What's the difference between English and Jewish English?
Today, millions of Jews use Jewish versions of English in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, and Israel, with influences from Textual Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, Yiddish, and other languages. There is considerable variance based on area, ancestry, generation, religiosity, and gender, but all forms of English used by Jews may be addressed collectively under the banner of "Jewish English."
The distinction between mainstream and Jewish English may be as little as including a few Hebrew or Yiddish terms (e.g., Hannukah, matzah ball, shlep) or as significant as several Yiddish influences in syntax, lexicon, and phonology. The former is commonly used by Jews who have little or no religious practise, whereas the latter is primarily used by Orthodox Jews (and, in the past, by immigrants and their children, referred to as "Yinglish").
New York linguistic traits, such as pronouncing "orange" like "ahrange" and a high-engagement conversational style (including cooperative overlapping), are widespread among Jews outside of New York. Descendants of Ladino speakers frequently preserve some Ladino vocabulary, while descendants of Judeo-Arabic speakers frequently preserve some Judeo-Arabic words. The Jewish English Lexicon is a crowdsourced collection of many Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish terms used in English:
Hundreds of loan words from Hebrew and Yiddish are used in Orthodox Jewish English, including baruch hashem, which means "blessed is God," blech, which means "metal stove covering that facilitates Sabbath cooking," bentsh, which means "bless, say Grace After Meals," dafka, which means "specifically, really, to make a point of," and kippah, which means "skullcap." Some loan terms have specific meanings or applications, such as leyn ('read Torah' Yid.'read') and "learn" ('learn Jewish literature').
Other characteristics of Orthodox Jewish English include:
- Quasi-chanting intonation contours and different distinguishing intonation.
- Yiddish borrowing usage.
- Frequent word-final /t/-release ("night" rather than "nigh'").
- Yiddish-influenced periphrastic constructions.
Orthodox (and many non-Orthodox) Jews are aware of the presence of Orthodox speaking patterns, particularly those linked with the Yeshiva, a predominantly male learning institution. Many Orthodox community members use the term "Yeshivish," as seen by the title of a famous book, Frumspeak, and the song Yeshivishe Reid by the Orthodox band Journeys.
Furthermore, Jewish English contains a Modern Hebrew component, likely present in all modern Jewish languages. Speakers of Jewish English in the early twenty-first century tend to be proficient in the local non-Jewish variety and alter styles depending on audience, venue, and topic. This bi-dialectalism and the landscape of widespread English literacy in which this language is growing explains why Jewish English is not written in Jewish characters.