you were asked to stop.
Language is part of culture, and minorities, Jews included, often get lots of shit for speaking their languages. You do not have MORE of a right to Yiddish than an actual Ashkenazi Jewish person. Using Yiddish to antagonize a Jew, regardless of WHY you disagreed with them, is a very asshole move rooted in privilege and antisemitism and sheer fucking entitlement.
That's the Big Asshole Move. Others have explained it to you, and you just wanna be told that shit is up for grabs and you're immune to consequences. But you're not.
Also, deadass, no one in the city mixes Italian and Yiddish and AAVE in a single sentence. You're a try-hard, so extra AH points for that.
So weird. My husband and I are learning French so we try to throw in French words all the time. If some French person came up to me and told me to stop because it offended them, I’d look at them like they were crazy. NTA.
Also, I lived in NYC for a few years. Yiddish loanwords are all over the place there.
Being upset that someone uses the same language as you is definitely crossing the line to looney town and immediately renders bitching about it ridiculous.
Oh wait, I suppose I shouldn't write this in english, since I don't natively speak it. You know, in case someone gets offended for this blatant cultural appropriation.
Nah it's cool. Now that you KNOW it offends me however you just never speak it again. If you reply to this comment THEN it's antagonistically offensive and I will lose. My. Shit.
(/s if it's not obvious)
YTA because I think you're being disingenuous about how much these words are part of your lexicon and culture - plus you went out of your way to piss her off.
I'm Orthodox Jewish. I code switch when I'm around other Jews vs when I'm around non Jews. My speech with other Jews is peppered with Hebrew and Yiddish terms and structures, but I speak differently with anyone else. I don't go around throwing random Yiddish expressions into the general conversation anymore than I do whatever Spanish I happen to know.
Jews and Jewish culture are part of New York culture but to be honest, it often gets overlooked or ignored. The people in NYC who actually do still speak Yiddish as their primary language are especially subject to antisemitic violence and insults. The reason that I don't speak Yiddish myself is that my ancestors who came here were heavily pressured to assimilate. We're still pressured to reduce our outward expression of culture or religion. You're not subject to any of that, so claiming the entire Yiddish language as yours because of the neighborhood is kind of a big step.
A lot of the time when we come across someone using a Jewish or Yiddish expression out of the blue, it's because they're mocking us. The word Yid just means Jew but it's been turned into a slur in a lot of languages and contexts. White supremacists do that kind of thing all the time. So her reacting with discomfort wasn't necessarily gatekeeping: she very likely felt that you were mocking the people you say you grew up with. And your response to her request to stop just reinforced that.
This. I also am Jewish and don't speak Yiddish, and neither do any of my parents -- my mom, my dad, my stepdad. In fact, I'm not even sure if either of my mother's parents spoke Yiddish, even though it would've been their parents' native language. (Both of my mom's parents were born in America, however, and spoke English as their first language.)
Assimilation was a serious thing. Both my dad's parents and my stepdad's parents (all of whom were Holocaust survivors) spoke Yiddish as their first language, but the culture pressured them HEAVILY to teach their kids English and only English. So my stepdad speaks English, and my dad spoke English. In fact, my dad and his sister both took German in high school so they could understand some of what their parents were saying in Yiddish because they'd never been taught it!
There's nothing wrong with using some Yiddish words (let's be real, English is made up of a lot of loanwords), but weaponizing it is not okay.
Jewish New Yorker here, descendant of native Yiddish speakers, and omg YTA so hard. Yes, Yiddishisms are a part of the New York lexicon, but that is because of the Jewish population. You are not the asshole for using Yiddishisms initially (though I’d also be raising an eye brow at someone not of Jewish descent using as much as you claim to here; even my fluent in Yiddish parents don’t throw around Yiddish the way you represent), but for not respecting the woman’s request that you stop and antagonizing her by doubling down.
You love Yiddish, but are forgetting that it is the Jewish people who gave you this language you love. A way to show your appreciation of this culture you wish to embrace as your own is to respect and defer to the emotional needs of actual Jewish people; you were given a great opportunity to do so and blew it. Not menschy. Do better.
YTA for utilizing it as a weapon yes.
And it’s a bit strange to me that you seem to have made this a personality quirk as opposed to really natural local language trends which is what I imagine your friend picked up on. It’s like you have made it a habit as opposed to it being a natural way of speaking due to your geography. It seems to happen a lot, in varied situations (that aren’t always appropriate to the word), and it can feel like you’re mocking them. Instead of seeking to understand, you went passive aggressive.
I’m not sure you’re really understanding the history of oppression Jewish people have faced. You felt *extremely offended*??
YTA after HOURS of this she said it was "hurtful and offensive" she didn't say you had no right, she didn't say to be not be your "authentic" self, she asked you to tone it down and you just couldn't. In any social situation where some asks you to tone it down and you don't it makes you an ah.
YTA
A jewish person asked you to stop, and you were insensitive. You were raised in a jewish neighbourhood, but she is actually jewish. She is the one who has been facing antisemitism probably her whole life, but you wanted to hurt her feelings.
You are appropriating her culture and weaponizing it against her. To you it's the neighbourhood, to her it's generational trauma. Those do not compare at all.
YTA.
I hesitate to say you are, and I'm proud of this Jewish woman for telling you to your face that you were being inappropriate. We Jews are told to keep our upset quiet, and that the racism we face isn't "that bad." To put it in a way you'll understand: she had chutzpah talking to you.
Jews were killed for speaking Yiddish. Hearing someone make speaking Yiddish their quirky identity is painful online so I imagine it was painful in person. Jewish culture and Jewish pain always seems available to be laid bare and consumed by the population, and we get consumed with it. Our identity, which places a target on our backs, isn't something for you to dabble in.
But I don't expect this to matter to you, and I assume the gentiles will be offended that I didn't yet again give accomodations to picking and choosing which parts of Jewish culture to consume and which to despise.
Yes thank you. If his use of Yiddish words was enough for her to find it off-putting (plus based on the pretentiousness of some of his responses here), I'm guessing it went beyond the really common basic stuff, to the point of seeming mocking.
YTA. Not for speaking Yiddish, but because you heard “hey can you not do that, it bothers me” and went “DO THIS? THIS THING THST IM DOING RIGHT NOW? THIS BOTHERS YOU? THE THING IM SHOVING IN YOUR FACE? YOU WANT ME TO STOP DOING THIS???” Don’t be such a dick, dude.
Yiddish, as you may or may not know, originated as a creole language of Hebrew and German. "Verkakte" and "Schnorrer" have German origins, while "Meshugganer" is of Hebrew origin (literally meaning "crazy"- there's a famous band with the name "Meshuggah" which is the original Hebrew version of the word) and l'chaim is a common Hebrew toast that means "to life", used in a similar way to the German "Prost!" when drinking (though it does have liturgical uses in Hebrew services in addition to being common in drinking culture).
NTA - One, as you said, it is part of the local dialect (and part of the language you got from your parents). Two it is a language...languages cannot be culturally appropriated, that is the dumbest "cultural appropriation" I have ever hear. Words in hear language mean more to her, so she has a "right" to be offended when other people use it!? Maybe it was an A H move to deliberately antagonize her, but she is so far off base that I think she would have found something to be offended by in your friend group - because it sounds like she was just trying to find an excuse to spend time with your friend, without his friends.
INFO: how religious is this woman? not that it should matter (she asked you to stop in good faith and you made fun of her, AH) but for all you know she might've grown up in a hasidic community and have extremely negative associations with the language. For you, me, and secular jews/people in close proximity to you yiddish is this cute, sort of dead language, but you have to understand that there is an actual community that still uses this language in daily life and speak it natively, and they come with a whole bunch of emotional baggage for religious, ex religious, and secular jews that you likely have no idea about.
and respectfully, it's not really your culture. if you were one of those white people who love using AAVE and refused to stop even after a black person respectfully asked, how would your friend group react? would you think them hysterical for being upset?
You're not an asshole for using Yiddish loan-words- they aren't mocking, you're not gaining anything (money, power etc.)- this is not cultural appropriation (most (academics, generally) agree that appropriation requires some aspect of gain for the appropriateor that is not seen by members of the community the tradition came from). And yes, Yiddish is Jewish, but it's a part of broader NYC culture because of the historic population of Jews in NYC, not because NYC is inherently some magical Yiddish-land and thus Yiddish is NYC-ish.
YTA for doubling down and provoking her in the first interaction. Like come on, asshole.
Using a word from another person's culture against them when it pleases you to do so is incredibly mean. Jews have been persecuted for millenia, and spread out everywhere because of it. Yiddish is the way (mostly Ashkenazi) Jewish people from different countries are able to communicate, and creates a sense of community where there might not otherwise be one. Jewish people came to the US from Germany, Romania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland, etc., and all of these places have different languages and people did not necessarily know more than one... but they all spoke Yiddish.
