#yiddish

I don't remember participating in the original survey exploring the familiarity of Jewish English terms among Australian and American Jewish and non-Jewish people, but I was informed that the paper based on the survey has been published, and it's highly illuminating for a linguistics nut like me. Generally, Australian non-Jews are less likely to be familiar with Jewish English terms (chutzpah, shlep, kvetch, menorah) than their American counterparts, with the exception of a small set of words that have entered Australian general speech (cobber, shemozzle, shtum, gazumped), which American Jewish and non-Jewish people don't use much. I love "barmi" and "batmi" for bar/bat mitzvah and I will now use these at any possible opportunity. Full paper: https://brill.com/view/journals/jjl/14/1/article-p42_3.xml Citation: Breslow, E., & Hendy, C. (2026). Was the Barmi a Shemozzle?: A Comparative Study of Australian and American Familiarity with Jewish English Lexical Items. Journal of Jewish Languages, 14(1), 42-86. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134638-bja10063 #English #Linguistics #Jewish #Yiddish #Australia #USA