„Mázlid van haver, nem bóvli a szajré.” Hebrew and Yiddish Loanwords in Present-Day Hungarian Language
Loading...
Files
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Babeș-Bolyai University / Cluj University Press
Abstract
Description
The Jewish minority in the Hungarian population has been undergoing a kind of renaissance in the last decades: the financial and cultural support of the ruling governments met with the awakening power of Hungarian Jews, which has led to the revival of the Hungarian Jewry. As a result, the theme of “Hebrew and Yiddish loanwords in Hungarian” has reappeared. Several list, some simpler, some more detailed, were published either in printed or in electronic form.
Despite the lack of serious sociological and linguistic surveys, the author attempts to give an established and valid list of this segment of Hungarian vocabulary. After biblical onomasticon and international words (e.g. Amen, behemoth, bagel, goy, hallelujah, etc.), he then examined a third group as well, which consists of allegedly Hebrew and/or Yiddish loanwords in the recent usage of Hungarian. Most of them belong to the realm of slang. This part of the vocabulary is well known, but some of the words seems to be new. To clarify this confused picture caused by the new, shorter or longer lists, we have introduced three categories: accepted loanwords, dubious loanwords, and refused loanwords. During the survey, we used all standard Biblical Hebrew dictionaries, workbooks and standard Hungarian linguistic reference books, too.
Because of the aforementioned Jewish revival, we believe that Jews would like to express their renewed dignity in linguistic terms as well. Yiddish has disappeared as a transmitter, but this does not mean they cannot create new lists, extending their loanwords together with their dignity. So, new lists are emerging in Budapest and for Budapest.