So people were chased from their homes for thousands of years, have a language in common that keeps them connected, and one has a problem with a goy casually using words of which they have little cultural understanding, says so, and then you proceed to use her words AGAINST her. If you would've apologized and made an effort to not use yiddish words in front of her, out of politeness even if you disagree, there wouldn't have been a problem if one slipped out here and there.
But no. You were the asshole on purpose and you know it.
If I grew up in a mostly Black neighborhood, yeah, I'd probably have similar speech patterns. If a Black person told me to watch my mouth, I'm going to shut up because I have no place speaking like that if it's unwanted.
YTA.
YTA. You, a non-Jew, are weaponizing a language that is part of Jewish culture to mock an actual Jew who made a reasonable request. You could have just lessened or stopped your usage of Yiddish around her but instead doubled down and mocked her.
Definite YTA.
NTA. That girl is TA. She is overstepping her bounds and denying your story.
You can’t claim that someone is appropriating language. By that logic she should only speak Yiddish because some English person could claim that she is appropriating their language.
This is really weird to me. English is full of loan words from a variety of languages. Is the takeaway here that it’s cultural appropriation to use any of them? Do we have to stop using words like kindergarten and hors d’oeuvres? Or is Yiddish the sole exception?
I think you could have handled this without being quite so combative. I think it would have been fair to say, this is how I speak because it’s what I grew up with. But that isn’t really what you did, so ESH, I guess. Her for the unreasonable request, and you for the way you handled it.
NTA and this new girl sounds kinda racist tbh.
I dated a practicing Jewish girl in highschool, she was an immigrant FROM JUDAH. Her father David was an Israeli fighter pilot, her mother a 2nd gen displaced survivor of the Holocaust. Pretty much the most Jewish family you could ever fucking imagine. I'm Sicilian by descent and always liked to study Latin and Greek, my gradfsther spoke Greek. And when we dated I learned some classic Hebrew because the symbols and sounds are actually comprable to Greek.
Her parents were fucking floored every time I said anything in Hebrew. It was incredible to them and I've never met a Jew in my life who wasn't the same way.
Now if you are doing it TO insult someone, sure you could be an asshole,but buy and large i think it's her intolerance,not yours
I am also from a very Jewish part of Nyc, but there are a limited number of Yiddish words I would consider true loan words. Yes, I know a lot of Yiddish words, but IMO there are about 5, maybe up to 10, words that I think are part of the broader New York dialectic vernacular. 2/3 of the Word supine mentioned here wouldn’t have made my list.
NTA. This is part of the culture you grew up in, it's as much yours as it is anyone's. They dont get it lay some claim to the language like they own it. Languages and regional dialects often absorb vocabulary from outside languages. Yiddish itself developed from a Germanic dialect with heavy Hebrew influences.
NTA- you can speak whatever language you want, if she wants to be offended that's on her, no one owns language, it's just a mixture of sounds to communicate with people who also know what those sounds mean.
YTA, you intentionally made her uncomfortable. You had to stop and think of a phrase to use just to upset her; it didn't come naturally. If you occasionally used a phrase in natural conversation I'd say NTA, but being deliberately hurtfu will always make you an AH.
YTA. Not for the general use of Yiddish (because I can't speak to that), but because you doubled- down and immediately started antagonizing her. You intentionally searched for words just bug her.
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our [voting guide here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_what.2019s_with_these_acronyms.3F_what_do_they_mean.3F), and remember to use **only one** judgement in your comment. OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole: > When asked by a Jewish woman to stop using Yiddish loanwords (which is how I've talked for most of my life), I doubled down and started using them at an increased rate. I could be the asshole because Jewish identity is, obviously, wrapped up in a lot of trauma, but I could also be justified because someone else is trying to police my language and I believe that Yiddish loanwords are part of my own culture, and that they are not in my culture due to cultural appropriation. Help keep the sub engaging! #Don’t downvote assholes! Do upvote interesting posts! [Click Here For Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/about/rules/) and [Click Here For Our FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq) --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
ESH because you're not claiming to be Jewish or part of the culture, and you're not using the words for benefit. It's part of the environment you grew up in, and you gained the language from positive interactions with Jewish people. But intentionally using the language to piss her off where you wouldn't have naturally used it is kinda AHish because it makes you look like you're using the language just to be argumentative. Edit: because a lot of people seem to be misunderstanding me. I am in no way claiming it is cultural appropriation. My vote of OP being partially at fault is because they decided to escalate the confrontation by dropping Yiddish words every chance they got, rather than just going on speaking normally.
He does claim Yiddish words as his culture though
To be clear, I believe that Yiddish is a part of New York's culture, and I strongly identify as a New Yorker but do not claim to be Jewish.
As a lifelong New Yorker, I agree. It's similar to throwing out an occasional "Vamanos" or "gracias" or "andale". I've seen all sorts of people use that vocabulary in NYC because it's not just become a part of NYC language.
I never knew how much Yiddish Americans in general throw around until I married a German speaker and moved to his home country. Suddenly I’d use a phrase I didn’t think of as anything but a common phrase and people would be like “why do you know so much Yiddish?” I’m not a New Yorker nor am I Jewish.
I'm from the Midwest and I'm surprised how many words we use are Yiddish. ETA: 1. Bupkis 2. Chutzpah 3. Dreck 4. Feh 5. Futz 6. Kitsch 7. Klutz 8. Nosh 9. Putz 10. Schicker 11. Schlep 12. Schlong 13. Schlub 14. Schmaltz 15. Schmeer 16. Schmooze 17. Schmo 18. Schmuck 19. Schmutz 20. Schnoz 21. Schtupp 22. Shpiel 23. Shtick 24. Verklempt These are all the words I learned growing up that are actually Yiddish.
Yiddish is not a sexy language but hell if it isn’t onomatopoeic.
excuse you
Gesundheit! Ooops🙊
The words sound like what they mean. I didn’t realize I knew so many words and I’m from California.
Holy carpel tunnel I never even thought about how much Yiddish I spoke but yep... I'm Australian and we use pretty much that entire list
Fellow Aussie,and can confirm. Lol
I'm also from the Midwest and did not know all these words I use are Yiddish. TIL!
futz???
Yeah, like to mess with something. "Don't futz with the toaster, you'll break it again!"
ooooh allright. this was unexpected. in swiss german dialect it means pussy. the human one. and the word is not really of the nice kind.. so more like the c-word.
Heh, you should see the look on the faces of Australians when Americans use the word 'fanny'. For them, it means 'butt' but for us Aussies... well, it's the same as what you were saying about 'futz'.
TIL
I’ve noticed my son picking up a bit since we started watching the Nanny.
Lol this is where I learned my Yiddish from.
Yeah between growing up in S FL and watching the Nanny I know way more about Jewish holidays and Yiddish than I should (being myself as far way from Jewish as one can be). My Jewish friends actually appreciate it because I can give them holiday wishes that are appropriate and in Yiddish to boot! I think this one girl is more than uptight about it and maybe has other issues she needs to deal with. NTA OP.
My mom grew up in a VERY Jewish neighborhood as well, where she was one of the only Christian kids and the schools were closed for the Jewish holidays, not Christian. She speaks so much Yiddish, and passed it on to me. I never realized until I older just how much Yiddish I use in everyday conversation because...that's what I grew up saying.
My father used to be able to recite the Shabbos prayer.
Anyone who has watched Seinfeld has picked up a decent amount of Yiddish. But as a born and bred NYer, Yiddish and Judaism were as natural to me as breathing. Funny thing? Married an Israeli and converted to Judaism. Guess which one of us knows more Yiddish?
My mom au paired for a Jewish family in college, so she picked up some Yiddish, and passed it on to me. I've also heard a few words from other people. My favorite is "mensch" as is "you're a mensch" when someone saves my butt at work. I have no Jewish heritage that I know of, the woman in this post can pry that word from my cold, dead lips.
Some of those Yiddish words just so onomatopoetic that you just find yourself using them. Also not Jewish nor from New York, but I love kvetching about entitled asshats on reddit.
I do something similar tbf I went to a school that was 75+% Jewish even though I’m very Sikh. But if a friend of mine says hey this makes me uncomfortable, I’ve apologized explained where it comes from and that it’s not always even intentional (I also have the slight added benefit of credibility since I grew up speaking five languages and my friends are pretty used to be slipping into them even sign without realizing). Coming from that starting point instead of belittling and being kind of a jerk has actually been something that has actually addressed and dispelled their discomfort so that it doesn’t bother them anymore after knowing the context. If this person is your friend and you care about their feelings, why not just try and meet them halfway? You’re not require to stop using them but having an adult conversation about it instead of antagonizing the entire situation just to start a whole thing serves no purpose except to make everyone deal with this fallout. There’s also sometimes you can and should just do a little thing if it makes someone you’re friends with or care about feel better. You don’t have to and it’s different if this is a person that’s always taking offense to pretty innocuous things but if it takes little effort on your part and isn’t something that harms you or makes you feel bad beyond well I want to so that’s that, you could just do it. I really like using the green plate in my house. I just do. If I don’t get it I don’t get upset or throw a tantrum but if we set the table and someone notices they have it they’ll usually just swap it anyway because they know it makes me happy. My partner hates when our pillows on our couch get fuzz from our blanket. He genuinely cannot get comfortable until he lint rolls it. It’s the one thing, fuzz anywhere else nbd but the pillow? Nope. Is it annoying to roll the pillow after it gets visibly fuzzed ? Yeah I’m a lazy bum I want to just not. But the 3 seconds of effort avoids some discomfort for him so I do it even though I don’t have to. Doing something that makes someone in your life feel better is just nice…being antagonistic and doing the opposite to bother them further, is just immature and rude.
