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Concept
Yeshivish
Summary
Yeshivish (ישיביש), also known as Yeshiva English, Yeshivisheh Shprach, or Yeshivisheh Reid, is a sociolect of English spoken by Yeshiva students and other Jews with a strong connection to the Orthodox Yeshiva world.
"Yeshivish" may also refer to non-Hasidic Haredi Jews. Sometimes it has an extra connotation of non-Hasidic Haredi Jews educated in yeshiva and whose education made a noticeable specific cultural impact onto them. In the latter case the term has ambivalent (both positive and negative) connotations comparable to these of the term "academic".
The term appears to be a portmanteau word of yeshiva and English, however, it may simply be formed from yeshiva + the adjectival suffix -ish.
Only a few serious studies have been written about Yeshivish. The first is a master's thesis by Steven Ray Goldfarb (University of Texas at El Paso, 1979) called "A Sampling of Lexical Items in Yeshiva English." The work lists, defines, and provides examples for nearly 250 Yeshivish words and phrases. The second, more comprehensive work is Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish by Chaim Weiser. Weiser (1995) maintains that Yeshivish is not a pidgin, creole, or an independent language, nor is it precisely a jargon. Baumel (2006) following Weiser notes that Yeshivish differs from English primarily in phonemic structure, lexical meaning, and syntax.
Benor (2012) offers a detailed list of distinctive features used in Yeshivish. Katz describes it in Words on Fire: the Unfinished Story of Yiddish (2004) as a "new dialect of English", which is "taking over as the vernacular in everyday life in some ... circles in America and elsewhere". Heilman (2006) and others consider code-switching a part of Yeshivish. Though Kaye (1991) would exclude English speakers in the context of a Yeshiva, studying the Talmud, from code-switching where he considers the terms "Yiddish English" or "Yiddishized English" ("= Yinglish") may be more appropriate.
Official source
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