# Russian word Hy and Hebrew word נו



## jewish

Are they at all related? I'm currently learning Russian and while they are pronounced the same and have relatively similar meanings (from what I understand), I'm not totally sure they are. If anybody could help me I'd greatly appreciate it.


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## willem81

Yes, they have the same meaning in both Russian and Hebrew. I guess that Ben-Yehuda (the resurrector of the Hebrew language) simply introduced the Russian word into the modern Hebrew vocabulary. By the way, the same has been done by Zamenhoff in his time, he introduced the word "nu" into Esperanto.


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## Drink

jewish said:


> Are they at all related? I'm currently learning Russian and while they are pronounced the same and have relatively similar meanings (from what I understand), I'm not totally sure they are. If anybody could help me I'd greatly appreciate it.



Yes, the word "nu" is originally Russian (or Slavic in general). It was borrowed into Yiddish, and later into Modern Hebrew.


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## Drink

willem81 said:


> Yes, they have the same meaning in both Russian and Hebrew. I guess that Ben-Yehuda (the resurrector of the Hebrew language) simply introduced the Russian word into the modern Hebrew vocabulary. By the way, the same has been done by Zamenhoff in his time, he introduced the word "nu" into Esperanto.



I don't think it was Ben-Yehuda. It was simply part of the Yiddish vocabulary of most of the early speakers of Modern Hebrew.


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## willem81

Then it's a Yiddish influence, I see. Thanks for the info.


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## mask-13

When russians learn foreign languages, they at first don't realize that interjections are not international, and use Russian interjections in a foreign language. I have even heard a teacher of English using "noo" in her English speech . So, I'd bet that 90% of Russian Jews were continuing using "nu" in their Hebrew speech, and since 1/6 of Israel's population has Russian descent it entered into Hebrew.


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## fdb

Drink said:


> Yes, the word "nu" is originally Russian (or Slavic in general). It was borrowed into Yiddish, and later into Modern Hebrew.



I am not at all sure that “nu” is “originally” Russian. Similar words are found in most Indo-European languages, including English “now”, and the exact form “nu” is also in German, so Yiddish “nu” is probably part of the German core vocabulary of Yiddish, and not borrowed from Russian. Modern Hebrew “nu” is of course borrowed from Yiddish.


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## Drink

fdb said:


> I am not at all sure that “nu” is “originally” Russian. Similar words are found in most Indo-European languages, including English “now”, and the exact form “nu” is also in German, so Yiddish “nu” is probably part of the German core vocabulary of Yiddish, and not borrowed from Russian. Modern Hebrew “nu” is of course borrowed from Yiddish.



Yes, you seem to be right about that. The interesting thing is that in Yiddish dialects where /u/ became /i/, "nu" is still pronounced /nu/, which usually indicates a borrowing. Perhaps it was simply reinforced by the Russian or Polish pronunciation. But then where did the Russian word come from? Vasmer says it is onomatopoeic, but is that a coincidence then that it coincides with the Germanic word?


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## fdb

Not a coincidence, but IE cognates; cf Greek νύ, Sanskrit nu, etc. etc.


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## mask-13

All the words that mean "now" in these languages are cognates to archaic Russian ныне/ноне "now, nowadays", modern нынешний "current, contemporary" (by Vasmer), not to ну.
It is probably an important fact that, by Vasmer, this word exists in all the major Slavic languages except Bulgarian (the only Slavic language that hasn't had broad contact with German or Yiddish). This fact supports the version that the word was borrowed from German and Yiddish. However Vasmer has another version (the reference supplied is to an etymological dictionary of Check by Holub and Kopecny)


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## Maroseika

According to the contemporary etymological dictionary of Slavic languages (ЭССЯ) it is primordially Proto-Slavic and most probably has onomatopoetic origin.


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## fdb

I tried to consult this, but an ad for a computer game came up instead.


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## Maroseika

fdb said:


> I tried to consult this, but an ad for a computer game came up instead.


That's strange, as when I open this link from my post it works properly. But you may try thru the main page, vol. 26, page 31 (choose the volume from the lower row).


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## mask-13

It doesn't work for me neither (including links from the main page), however, I've discovered that these links work:
http://essja.narod.ru/pg/26/e030-031.htm
http://essja.narod.ru/pg/26/e032-033.htm
This site is probably browser-dependent


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## Valda Vaux

I'm not disagreeing with everyone but I'd like to offer another perspective. As a native Hebrew speaker who has been learning Russian for many years, I've come to the impression that the Hebrew "nu" is more of a word we use to make other people act more quickly when they're delaying (like the Russian "давай", or "kadima" in Hebrew...or "yalla"... actually we often say "nu yalla!" in Hebrew ), whereas the Russian "nu" can ALSO have the same meaning as the English "well". In Hebrew we practically never use "nu" before we start a sentence, only Russian speakers do it (or Russians who speak Hebrew). In fact, a good way to identify a native Russian speaker even though they speak perfect Hebrew as if they start a sentence with "nu".