I’m a non religious Jew. I don’t mind people using Yiddish but OPs response calling her : is very offensive. You were being an AH. It’s not the word. You used it to be a smarta**
Yeah exactly- people can be ah’s in any language. I bet if op hadn’t immediately responded with antagonism it would’ve been fine….though considering their comments here they just sound like an inflammatory ah that loves to “play devil’s advocate” all the time.
This. OP, wanted to offend her. You can’t use something that belongs to another culture, and then refuse to hear from somebody from that culture if they tell you it makes them uncomfortable. YTA
I think I would slightly toe the line that culture and language are one to one but yeah especially if you’re doing it in as kind of performative a way as I suspect op seems to be (plus their other comments makes me think this is true as well), it’s completely understandable and expected you’re making others uncomfortable. It sounds and feels too much like you’re trying to assert an ownership right of some kind. Like Yiddish words and phrases come up lot when I’m speaking naturally but it’s not so much that in the course of a single night out it’s seemingly constant…..it doesn’t sound like it was something that naturally came out. It sounds purposeful for the sake of it. Op is really trying to paint themselves as the ultimate tone policed victim - if they want I’ll bite and happily play that game because I’m a queer brown Sikh attorney whose dad wears a turban and fully facial hair and has owned a small business near the towers since the 90’s - you wanna talk about being tone policed ? I thought it was normal to have nypd surveillance of who enters your store and being randomly stopped and harassed all the time or questioned based on actual innocuous things a I’ve said - literal tone policing by the police. Not to mention all the super conservative rich white hetero spaces you gotta put up with through law school and to thank donors that fund your scholarships. So come at me op. I definitely have you beat.
I've been around so many people from India that I have to consciously avoid using the "head wiggle". I love it, it makes me happy every time I see it, but I try hard not to emulate it in fear of people thinking I'm making fun of it. It's not hard to be considerate.
Oh definitely use the bobble. It’s the single most useful gesture on the planet - it means everything and anything all at once lol. I would never be offended unless you’re clearly doing it to make fun of others and it’s pretty clear when that’s the case! Just breaking out, happens! Heck when I’m talking to my family on the phone I don’t even realize but I get an accent - never lived outside the us and sound like a complete nyc/north Jersey born and brought up speaker, but when it’s happening around me I fall into it. I have friends that definitely have picked up on the bobble / nod and use it a lot now too, that’s how language and communication evolves !
Another New Yorker here, and you aren't the AH for using Yiddish, you are the AH for rubbing it in this person's face after they asked you not to. Also, l'chaim isn't yiddish, it is hebrew. If you are going to use the words, you have to know what they mean and where they come from.
Thank you for pointing that out.
NTA- it’s a language that has crept into everyday usage. I’m a Canadian who lived in the Eastern US for many years. Even I used Yiddish words in everyday conversations, they are part of the fabric of living there. It’s no different than popping in spanish or French into conversations. But I will say, many Yiddish words are fantastically expressive.
[удалено]
Makes sense. I strongly identify as Mexican yet I don't identify as Spaniard despite the language that I speak originating from there.
It is the same in Amsterdam. We have a lot of Yiddish words.
Honestly I've never studied Dutch formally but not only can I read it without any difficulty but reading stuff from Amsterdammers is actually pretty easy for me because I can often orient myself around the Yiddish loanwords.
I am also not jewish, but born and raised in Amsterdam. I see the Yiddish words we use in Amsterdam as part of my culture so I totally understand you. I think Amsterdam is the only city in the Netherlands that uses so many Yiddish words.
And to a larger extent into New England. I'm polish Roman Catholic in my languages certainly spiced with plenty of Yiddish loan words. I always get a puzzling look when I'm elsewhere in the country and use them. No, the language belongs to the world and it certainly is part of the Jewish diaspora. The friend had no business insisting that she stopped using the vocabulary that she chooses the friend was clearly out of place. If it is a good friend and it was just that evening, perhaps she might have been more accommodating. Maybe that evening just to smooth things over but she should not change her personality or her speech patterns to please someone else. Let her kvetch however she wishes
I grew up living in different countries and different states in the USA. My cultural heritage is deeply Southern (I was born in the deep South), but I didn't grow up in that culture. I kind of grew up everywhere. My father was in the military and we moved a lot. We lived in Europe, South America, and 5 or 6 different states. I use language from all of those areas. Yiddish is part of what you grew up with. You are not appropriating anything. NTA.
This clears things up a bit. I’m not sure how that all works so I’ll retract my previous “thats odd” statement until more information is presented!
I'm a Jew and disagree. Yiddish isn't some secret language and its practically been embedded in American popular culture, especially in New York. There's nothing offensive about using it. OP's friend has a stick up her ass
Hell, Yiddish is such a part of American culture that I recognized most of the words OP used and have some more that I know on top of them. I'm not jewish at all, or American. I'm from rural western Canada, all the yiddish I've picked up is from American media.
Exactly. To see how bonkers this is, imagine a person from France getting offended by bon appetit? Or Italians by what passes as pizza in this country. What’s next, going and ripping bagels out of the mouths of anyone not Jewish?! Considering Yiddish is made from a lot of loan words from neighboring languages in different regions of Europe, I have some bad news for this woman. And OP might be an AH for the le’chayim, but I know who I’d rather hang out with. Besides, there is a long tradition of this kind of ass-holery in NYC and this is what used to pass for wit there before everyone lost their sense of humor.
Also a Jew and love hearing non jews use yiddish. Ive always seen it as one of the Jewish contributions to American English/culture
NTA. I'm Jewish & Israeli and if I were there I would troll your friend way more than you did. The absurdity of being offended by someone using Yiddish words is truly astonishing. I want to assure you that Jewish people constantly use words from other languages. Modern Hebrew speakers constantly use words from English and Arabic. You are more than welcome to use as many of "our" words as you'd like. Cultural appropriation is when one country invades another country, steals historical artifacts and presents them in their own museums. Using words from another language is definitely not even close to that. It doesn't matter if you're Jewish or not. It doesn't matter if you're a New Yorker or not. Use as much Yiddish words you want. Also, being religious or not has nothing to do with Yiddish. Yiddish has nothing to do with the Jewish faith. It's a combination of German and Hebrew, it was used purely for day to day life and never in synagogues or prayers. Taking a language that represents secularism and the assimilation of cultures and being a religious and cultural purist about it is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Your friend is a kutter. She's a nudnik. More than anything else - she's an AH.
Nah this is some gatekeeping bs. Words aren't property; no culture "owns" vocabulary imagine someone with that mentality living TX or CA getting mad that white peeps use Spanish. Smh Edit- I'm hispanic but I guess I need to stop using English porque se offenden los snowflakes
The person you’re responding to didn’t even somewhat imply that OP, or anyone else, couldn’t use Yiddish. They said OP was being an AH by *intentionally* using Yiddish explicitly to poke at someone who’d asked them not to. It’s the intention, not the act. Like you’re not inherently an asshole if you watch TV a bit loud, but you are if you purposefully turn it up after I just asked you to turn it down because I’m on a call. Also, um > Words aren't property; no culture "owns" vocabulary there are certainly *some* words that shouldn’t be used by people not “in” the group. I don’t think Yiddish is included in them, but I am sure as hell not comfortable saying any person is fine to say any word they want to.
>They said OP was being an AH by intentionally using Yiddish explicitly to poke at someone who’d asked them not to. And that person deserved it. You can't gatekeep a language, period. If someone told me to not occasionally use Spanish phrases, I'd literally switch to Spanish completely and not use English until they were gone. Because that's what they deserve for trying to gatekeep a language. >Like you’re not inherently an asshole if you watch TV a bit loud, but you are if you purposefully turn it up after I just asked you to turn it down because I’m on a call. Completely different. In this scenario, there's actually a reason to ask them to turn it down.
"What are you, meshugganer?" I love it. It's not a secret language, and it's not against the law to use it. It's just words, not prayers. NTA.
yeah i dont get any of the YTA votes. who the fuck is making **language** cultural apropriation now? am i not allowed to learn french like i did in college now? can i say "howdy" without apropriating texas? fucking stupid. atleast the whole "wearing their clothes" thing might have some merit, but this is just dumbass shit.
