# mishegoss / michegaas



## perpend

Sarah Silverstein said this on the Academy Awards (Oscars) tonight.

Paraphrasing: ... I'll leave my personal mishegoss / mishegaas aside ...

It's Yiddish.

Context: ... I'll leave my personal life by the way ...

Is there anything in contemporary German that would use the sound "misch" for this idea/context?


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## Frieder

We do use the word _Mischpoche _sometimes – but that would be something different.


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## perpend

Thanks. It is somehow very different, but somehow "Mischpoche" is relevant, depending on how it's written.

Danke fürs mitdenken, Frieder.


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## bearded

perpend said:


> Is there anything in contemporary German that would use the sound "misch" for this idea/context?


Apparently from the same yiddish root there is in German the adjective _meschugge _(foolish, silly, 'verrückt').


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## perpend

But there's nothing in German that sounds similar, oder doch, bearded?


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## fdb

It is a Hebrew loan word in Yiddish. It does not have a German etymology.


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## bearded

@ perpend
Not in German ''strictly speaking'' (germanic origin), but the word 'meschugge' is _nunmehr _colloquial German.


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## Demiurg

Na ja, "meschugge" steht im Duden und ist damit ein deutsches (Fremd)wort:



> *Herkunft*
> jiddisch meschuggo < hebräisch mĕšuga`



Edit: crossed with fdb, bearded man


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## Hutschi

Hi, it "Misere" cognate somehow?

Ich lasse meine persönliche Misere beiseite.
"unglückliche Situation, bedauernswerte Lage, Notlage" Duden | Misere | Rechtschreibung, Bedeutung, Definition, Synonyme, Herkunft (Herkunft laut Duden: - französisch misère < lateinisch miseria = Elend, zu: miser = elend)


PS: Meschugge: mishegoss - Wiktionary

---
edit: removed speculation


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## fdb

Hutschi said:


> Hi, it "Misere" cognate somehow?



No.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> Apparently from the same yiddish root there is in German the adjective _meschugge _(foolish, silly, 'verrückt').


Depending on dialect of Yiddish also _meshigge_. There is also a Hebrew derived noun משוגעת/משגעת - _meshugath = craziness _hat would be pronounced _meshugas _or _meshiggas _in Yiddish. That must be it.


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## fdb

I am not a specialist, but I think "meshuggos" (craziness) is not a plural, but a Hebrew abstractum in ﬨ (Ashkenazic pronunciation -os).


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## berndf

fdb said:


> I am not a specialist, but I think "meshuggos" (craziness) is not a plural, but a Hebrew abstractum in ﬨ (Ashkenazic pronunciation -os).


I meant _Meshigge _in the sense of _the crazy one _and with an English plural. But as you can see, I had changed my mind in the meantime and had come to the same conclusion than you that she must have meant the abstractum משוגעת.

PS: An Hutschi as well in #9, which I only saw just now.

PPS: An you are right, the Yiddish ending sould be _-os_ and not _-as_ as the Hebrew vowel is a Kamatz and not a Patach.


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## Dan2

The following are in Webster's New World College Dictionary (not a particularly large dictionary, as dictionaries go...):

meshuga [mə'ʃʊgə]: crazy, mad, insane
meshugas [mɛʃʊ'gas]: craziness, foolishness, nonsense
meshugeneh [mə'ʃʊgənə]: a crazy, eccentric or foolish person
(The IPA is my translation of the "Websterese".)

All are identified as "Yiddish", meaning they're not considered to be real English words, but are encountered often enough to warrant an entry in the dictionary.


perpend said:


> Sarah Silverstein said... "I'll leave my personal mishegoss / mishegaas aside ..."
> Context: ... I'll leave my personal life by the way ...


So she apparently meant "my personal craziness".
Here (and elsewhere) you use the word "context" differently from the way most of us do.  I think you mean "The meaning seems to be".  A _context _might be (I didn't see the event), "She's talking about her life and the problems she's faced".

To avoid deletion for offtopicity: Only the first of the three words above is also German?


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## Demiurg

Dan2 said:


> The following are in Webster's New World College Dictionary (not a particularly large dictionary, as dictionaries go...):
> 
> meshuga [mə'ʃʊgə]: crazy, mad, insane
> meshugas [mɛʃʊ'gas]: craziness, foolishness, nonsense
> meshugeneh [mə'ʃʊgənə]: a crazy, eccentric or foolish person
> ...
> To avoid deletion for offtopicity: Only the first of the three words above is also German?



I guess "meshugeneh" is simply an English transcription of German "Meschuggene(r)" (resp. the Yiddish equivalent).


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> To avoid deletion for offtopicity: Only the first of the three words above is also German?


You'd currently know Yiddish or Hebrew to identify _Meschugos _(the theoretical German spelling) as a abstract noun derived from _meschugge _(the real German spelling).

By the way:


Dan2 said:


> The IPA is my translation of the "Websterese".


I'll really wish you'd stop mixing [a] and [ɑ]. If you now start transcribing the vowel of _father _[a] while Brits start to transcribe the vowel of _man _[a] the confusion will be perfect. The mere fact there are _some _US and _some _UK dialects where if directly contrasted _block _and _black _could be confused is not sufficient reason to start such a mix-up of notation.


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## berndf

Demiurg said:


> I guess "meshugeneh" is simply an English transcription of German "Meschuggene(r)" (*resp. the Yiddish equivalent*).