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## Drink

It may be possible that the Germanic _nu_ originally only had the meaning of "now", but acquired the meaning of "well" due to influence from the original Slavic _nu_​. But I have no evidence to back this up.


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## fdb

There is no need to speculate. The history of the German word is copiously documented here (see in particular the idiomatic usages listed towards the end of the article):

http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GN06559


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## Drink

fdb said:


> There is no need to speculate. The history of the German word is copiously documented here (see in particular the idiomatic usages listed towards the end of the article):
> 
> http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GN06559



My German is horrible is there an English version? But if it was in fact a development within the Germanic languages, then that brings us back to the fantastic coincidence that a Slavic onomatopoeic term has the same meaning.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> My German is horrible is there an English version? But if it was in fact a development within the Germanic languages, then that brings us back to the fantastic coincidence that a Slavic onomatopoeic term has the same meaning.


_Nun_ and _nu _are variants of the same word in OHG. In Low German the form _nu _still prevails and English now is an obvious reflex of old English _nu_. If this is right, _nu _is an unchanged inheritance from PIE and probably not a parallel development.
Concerning the colloquial _nu_ in modern High German (outside the original Low German speaking area where it is probably of Low German origin), I couldn’t tell if it is a direct continuation of the OHG _nu_ or if it is a back-loan from Yiddish. Both seem possible; or maybe even a combination of both: inherited when meaning _now_ and from Yiddish when being used like the French _alors!_


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## Drink

berndf said:


> _Nun_ and _nu _are variants of the same word in OHG. In Low German the form _nu _still prevails and English now is an obvious reflex of old English _nu_. If this is right, _nu _is an unchanged inheritance from PIE and probably not a parallel development.
> Concerning the colloquial _nu_ in modern High German (outside the original Low German speaking area where it is probably of Low German origin), I couldn’t tell if it is a direct continuation of the OHG _nu_ or if it is a back-loan from Yiddish. Both seem possible; or maybe even a combination of both: inherited when meaning _now_ and from Yiddish when being used like the French _alors!_



That's not the point at all. I am not disputing the origin of the Germanic words, but the meaning of the Germanic words. The meaning "now" is clearly inherited from PIE, but the meaning of "well" is either a development within Germanic or it could have been influenced by the Slavic _nu_, which is not derived from PIE _nu_.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> That's not the point at all. I am not disputing the origin of the Germanic words, but the meaning of the Germanic words. The meaning "now" is clearly inherited from PIE, but the meaning of "well" is either a development within Germanic or it could have been influenced by the Slavic _nu_, which is not derived from PIE _nu_.


You mean _well_ as in _Well, I don't know what to say_?
You can use _nun _in Standard German this way, _now _in English, _maintenant _in French and _adesso _in Italian. Maybe it is just a natural extension of the semantic concept _now _and has nothing to do with the specific word that expresses that concept.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> You mean _well_ as in _Well, I don't know what to say_?
> You can use _nun _in Standard German this way, _now _in English, _maintenant _in French and _adesso _in Italian. Maybe it is just a natural extension of the semantic concept _now _and has nothing to do with the specific word that expresses that concept.



In English, "well" is not used in the same way as "now". I do understand that it is easily possible for the meaning to shift from "now" to "well", but that is not necessarily what happened. We have two possible explanations, one of which leaves behind a huge coincidence (which does happen in languages, so we can't rule anything out simply because of that).


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## berndf

Drink said:


> In English, "well" is not used in the same way as "now".


Given the right pronunciation the difference between _Well, I don't know what to say_ and _Now... I don't know what to say _is marginal. But I don't want to quarrel with you. One example language more or less doesn't make a big difference.



Drink said:


> I do understand that it is easily possible for the meaning to shift from "now" to "well", but that is not necessarily what happened.


Not necessarily, I fully agree. But it is the obvious hypothesis as it happened in languages that use etymologically unrelated words for _now_.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Not necessarily, I fully agree. But it is the obvious hypothesis as it happened in languages that use etymologically unrelated words for _now_.



And which languages are those?


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## berndf

Drink said:


> And which languages are those?


See above, #21.