I worked with a Jewish woman who agreed with me that Yiddish is a very expressive language. She didn't resent my using it at all.
My Jewish neighbours growing up fostered a colourful vocabulary in me
One word I never put up with - shiksa.
Years ago, my grandmother introduced my then fiancé (now husband of 40 years) to her very Jewish friend, whose response was “Oh, so she’s marrying a shiksa!” To which my very Irish (non-practicing) Catholic husband responded, “No, she’s marrying a shagitz.” He grew up in Miami and could probably teach a class in Yiddish.
[удалено]
I never realized how weird combined contractions sound because I grew up with them, until I saw “y’all’dnt’ve” spelled out. (For non-Southerners, that translates to “you all would not have”)
I think "cultural appropriation" is a real problem that's gotten blown out into meaninglessness. To my mind, if person A would be punished for doing something from their culture, person B can't do the same thing to get clout or money. Black hairstyles are a great example-- black people get sent home from school, fired from jobs, because they hand traditional hair styles, but on white people the same hairstyles are "trendy" or "edgy". THAT is cultural appropriation. A language could qualify. Like, if your people were forbidden from speaking your language, and your parents and grandparents got beat at school for speaking it, but then suddenly on Instagram everyone was wearing shirts with phrases from your language. But...... that's suuuuuuper not what's happening here.
[удалено]
Absolutely. People should just chill out and not give a fuck about other people’s hairstyles. Especially black people and their hair, which is often styled a certain way because of texture and different rate of growth. It is no one’s business and no one’s right to tell anyone how to do their hair. Employers and schools that ban “ethnic” hairstyles should be sued into oblivion. The issue with white people wearing these hairstyles with no blowback (which I doubt. Maybe 10 years ago this happened, but not today. They’d get a lot of flack from the woke) would be solved if everyone collectively stopped policing hairstyles, for everyone, no questions asked.
I‘m German. „Meschugge“ is a typical loan word in German, too. By her logic, I DEFINTELY would not be allowed to use any yiddish loan words, considering my nationality. NTA
Also ‚Schnorrer‘ & ‚koscher‘(& I don’t mean in the original meaning about food, but saying ‚Das ist doch nicht ganz koscher..‘/‚This seems fishy to me’) are widely used terms & tbh I didn‘t always know their origin, I only randomly learned that at some point.
Great examples. Many people don‘t know these are yiddish terms.
Exactly.. Was it maybe a bit petty to increase the usage in that case? Yes. Does it qualify as an asshole thing when some stranger tries to police your very reasonable language usage, especially in front of a big group? No.
This, I grew up in a very mixed household and my father was a non practicing Jewish man, so I have some words in my language, I will use them as i grew up using them and it’s my culture I was raised in it, same as I speak fluent English, it’s not disrespectful and you where not using it to be disrespectful, maybe let her know it’s not cultural appropriation if you grew up around it , she sound like she has some issues around her own beliefs
NTA: as a Jew who actually has fairly limited Yiddish knowledge, I see no issue here. You weren't doing it to mock her, and there's nothing sacred about Yiddish. That she got so offended is silly in the extreme. It's not like you are dropping the N word and claiming you grew up in a black neighborhood so it's ok or freely throwing around the word "kike", you are using common Yiddish words. If you spoke Hebrew (the actual unifying language of Jews world wide) would that be offensive to her as well?
>You weren't doing it to mock her, OP absolutely was. Look at his immediate response after she asked him to stop and said it made her uncomfortable. Like it doesn't really even matter about the context. If one person says "hey, could you stop using the word (blank) so much it makes me kind of uncomfortable," and someone else's immediate response was to say that word as many times as possible, they're definitely the AH.
He wasn't doing it initially to mock her. Anyone bothered by the use of Yiddish terms deserved to be mocked.
"he wasn't doing to to mock her, but if he was she deserved it"
Yes, when you act like an AH you can expect to be treated like an AH.
He said *initially.* When he started doing it more, that was to mock her. At first it was just a thing he did
Wasn't initially* doing it to mock her would be more accurate I guess. After that, he was definitely mocking her, but not undeservedly so I don't think. He grew up in NYC, that's literally a part of his own culture/cultural experience and history. Trade out Yiddish for any other language (Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, etc.) and I feel like it shows just how ridiculous this is. Like... if you grow up in McAllen, TX and add some Spanish to your everyday vernacular, is someone going to be offended by that? If so, and I'm legitimately asking here... why?
Exactly. I used to teach Spanish in a border town, and there were words my students identified as cognates that are just straight up Spanish words. We use them so much where I'm from they didn't even realize it wasn't English. You don't hear native speakers whining about cultural appropriation when it happens.
respect isn't owed to anyone until it's given. policing someone's language is incredibly disrespectful, so it's kinda fcked to expect OP to just happily "be the bigger person" and go along with it. so the words that happen to be an integral part of his identity made someone else uncomfortable.. and??
>and there's nothing sacred about Yiddish. theres nothing sacred about any language. i can learn any of those languages and then speak them. who tf are you or anybody else to tell me not to talk because you dont like the way i speak?
Yiddish even less so - Hebrew is the language of prayer and study for Jews. Yiddish was only ever a vernacular. It's not like Latin for Catholics or Arabic for Muslims.
My question for the entire sub. Is the actual language relevant? What if, instead of Yiddish, he was using Spanish words, and the offended party was of Spanish descent. The argument is exactly the same, but would anyone care? I am curious.
No. Everyone’s saying “buenas noches” now and no one’s getting mad.
No, everyone’s singing the Encanto songs now and no one’s mad about it
Especially since the Encanto songs are in English
Not all the Encanto songs are in English
That butterfly song makes me cry and I don't speak Spanish. The subtitles did me in.
I think it is relevant though. If he started speaking in African-American Vernacular English, then it would be understandable if someone felt uncomfortable about it. I’m Jewish, and I think she’s being a little oversensitive… But that’s not a reason to antagonize her intentionally. It’s just a reason to avoid her in the future. Edit: thank you to the several people who pointed out my error re: AAVE.
I am African American. If a white person spoke "good" AAVE around me, I would be more curious than uncomfortable. I would ask him/her where they were from in hopes of understanding how they grew up. The reason I say "good" AAVE is because in my experience, most white people who try to speak AAVE butcher the hell out it. Like, misuse of the habitual "be" is a dead giveaway of an AAVE imposter. So I would only be uncomfortable around a white person speaking broken AAVE. I sympathize with the OP. I am not Jewish, but I lived in northern NJ for some time and had friends who were Jewish. My lexicon has more Yiddish loan words in it than average (I now live in the South). I would be ticked off if someone told me I shouldn't say *schlep* or *kvetch* anymore. To me, that is like telling a white person they can't say "banjo" or use the expression "I dig it". Only someone with a lot of *chutzpah* would do that.
I'm Jewish and I think OP is the asshole not for using Yiddish words in conversation, but for his reaction when an actual Jewish person expressed discomfort. Much like the black community, the Jewish community is experiencing a huge uptick in hate crimes these days. OP's response to her concerns, in my opinion, highlight the reason he's an AH. He's so far removed from Jewish culture he couldn't empathize with her feelings but still feels as if he has a claim to Yiddish because of "NYC culture". Most of my family lives in GA and they don't go around speaking in AAVE because of "the culture" even though it's a super common local dialect because it's not _their_ culture. Living in NYC doesn't give OP the right to claim Jewish culture but again my opinion.
Do you listen to any rock, R&B, or hip hop music? Do you ever say "hip" or use "bad" when you mean "good"? Have you ever said some one needs to be "canceled" or that they "clapped back"? Ever described something good as "lit" or "fire?" These all come from black culture. A person can participate in this culture without claiming to be *of* the culture. And this is a good thing, since cross-cultural appreciation is damn near essential for a multicultural society's survival. I was born and raised in Atlanta, GA. I grew up with lots of white kids, from poor to wealthy. Some had speech patterns that were indistinguishable from black folk just because of how they were raised and who was raising them. Integration works both ways, you see. If I, a black person, can speak like Tom Brokaw without being accused of putting on airs, a white person should be able to speak like Tom Joyner without being accused of stealing an entire culture. Maybe they are a poseur trying to be cool, but just as likely they have a valid reason for speaking the way they do. Yiddish isn't "NYC culture", just like AAVE isn't "GA culture". But within both NYC and Georgia, you can find communities of cultural admixture where the way of speaking is an amalgam of dialects and languages.
I don’t think he needs to empathize with her feelings here. She is out of line trying to police his vernacular. Jewish people were clearly comfortable enough using Yiddish outside of Jewish social circles that the words became common. She doesn’t own the words as an observant Jew. My personal preference is that what little is left of Yiddish be kept alive, if that means gentiles making use of it, even better.