*משוגענער *(German transcription _Meschuggener_) *= *_crazy person._

PS: Note that it is דער משוגענע*ר* rather than דער משוגענע in that poster. I don't know if this is really proper Yiddish usage or if this is a compromise for usage in America because Americans wouldn't know why the presence of the direct article should modify the nouns.


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## Dan2

berndf said:


> I'll really wish you'd stop mixing [a] and [ɑ].


[sɑri]... I was just trying to minimize the number of symbols I had to cut-and-paste.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> [sɑri]... I was just trying to minimize the number of symbols I had to cut-and-paste.


Thank you.


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## fdb

berndf said:


> Note that it is דער משוגענע*ר* rather than דער משוגענע in that poster.



"Der guter man" is normal in Yiddish.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> "Der guter man" is normal in Yiddish.


Thank you very much. I have done a bit of search in google books for דער גוטער vs דער גוטע. In nominative case contexts, I have found the latter only in 19th century West-Yiddish texts (a language that is now practically extinct). Is it fair to say that the weak declension has completely disappeared in Eastern Yiddish but not in Western Yiddish?


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## fdb

I am not in the habit of quoting Wikipedia, but this (or at least the table) seems more or less correct:
Yiddish grammar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## berndf

This doesn't really answer my question because that is only about East Yiddish. But never mind. This is getting to detailed for this thread.


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## Dan2

fdb said:


> Yiddish grammar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Based on this article, Yiddish seems a lot closer to standard German than many German dialects do.  (I have in mind the extreme dialectal deviation from standard that I've seen here in the forum over the years when Bavarian and Austrian dialects are discussed.)  For ex. (using more German-like spelling than Wiki does):

_käufen: ich käuf, du käufst, er/sie käuft, mir käufen, ihr käuft, seh käufen;
sein: ich bin, du bist, er/sie is
ich hob gekäuft, ich bin gegangen!_

True, Yiddish vocabulary has a significant percentage of Hebrew borrowings, but on the grammatical, as opposed to lexical, level, Yiddish looks amazingly "standardkonform" compared to some currently existing German dialects (even excluding Platt and Swiss German).  Am I missing something?


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> Am I missing something?


No, not really. Yiddish is based on Rhine-Hessian dialects that belong to the same larger dialect group (middle German) modern standard German is derived from. Also, educated speakers had always been able to speak, read and write standard German as well which kept Yiddish in contact with standard German; even those dialect that were spoken in areas without a German speaking population. The very idea that Yiddish is a language in its own right rather than simply German is relatively new thing (late 19th century). Apart from the Slavic, Hebrew and Aramaic loans (in that order in terms of frequency), Eastern Yiddish (the only surviving macro group of dialects), Yiddish is pretty easy to read for a German, provided you can read the alphabet. But that isn't really that difficult. The sentence structure is noticeably different from standard German but that doesn't really impede mutual intelligibility.

Judge for yourself. Here is the first sentence of the Yiddish Wikipedia article about Yiddish:


> *יידיש, אידיש* אדער *יודיש*, גערופֿן ביי אידן *מאַמע לשון*, איז אַ שפּראַך װאָס װערט הײַנט גערעדט פֿון 1.5 מיליאָן יידן[1] און באַקאַנט ביי 3,142,560 מיליאָן [2] מענטשן איבער דער װעלט, בעיקר פֿונעם אַשכנזישן אָפּשטאַם.


Transliteration for your convenience (German-like):
"Jiddisch, Jiddish oder Jiddish [3 different spellings], gerufn bej Jiddn Mamme Loschen, is a Sproch wos werdt hejt geredt von 1.5 Miljon Jiddn un bekandt bej 3'142'450 miljon [obvious mistake] Mentschn oiber der Welt, b'ikar vonem Aschkenasischn Ofstamm."


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## perpend

The only things that trip me up are "Mamme Loschen" and "b'ikar". Bitte, bitte bernd!


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## berndf

perpend said:


> The only things that trip me up are "Mamme Loschen" and "b'ikar". Bitte, bitte bernd!


_Mamme Loschen=Muttersprache_ and _b'ikar=besonders_. _Loschen=Sprache/Zunge_ and _b'ikar=besonders_ are Hebrew words.


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## perpend

I had sort of guessed "besonders", for that part of the sentence, but still wasn't sure.

"Mamme Loschen" had me completely stumped! (It's too cute, by the way.)

Thanks to you and everyone for all the input and a very interesting thread!

I initially wrote "mishegoss / mishegaas" as versions, since that's how they are written in the physical book I have called "The Joys Of Yiddish". I see now that the orthography is all over the map (pun intended). 

Sarah Silverman is quite a wordsmith. At this point, I think could have meant any of these:
... my personal "crazy" aside
... my personal craziness aside
... my personal "crazy person" aside

No big difference.

Regarding my original question, I see that German would use "Meschuggene", the loan word!

Thanks again everyone.


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## Dan2

Dan2 said:


> Yiddish vocabulary has a significant percentage of Hebrew borrowings, but on the grammatical, as opposed to lexical, level, Yiddish looks amazingly "standardkonform"


This is a bit misstated, I realize now.  It's really the grammatical _morphemes _(for ex., verb conjugation endings) and basic grammatical _words _(ich bin, du bist, er/sie/es is; Nom. der/die/dos; Dative dem/der) that I found so standard-German-like.  I can't comment on the grammar (syntax) per se.

Thanks for your comments, Bernd.


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