I’ve given a bit more thought. What we are discussing here is temporal adverb vs. interjection, right? It seems there are at least two uses as interjections that need to be distinguished. One in a chain of argument or thought or as a cohortative interjection like the French _alors_; that’s how you use it a lot in Italian.  The other is contradicting or interrogative. In German, these uses seamlessly mix. In Yiddish on the other hand only the latter exist, if I am not mistaken (my knowledge of Yiddish is ok but does not run too deep); for uses related to the temporal adverb, Yiddish only uses יעצט and not נו while in German _jetzt_ and _nun_ (colloquially _nu_) can be user interchangeably as temporal adverbs. So, it could be that only the first use is a natural extension of the temporal adverb and the second is a loan from Yiddish in German and, hence, indirectly from Russian.
My knowledge about Russian is lousy. What is the range of meanings of the interjection there?


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## Drink

berndf said:


> See above, #21.
> 
> I’ve given a bit more thought. What we are discussing here is temporal adverb vs. interjection, right? It seems there are at least two uses as interjections that need to be distinguished. One in a chain of argument or thought or as a cohortative interjection like the French _alors_; that’s how you use it a lot in Italian.  The other is contradicting or interrogative. In German, these uses seamlessly mix. In Yiddish on the other hand only the latter exist, if I am not mistaken (my knowledge of Yiddish is ok but does not run too deep); for uses related to the temporal adverb, Yiddish only uses יעצט and not נו while in German _jetzt_ and _nun_ (colloquially _nu_) can be user interchangeably as temporal adverbs. So, it could be that only the first use is a natural extension of the temporal adverb and the second is a loan from Yiddish in German and, hence, indirectly from Russian.
> My knowledge about Russian is lousy. What is the range of meanings of the interjection there?



The French _maintenant_ and Italian _adesso_ do not have the meaning that I am referring to, which lacks any sort of temporality and is best exemplified by the simple question "Well?", which essentially just asks for a response.

In Russian _ну_ has a wide range of interjectional uses that I can't clearly define except by roughly equating it with English _well_, but none come anywhere near the temporal meaning of English _now_.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> ..which essentially just asks for a response.


Soliciting for a response is something you can do with an expression along the lines of "And now?" in many languages, among them English, German, French and Italian. That cannot be the whole story.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Soliciting for a response is something you can do with an expression along the lines of "And now?" in many languages, among them English, German, French and Italian. That cannot be the whole story.



"And now?" has a completely different meaning in English (and the same goes for French and Italian). Here is an example of a typical usage of "Well?" with the Russian translation:

Jack: Where were you? = Где ты была?
Jill: *remains silent*
Jack: Well? = Ну?

As you can see, "And now?" or anything similar would not fit at all.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> "And now?" has a completely different meaning in English (and the same goes for French and Italian). Here is an example of a typical usage of "Well?" with the Russian translation:
> 
> Jack: Where were you? = Где ты была?
> Jill: *remains silent*
> Jack: Well? = Ну?
> 
> As you can see, "And now?" or anything similar would not fit at all.


Ok, fine. That is my second usage in #25 that is in agreement with the usage in Yiddish. In German you can use _nun _here too; but you can't use _jetzt _here which in all cases where German _nun _and English _now _agree can be used as a synonym. That points in a direction of loan from Yiddish and eventually from Slavic rather than to a parallel development.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Ok, fine. That is my second usage in #25 that is in agreement with the usage in Yiddish. In German you can use _nun _here too; but you can't use _jetzt _here which in all cases where German _nun _and English _now _agree can be used as a synonym. That points in a direction of loan from Yiddish and eventually from Slavic rather than to a parallel development.



And that's exactly the case I was referring to the entire time.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> And that's exactly the case I was referring to the entire time.


Do we also agree on the conclusion?


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Do we also agree on the conclusion?



Yes, although I don't think it necessarily had to go through Yiddish to get to German.


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## berndf

Older Slavic loans into German happened mainly through West Slavic languages more recent ones increasingly through Yiddish. Direct loans from Russian are relatively rare.


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## ahvalj

И. Ш. Шифман «Современный иврит» в: «Языки Азии и Африки. Семитские языки. IV, кн. 1», стр. 165:
_Частица nu̯ [nu], вошедшая в современный иврит также из русского языка через посредство идиш, приобрела здесь широкое распространение. Она утратила в иврите значение утвердительной частицы, но сохранила значение частицы как побудительной (например, [nu, 'nelex] ‘ну, пойдем’), так и вопросительной. Известный археолог И. Ядин рассказывает, что, ведя в Нью-Йорке переговоры о покупке рукописей из окрестностей Мертвого моря, он получил однажды из канцелярии премьер-министра, обеспокоенного затяжкой переговоров, телеграмму, состоявшую из одного только слова: [nu] ‘ну?’.

_Напоминает обмен телеграммами: «Изя всё» / «Ой».


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