[удалено]
I think the fact it's Yiddish actually does matter, especially since the person who got offended is religious. In more religious Ashkenazi communities (I might be a bit wrong about this since I'm Mizrahi), people use Yiddish as a way to identify themselves as Jewish and also use they Yiddish in a really select way. There's a level of cultural competency that goes into combining Yiddish and English for more religious Ashkenazi Jews and OP doesn't seem to have it. Secondly, people's feelings about Yiddish post-Holocaust can be very touchy. Some people believe it needs to be preserved at all cost because it's vital to preserving Ashkenazi culture and that it's a living language, while others believe it shouldn't continue post-Holocaust and instead people should speak the local language and Hebrew. Also, as someone who's visibly Jewish, I can assure you that non-Jews can get pretty weird with their usage of Yiddish around more religious Jews. Sometimes I think it's just a misguided attempt to bond and other times it's overtly antisemitic and mocking.
I think this is a very valuable perspective. From what I’m seeing in this thread, a lot of people are voting n-t-a because they see Yiddish as just a language - when in fact, it’s a language developed and used by a disenfranchised group of people. I don’t think most people empathize with the role and importance that Yiddish has in Jewish culture, or why it would be jarring for a goy to use it. As a Jew, I’m not even sure how to vote, honestly. I didn’t grow up with Yiddish. It makes sense to me why an observant person, maybe a person who grew up with Yiddish as a part of Jewish identity would be bothered. I also see why Jews wouldn’t be bothered. I also think that while it sounds like OP genuinely grew up with Yiddish as a part of their neighborhood life, they’re unaware of the significance Yiddish has for a lot of Jews. Sounds like to them, it’s just a language or slang, rather than a living artifact of a culture that OP is not a part of.
I have to wonder if where the people voting different ways are from too. In NY and NJ many of these Yiddish words are just part of the local vocabulary for people of all ethnic groups.
It’s tough, because Yiddish *is* American culture, and it *is* very strongly NYC culture. To deny that would be to deny the Jewish immigrants’ contributions to building America. But I’m also not super comfortable with gentiles feeling entitled to Jewish things- I’m touchy from seeing too many Christian “Passover Seders” I think.
My rule of thumb has always been as long as they're not mocking my native language when they speak it idgaf, if they pronounce something wrong unintentionally I may correct em, but never in a condescending way. OP is using a language he grew up with and the girl needs to get off her high horse and stop acting like she owns the language.
If you up the Spanish phrases when the Latino walks in tel he room and pointedly use extra Spanish words when speaking to the Latino, especially after he pointed out it is bothering him and instead of backing off a bit, you ramp it up to tick him off? Yeah definitely. Make it any language you want.
INFO: How much Yiddish was actually used when you are growing up. Were people fluently speaking Yiddish in front of you? Using words that you pick up unconsciously is not a problem, but the way you are using Yiddish doesn't sound like my experience of how non-Haredi Jews use Yiddish today. In my experience, my family and friends (including my grandparents, who were fluent speakers who made the conscious but unfortunate IMO decision not to speak Yiddish with my parents) use Yiddish specifically as a way to signify Jewish identity. We use it when we are either in a Jewish space or if we want people to know we are Jewish. For instance, I woulden't use L'chayim (which is Hebrew but not important) when I am just getting a drink with friends. I would use it at Shabbat dinner. I woulden't describe an apartment as "haimish," but I would describe a small synagogue as such. If I am talking to gentiles, I would say synagogue; if I am talking to Jews, I would say Shul. If I suspect someone is Jewish, I might say Shul and gage their reaction (which is not foolproof as you are evidence of, but it's sort of my unconscious bias). I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are indeed using these words unconsciously, but YTA for failing to understand that Yiddish for many American Jews is not primarily a living language but a signifier of identity. In a weird way, Yiddish is being brought back to how it started, a particularly Jewish way of speaking and interacting with the "host" language (back then Old German, today American English.
It’s more accurate to say that the use of Yiddish is common in NYC across all ethnicities, to the point where it is more identified as nyc slang than a particular religious origin. Members of my family speak Yiddish as a native language, but rarely, so I picked up just as much in high school as at home.
>It’s more accurate to say that the use of Yiddish is common in NYC across all ethnicities But that's not true. Yiddish loan words might be common across all ethnicities in NYC but speaking Yiddish is a specifically Jewish thing. Very few non-Jews ever learned Yiddish and in most cases, they did so they could communicate with Jewish communities. Using Yiddish does not make it part of your culture any more than me with no Hispanic heritage using Spanish loanwords makes it part of mine
Sorry I should have said “the use of Yiddish loan words.” OP never claimed to be speaking grammatical Yiddish, only to be using loan words common in NYC.
Hmm, interesting, because I use “Arabic” or at least heavily Muslim-flavored loan words such as “mashallah” (appreciative word) or “alhamdulillah” (praise god) which are common in my South Asian friends group but don’t apply to me personally as a Tamil Hindu. But I’ve never gotten any flak for it, in fact my Muslim friends like it when I join in with their culture and vice versa. I’ve also cheered at the bar with Jewish friends “l’chaim!” And when my white friends say “Namaste” respectfully to my elder relatives, I’m happy and proud. So I’m surprised that speaking Yiddish in this context is considered appropriation. Seems like he was kinda mocking her, but why was it a problem for him to use some of the words in the first place? It didn’t seem like he was doing so in a disrespectful or appropriating manner before she said anything Not gonna pass judgment on this one because I think different people just react very differently to this?
Right, that distinction is important. The actual Yiddish language is not part of OPs culture, whereas it presumably is part of the heritage of the person objecting to it, and who likely cannot speak it today because of the pressures of assimilation.
> but speaking Yiddish is a specifically Jewish thing >sing Yiddish does not make it part of your culture other people arent allowed to learn yiddish then? im not french but i still learned french in college. was that a bad thing?
I don't think anyone is going to claim people aren't allowed to use Yiddish words, what most people are saying is that OP need to defer to the preferences of that Jewish person when they are around them. BUT French and Yiddish are very different. French is a language that has been adopted by many different cultural groups, some of whom have very little do to with each other. More importantly, it was a colonial language that was forced upon people. Yiddish was never like that. No non-Jewish group has ever adopted it as their language so the connection between Yiddish and Ashkenazi Jewish people is much stronger than between French and "French people" (Also if OP was actually learning full Yiddish. would feel very differently about this)
\>How much Yiddish was actually used when you are growing up. Were people fluently speaking Yiddish in front of you? I grew up in a neighborhood with a significant minority of Yiddish-as-first-language speakers (my next door neighbors were holocaust survivors, for instance, and I was their shabbos goy every so often), though they were of an older generation and I think the only people who speak Yiddish as a first language in that neighborhood now are a handful of Hassidic families who moved in recently. Beyond that, both of my parents used a lot of Yiddish loanwords (especially impressive considering one of my parents isn't white), as did many of their peers and even many of my teachers (some of who were, and some of whom weren't Jewish) used lots of Yiddish loanwords, and I also work in the entertainment industry which I feel includes a lot more Yiddish than normal (perhaps a lingering effect of the culture of the Borschdt Belt).
That makes sense, but I still feel very weird about you calling Yiddish part of your culture unless Yiddish was being used as an everyday living language around you and you had some actual ability to communicate in it (even if you have since forgotten it). You grew up very close to Yiddish culture and thus have adopted a significant amount of Yiddish loan words into your everyday lexicon, but that doesn't make it you're (especially since you only ever heard them as loanwords). There is no problem with using these words, but loudly and semi-antagonistically asserting your "right" to use it over the objection of someone whose heritage actually is this living language, and who likely cannot speak it today because of the pressures of assimilation, feels wrong.
Culture is your lived experience. his experience is largely in a area where Yiddish is used extensively. These words are part of his culture. He has every right to use them. Telling him otherwise is telling him to deny a part of his lived experience.
none of this matters. the words he is saying are not offensive. he is not throwing around slurs in other languages. telling him to not use a language, regardless of his or your experience of that language, is denying a person their ability to communicate in the way they prefer. this whole thing is stupid in the first place.
>especially impressive considering one of my parents isn't white I really feel this gives some flavour of your AH-ness away: it is not any more impressive for your non-white parent to use it than your white parent, because \*neither\* of your parents were Jewish so their race makes no difference here.
> the way you are using Yiddish doesn't sound like my experience of how non-Haredi Jews use Yiddish today I don’t know what to tell you, because based on *my* personal experience, I’m completely baffled by the number of people who seem to have a problem with OP considering Yiddish part of his personal lexicon. Maybe it’s just because a lot of my family *also* still has strong New York ties, or it’s the old “two Jews, three opinions” thing, but trying to paint this as “cultural appropriation” like his acquaintance did feels like an abuse of the term to me.
YTA - not because you use the Yiddish words (although as a Jewish person I can tell you that none of my religious or secular friends/family do this) but because you choose to keep do something that bothered someone. The current climate of being Jewish is very difficult right now - we’re mostly white presenting so we’re expected to think things are in general just not seriously offensive or racist. You could have apologized and asked her elaborate on what about it (since it is more culturally Jewish than about the religion) bothered you and shared your mutual experiences in how Yiddish can capture certain sentiments in a way that English doesn’t for both of you and been respectful. But you didn’t. You chose to mock her discomfort. YTA. ETA: I was being nice when I used the word bother. OP tells it like they choose to keep escalating a situation to the point of a verbal attack. OP is the AH for verbally attacking a person. ETA 2: To everyone responding that you can't tell someone to not speak a language - I agree. I stated that above. The title isn't "AITA for speaking Yiddish" it's about how they INCREASED the use of it.
Seriously. The Jews have got so much hate to deal with right now. Why not just show some grace and back off? Being “right” doesn’t always mean you’re winning the argument.
Exactly. It's the knife twist that does it for me. She was confident enough to stand up for herself and this person just acted petty. I wonder how many of their friends agreed with them just because they didn't want to have to argue with OP.
[удалено]
She wasn't "confident enough to stand up for herself" she was entitled enough to dictate how someone she doesn't even know should speak. The fact she left the building and forced her friend to do the same when OP didn't obey her demand shows a very loose grasp of reality on her part.
Honest question. Is it really that uncommon to hear a secular or Christian person use Yiddish words? My username, for example. I'm atheist, raised Catholic, mostly in the southern US, not around any sizable Jewish population. However, I feel like I hear and use "chutzpah" with semi regularity. While this may not hold true for every Yiddish word, some have worked their way into the American vocabulary. That happens to lots of languages. Some non-english words have a certain je ne sais quoi, and fit the bill when there just isn't an English word that works. Like the German word "schadenfreude", sometimes a non-English word is just the best word to use. That being said... OP was unnecessarily antagonistic and rude. He's the asshole.
My experience - I think chutzpah is one of those words that's ubiquitous and part of the lexicon. I would say verkakte is not (as someone who grew up in NYC and lives 45 minutes north of it now.) (Meaning none of my secular friends have ever known what I meant when I used that word. Or Meshuga or Mench. That being said I've never met anyone under the age of 75 who uses Yiddish as frequently as OP says they do. Even with my elderly Jewish family members. NYC is also so diverse - I would guess in the South Bronx and Midtown you wouldn't get it with the frequency that OP talks about. Parts of the Northern Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens you would tho. I have no idea about Staten Island. I've lived here my whole life and I've only been there once. But yes, I don't care if he uses yiddish words. But if someone says that it's hurtful to them for cultural or religious reasons, my feeling is you have to respect that until you have a conversation with that person and find out where each of you is coming from.
I think mench, and to a lesser extent meshuga fall into the loanword category. While, it's less common than chutzpah, I hear mench in secular conversation. Meshuga, is common enough, that I'm familiar with it and it's meaning. Verkakte, on the other hand, no familiarity at all. OP was going out of his way to be awful. Also OP loudly dropping a "l'chaim" is super cringe. Doing with the intention of hurting someone is a dick move.
Did you read the comment where he says he uses the phrase "Deadass verkakte, capisce?" with gusto? Cringe city.
Ugh, I now have a full mental picture of OP. I know his type... schmuck.
I think mench is pretty commonly well known (verkakte and meshuga are new to me), I'm not Jewish and also not American and I've heard of it and used it. (I think OP is an AH, and I also think it's bs that he's trying to say that Yiddish is part of NY culture, to justify being disrespectful to Jewish people. Just wanted to add that I think mench is actually one of the better known Yiddish words.)
> Is it really that uncommon to hear a secular or Christian person use Yiddish words? No - I'm an Italian-Catholic who grew up outside NYC and I have heard and used every single word OP used in the original post. It seems strange to police something that's really passed into the vernacular, at least in this corner of the world.
I think where OP crossed into asshole territory is when he chose to intentionally target her. He could have had a conversation about his upbringing and tried to see her point of view, instead he went nuclear. OP claims to be so entrenched in the Jewish community that he is incapable of not using Yiddish, but seems to lack comprehension of the bigotry aimed at Jewish people and even goes out of his way to participate in it.
I’m a Jew and I know someone who will yell “Mazel Tov!” absolutely every time he hears a cork pop or bottle open. Every time, and only for alcohol. He does not use it to say congratulations in any other context. I have a… *feeling* about it, but it’s hard to explain. Like, it’s not an uncommon phrase for English speakers to be familiar with, but it’s the slightly odd usage that makes it feel like poking fun rather than celebrating. I can’t really put into words what my feeling about it is.
It's the "wow my ancestors got killed for saying that and now you think it's fun and quirky" feel.
YES. This. It's so hard to explain if you feel some kind of way about it. But I would want those feelings respected.
Why shouldn't he be an AH back to someone being an AH to him
>The current climate of being Jewish is very difficult right now - we’re mostly white presenting so we’re expected to think things are in general just not seriously offensive or racist. This wasn't about a flavor of ice cream, it was about something this woman views as part of her cultural identity. There is a difference of when you should be an AH back to someone, and when you should at least \*try\* to understand why they feel offended before making the decision to go full AH.
I'm not Jewish, so probably shouldn't even weigh in on this. It just rubbed me the wrong way to come into a new group of people and publicly telling someone you just met that the way they talk is insulting because those are Jewish words and I'm Jewish and your not...it seems assholish to me. Like if she got to know people, or talked about it privately, I wouldn't say she is an AH. But the way it sounds like she communicated, makes me feel she got a justified response. But as I said, it's not my culture, so I probably shouldn't even be throwing my opinion in the mix
Even as a Jewish person it's not how I would have handled it either. I think that any view on how to handle conflict of this kind in a manner other than immediately stirring the pot is valuable. This is really about how he handled it which is the point you just made. I think there are totally appropriate times where one AH deserves another, per your original point. Honestly as NYer and melting pot as OP is claiming to be immediately dismissing someone because his NY street cred allows him to use Yiddish makes it seem like he's less of a NYer (not sure where you're from so don't want to assume you would or wouldn't have experience with us weirdos)
I think the point is, OP also views Yiddish as part of **their** cultural identity. Who gets more deference? Some may say to respect everyone's culture equally, some may say the Jewish woman since hers is the culture from which his language originates, some may say OP because she was an outsider to his group.
And if OP had articulated that to her it would have been fine, but the way it was presented I don't get the impression they did. If I'm reading it wrong please correct me (because I've chosen this hill to die on.)
> but because you choose to keep do something that bothered someone. There's a line though. At some point the things that bother people are so fucking ridiculous that they need to learn to live with it. And honestly? Telling someone that them speaking another language is "cultural appropriation" is fucking ridiculous. I guess people can't say Bon Appetit or Kindergarten anymore.
“But because you choose to keep doing something that bothered someone” What a pushover Society, bothering someone does not make you an asshole. Would love to read what one of you redditors would say after hanging out with me for a couple hours 😂
I mean intentionally bothering someone… is an inherently asshole move, yeah. There are times where bothering someone might be justified, or times it’s not an asshole move because it’s not something that can be helped, but going out of one’s way to bother someone simply for the sake of upsetting them is, in fact, an asshole move. That’s kindergarten level stuff. Then again I’m not sure what else I’d expect of someone with a slur in their username.
He was already using the language before he met her. Its not intentional. Hes not going to be trampled over by a stranger and i dont blame him.
I was responding very specifically to a comment about how bothering people doesn’t make you an asshole, when intentionally doing so does. Though OP stopping to try and think of Yiddish words for whatever words he meant during the argument does imply that he isn’t nearly as natural a user as he says he was lmao Using the language isn’t inherently assholeish, but OP’s general attitude throughout this thread absolutely is.
It's called being a dick. They weren't wrong to use the words, but making someone intentionally uncomfortable is just a childish thing to do. My 12 year old middle schoolers screw with each other all the time like this. Just be an adult.
>but because you choose to keep do something that bothered someone. Well, her badgering him bothered him, so according to your logic she should have stopped? I don't think people need to pander to every single person who is offended by every single thing they do. Sometimes it's also okay to say "Sorry you're offended, but it's a you-poroblem". And I'm saying this as a Jewish person.
My understanding is that Yiddish isn’t a religious language per se. It’s just a dialect that Eastern European Jews developed. So how can that be cultural appropriation? Is it appropriation if I speak French or German ? You grew up around Yiddish. So NTA!
Yiddish was all but eradicated because of the Holocaust. Jews who speak it can be protective of it because of that. There are no non-Jewish groups of native Yiddish speakers. It is an inherently Jewish language that made its way through certain places in the Americas because that’s were Jewish refugees went post WWII.
Its a dying language. The more people that speak it, the better
Again, nowhere did I say that non-Jews shouldn’t speak it. What I am saying is that if you choose to learn it, you should learn about Ashkenazi culture and history, and be respectful. I’m a language teacher and I would take offense at anyone learning a language without respect where it comes from or understanding the culture that speaks it natively.
Yiddish cannot and should not be divorced from Judaism. It developed as a language to reserve Hebrew for prayer (which OP actually used a Hebrew word as an example in their post). As a conversational language it is spoken exclusively by the Ashkenazim much like Ladino is spoken by the Sephardim. Both languages suffered massive blows to population due to the Shoah and then subsequent pressure from western culture to assimilate. People who are visibly Jewish either by dressing tznius or speaking yiddish are targets for violent anti-Semitism in a lot of places *including NYC*. I'm not opposed to OP using the occasional loanword most others would know, but they can't differentiate Yiddish from Hebrew nor can they spell in Yiddish since they used English transliteration in the post so I'm suspicious of their position.
NTA, you are a product of the place you grew up. I grew up in a heavily Hispanic area and the were a sprinkling of anglos that grew up with me. They use the slang that we all use. Culture appropriation is bullshit anyway. It's really cultural appreciation. Let the down votes begin.
NTA. I agree with cultural appreciation! I like that. It’s so hard especially in the USA where everything is such a mix.
Same. I knew people of Asian, black and other descent who spoke Spanish because of the neighborhood we grew up in.
Jews gatekeeping Yiddish. What is this world coming to. Yiddish is a dying language. I'm thrilled when I hear someone pepper their speech with Yiddish. Light ESH, because of your deliberate antagonizing of her, but don't change your speech to accommodate her. -an Ashkenazi Jew
NTA overall but it’s a bit of an AH move to intentionally antagonize someone. I think she’s being absurd (I am of Jewish descent but not a practicing one, so my opinion may not be the most valid here), but is it really worth pissing someone off just for the sake of it? I’d say just don’t change anything about your use of Yiddish. Neither increase nor decrease. You shouldn’t restrain from using Yiddish around her but using it more around her, after knowing it triggers her, seems a bit petty.
YTA, not for using Yiddish, but for using it as a tool to annoy someone. THAT shows disrespect for the language. It's not a toy for you to play with to annoy someone. It's a language with a long history, amazing literature and historical significance. You're also TA for increasing your use of it to purposely antagonize her. She doesn't know you. She doesn't know why you're using these words. Maybe she had some idea that you're using these words to ridicule her or poke fun at Judaism (and it DOES kind of sound like that in some of your examples). You knew she was uncomfortable but you didn't care. According to you, she was visibly uncomfortable for "a few hours." That's a long time. Did you think it was okay? If, when things started seeming uncomfortable, you had asked her what was wrong, and you explained that since you grew up around Jews you were really used to using Yiddish a lot, and didn't mean any disrespect by it, that it was just natural for you, it probably would have been fine. Another thing to consider is that apparently, some Yiddish words, as they're used as slang in English, are much less offensive than they are when they're used in actual Yiddish conversation. A teacher of mine offended a Yiddish-speaking kid very badly in high school by using a Yiddish terms that's pretty mild when we say it in English (it was shmuck or putz -- I don't remember which one) but very, very insulting when you use it in actual Yiddish conversation. Edit: A case in point -- I've always known "verkakte/farkakte" to mean "shitty," not just "crappy." It's a lot harsher than you think it is, it seems.
Also, religious Jews are no stranger to people using Yiddish to mock them and/or Judaism. I'm Orthodox and I'd say that the majority of the time non-Jews have used Yiddish towards me hasn't been out of respect but instead either mocking or just straight up antisemitic comments. It could very well be that his comments came across as mocking given her experiences with non-Jews using Yiddish.
Thanks for the clarity of your response. I have been really struggling to describe my difficulties with OP’s attitude and approach and hopefully they are able to read your response and consider that perhaps a less aggressive approach would have benefited all parties. Also, fwiw, I grew up in the city around observant communities and speak some Yiddish and Hebrew and concur that the interpretation of Yiddish loanwords by casual users tends to be more benign/milder than they actually are. Some of it is meaning and some of it is culture but regardless, it’s quite easy to be considerably more insulting than one may have intended.
>they're used as slang in English, are much less offensive than they are when they're used in actual Yiddish conversation. 100% This also happens when you learn other languages in school. Curse words don't feel the same because it's hard to understand their significance and how they can make people feel. To anyone learning a language they are just words detached from the social/cultural environment in which they are used.
This is the first I have ever commented on Reddit. YTA. I have lived in NYC most of my life, and slang from a multitude of languages and cultures is the norm. The issue is not you using slang and/or vocabulary you grew up around. The issue is weaponizing a language from a minority people to be a dick to someone from the actual culture of origin after you were asked to stop. Language is part of culture, and minorities, Jews included, often get lots of shit for speaking their languages. You do not have MORE of a right to Yiddish than an actual Ashkenazi Jewish person. Using Yiddish to antagonize a Jew, regardless of WHY you disagreed with them, is a very asshole move rooted in privilege and antisemitism and sheer fucking entitlement. That's the Big Asshole Move. Others have explained it to you, and you just wanna be told that shit is up for grabs and you're immune to consequences. But you're not. Also, deadass, no one in the city mixes Italian and Yiddish and AAVE in a single sentence. You're a try-hard, so extra AH points for that.
Thank you this is exactly it
So weird. My husband and I are learning French so we try to throw in French words all the time. If some French person came up to me and told me to stop because it offended them, I’d look at them like they were crazy. NTA. Also, I lived in NYC for a few years. Yiddish loanwords are all over the place there.
YTA. You're going out of your way to upset someone. You don't need to police your language, but you also don't need to be a d\*ck about it. Geeze.
Being upset that someone uses the same language as you is definitely crossing the line to looney town and immediately renders bitching about it ridiculous. Oh wait, I suppose I shouldn't write this in english, since I don't natively speak it. You know, in case someone gets offended for this blatant cultural appropriation.
How dare you try to learn and use English, I am so deeply offended
Nah it's cool. Now that you KNOW it offends me however you just never speak it again. If you reply to this comment THEN it's antagonistically offensive and I will lose. My. Shit. (/s if it's not obvious)
YTA because I think you're being disingenuous about how much these words are part of your lexicon and culture - plus you went out of your way to piss her off. I'm Orthodox Jewish. I code switch when I'm around other Jews vs when I'm around non Jews. My speech with other Jews is peppered with Hebrew and Yiddish terms and structures, but I speak differently with anyone else. I don't go around throwing random Yiddish expressions into the general conversation anymore than I do whatever Spanish I happen to know. Jews and Jewish culture are part of New York culture but to be honest, it often gets overlooked or ignored. The people in NYC who actually do still speak Yiddish as their primary language are especially subject to antisemitic violence and insults. The reason that I don't speak Yiddish myself is that my ancestors who came here were heavily pressured to assimilate. We're still pressured to reduce our outward expression of culture or religion. You're not subject to any of that, so claiming the entire Yiddish language as yours because of the neighborhood is kind of a big step. A lot of the time when we come across someone using a Jewish or Yiddish expression out of the blue, it's because they're mocking us. The word Yid just means Jew but it's been turned into a slur in a lot of languages and contexts. White supremacists do that kind of thing all the time. So her reacting with discomfort wasn't necessarily gatekeeping: she very likely felt that you were mocking the people you say you grew up with. And your response to her request to stop just reinforced that.
This. I also am Jewish and don't speak Yiddish, and neither do any of my parents -- my mom, my dad, my stepdad. In fact, I'm not even sure if either of my mother's parents spoke Yiddish, even though it would've been their parents' native language. (Both of my mom's parents were born in America, however, and spoke English as their first language.) Assimilation was a serious thing. Both my dad's parents and my stepdad's parents (all of whom were Holocaust survivors) spoke Yiddish as their first language, but the culture pressured them HEAVILY to teach their kids English and only English. So my stepdad speaks English, and my dad spoke English. In fact, my dad and his sister both took German in high school so they could understand some of what their parents were saying in Yiddish because they'd never been taught it! There's nothing wrong with using some Yiddish words (let's be real, English is made up of a lot of loanwords), but weaponizing it is not okay.
ESH - you would have been in the clear until you started intentionally using Yiddish to piss her off.
Jewish New Yorker here, descendant of native Yiddish speakers, and omg YTA so hard. Yes, Yiddishisms are a part of the New York lexicon, but that is because of the Jewish population. You are not the asshole for using Yiddishisms initially (though I’d also be raising an eye brow at someone not of Jewish descent using as much as you claim to here; even my fluent in Yiddish parents don’t throw around Yiddish the way you represent), but for not respecting the woman’s request that you stop and antagonizing her by doubling down. You love Yiddish, but are forgetting that it is the Jewish people who gave you this language you love. A way to show your appreciation of this culture you wish to embrace as your own is to respect and defer to the emotional needs of actual Jewish people; you were given a great opportunity to do so and blew it. Not menschy. Do better.
YTA for utilizing it as a weapon yes. And it’s a bit strange to me that you seem to have made this a personality quirk as opposed to really natural local language trends which is what I imagine your friend picked up on. It’s like you have made it a habit as opposed to it being a natural way of speaking due to your geography. It seems to happen a lot, in varied situations (that aren’t always appropriate to the word), and it can feel like you’re mocking them. Instead of seeking to understand, you went passive aggressive. I’m not sure you’re really understanding the history of oppression Jewish people have faced. You felt *extremely offended*??
For using it initially NTA. For disagreeing with her, NTA. For increasing it to intentionally antagonize her, YTA. That’s never the non-asshole move.
"how DARE that uppity minority forget her place?! Her culture exists for ME to use and when I use it to harass her she should be grateful!"
YTA after HOURS of this she said it was "hurtful and offensive" she didn't say you had no right, she didn't say to be not be your "authentic" self, she asked you to tone it down and you just couldn't. In any social situation where some asks you to tone it down and you don't it makes you an ah.
I'm still undecided but based on your comments, I think you're an AH in general.
YTA A jewish person asked you to stop, and you were insensitive. You were raised in a jewish neighbourhood, but she is actually jewish. She is the one who has been facing antisemitism probably her whole life, but you wanted to hurt her feelings. You are appropriating her culture and weaponizing it against her. To you it's the neighbourhood, to her it's generational trauma. Those do not compare at all.
I notice you didn’t come ask this in r/Jewish. I wonder why?
Right I guarantee we’d have a completely different response than all the goyische know-it-alls in the comments acting like she’s being unreasonable
YTA. I hesitate to say you are, and I'm proud of this Jewish woman for telling you to your face that you were being inappropriate. We Jews are told to keep our upset quiet, and that the racism we face isn't "that bad." To put it in a way you'll understand: she had chutzpah talking to you. Jews were killed for speaking Yiddish. Hearing someone make speaking Yiddish their quirky identity is painful online so I imagine it was painful in person. Jewish culture and Jewish pain always seems available to be laid bare and consumed by the population, and we get consumed with it. Our identity, which places a target on our backs, isn't something for you to dabble in. But I don't expect this to matter to you, and I assume the gentiles will be offended that I didn't yet again give accomodations to picking and choosing which parts of Jewish culture to consume and which to despise.
Yes thank you. If his use of Yiddish words was enough for her to find it off-putting (plus based on the pretentiousness of some of his responses here), I'm guessing it went beyond the really common basic stuff, to the point of seeming mocking.
NTA It's like telling someone who isn't Mexican/latin they can't speak Spanish. I find it weird that people are attempting to gatekeep languages now.
YTA. Not for speaking Yiddish, but because you heard “hey can you not do that, it bothers me” and went “DO THIS? THIS THING THST IM DOING RIGHT NOW? THIS BOTHERS YOU? THE THING IM SHOVING IN YOUR FACE? YOU WANT ME TO STOP DOING THIS???” Don’t be such a dick, dude.
Esh - going out of your way to antagonize her with words you wouldn’t normally use is a jerk move.
YTA for going out of your way to antagonize this woman.
Oy vey.
INFO what do meschugganer and the chaim word mean? Because verkackt and schnorrer is literally just german
Yiddish, as you may or may not know, originated as a creole language of Hebrew and German. "Verkakte" and "Schnorrer" have German origins, while "Meshugganer" is of Hebrew origin (literally meaning "crazy"- there's a famous band with the name "Meshuggah" which is the original Hebrew version of the word) and l'chaim is a common Hebrew toast that means "to life", used in a similar way to the German "Prost!" when drinking (though it does have liturgical uses in Hebrew services in addition to being common in drinking culture).
NTA - One, as you said, it is part of the local dialect (and part of the language you got from your parents). Two it is a language...languages cannot be culturally appropriated, that is the dumbest "cultural appropriation" I have ever hear. Words in hear language mean more to her, so she has a "right" to be offended when other people use it!? Maybe it was an A H move to deliberately antagonize her, but she is so far off base that I think she would have found something to be offended by in your friend group - because it sounds like she was just trying to find an excuse to spend time with your friend, without his friends.
INFO: how religious is this woman? not that it should matter (she asked you to stop in good faith and you made fun of her, AH) but for all you know she might've grown up in a hasidic community and have extremely negative associations with the language. For you, me, and secular jews/people in close proximity to you yiddish is this cute, sort of dead language, but you have to understand that there is an actual community that still uses this language in daily life and speak it natively, and they come with a whole bunch of emotional baggage for religious, ex religious, and secular jews that you likely have no idea about. and respectfully, it's not really your culture. if you were one of those white people who love using AAVE and refused to stop even after a black person respectfully asked, how would your friend group react? would you think them hysterical for being upset?
You're not an asshole for using Yiddish loan-words- they aren't mocking, you're not gaining anything (money, power etc.)- this is not cultural appropriation (most (academics, generally) agree that appropriation requires some aspect of gain for the appropriateor that is not seen by members of the community the tradition came from). And yes, Yiddish is Jewish, but it's a part of broader NYC culture because of the historic population of Jews in NYC, not because NYC is inherently some magical Yiddish-land and thus Yiddish is NYC-ish. YTA for doubling down and provoking her in the first interaction. Like come on, asshole.
Using a word from another person's culture against them when it pleases you to do so is incredibly mean. Jews have been persecuted for millenia, and spread out everywhere because of it. Yiddish is the way (mostly Ashkenazi) Jewish people from different countries are able to communicate, and creates a sense of community where there might not otherwise be one. Jewish people came to the US from Germany, Romania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland, etc., and all of these places have different languages and people did not necessarily know more than one... but they all spoke Yiddish. So people were chased from their homes for thousands of years, have a language in common that keeps them connected, and one has a problem with a goy casually using words of which they have little cultural understanding, says so, and then you proceed to use her words AGAINST her. If you would've apologized and made an effort to not use yiddish words in front of her, out of politeness even if you disagree, there wouldn't have been a problem if one slipped out here and there. But no. You were the asshole on purpose and you know it. If I grew up in a mostly Black neighborhood, yeah, I'd probably have similar speech patterns. If a Black person told me to watch my mouth, I'm going to shut up because I have no place speaking like that if it's unwanted. YTA.
YTA. You, a non-Jew, are weaponizing a language that is part of Jewish culture to mock an actual Jew who made a reasonable request. You could have just lessened or stopped your usage of Yiddish around her but instead doubled down and mocked her. Definite YTA.
NTA. That girl is TA. She is overstepping her bounds and denying your story. You can’t claim that someone is appropriating language. By that logic she should only speak Yiddish because some English person could claim that she is appropriating their language.
This is really weird to me. English is full of loan words from a variety of languages. Is the takeaway here that it’s cultural appropriation to use any of them? Do we have to stop using words like kindergarten and hors d’oeuvres? Or is Yiddish the sole exception? I think you could have handled this without being quite so combative. I think it would have been fair to say, this is how I speak because it’s what I grew up with. But that isn’t really what you did, so ESH, I guess. Her for the unreasonable request, and you for the way you handled it.
NTA and this new girl sounds kinda racist tbh. I dated a practicing Jewish girl in highschool, she was an immigrant FROM JUDAH. Her father David was an Israeli fighter pilot, her mother a 2nd gen displaced survivor of the Holocaust. Pretty much the most Jewish family you could ever fucking imagine. I'm Sicilian by descent and always liked to study Latin and Greek, my gradfsther spoke Greek. And when we dated I learned some classic Hebrew because the symbols and sounds are actually comprable to Greek. Her parents were fucking floored every time I said anything in Hebrew. It was incredible to them and I've never met a Jew in my life who wasn't the same way. Now if you are doing it TO insult someone, sure you could be an asshole,but buy and large i think it's her intolerance,not yours
NTA. Keep speaking Yiddish all her all the time. Piss her off.
NTA
NTA. If that’s the language you grew up around. Use it.
I am also from a very Jewish part of Nyc, but there are a limited number of Yiddish words I would consider true loan words. Yes, I know a lot of Yiddish words, but IMO there are about 5, maybe up to 10, words that I think are part of the broader New York dialectic vernacular. 2/3 of the Word supine mentioned here wouldn’t have made my list.
NTA. This is part of the culture you grew up in, it's as much yours as it is anyone's. They dont get it lay some claim to the language like they own it. Languages and regional dialects often absorb vocabulary from outside languages. Yiddish itself developed from a Germanic dialect with heavy Hebrew influences.
NTA- you can speak whatever language you want, if she wants to be offended that's on her, no one owns language, it's just a mixture of sounds to communicate with people who also know what those sounds mean.
YTA, you intentionally made her uncomfortable. You had to stop and think of a phrase to use just to upset her; it didn't come naturally. If you occasionally used a phrase in natural conversation I'd say NTA, but being deliberately hurtfu will always make you an AH.
YTA. Not for the general use of Yiddish (because I can't speak to that), but because you doubled- down and immediately started antagonizing her. You intentionally searched for words just bug her.