# Yiddish: Oishe geveine lech



## Inquisitive_Inquisitor

Hello there!
I am reading a book with some phrases in Yiddish (I hope I'm not too wrong) which are transcribed in English. The first one is "Oishe geveine lech". Could anyone help me guess what it might mean?
The book is Jan Eliasberg's _Hanna's War. _


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## Mr.Dent

If you can provide more context for the phrase it would help. What was the situation? What does the entire paragraph say? 
I'm taking a guess here -- Moishe (a man's name) was lekh (This would probably be the usual transliteration). "Lekh" by itself does not mean anything as far as I know, but it does form an integral part of many different words. You can look it up here to get an idea: Yiddish dictionary lookup


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## L'irlandais

I have it on good authority.


> ...
> 
> _Oishe Geveine Lech_ is a more formal version of the Yiddish slang phrase “Oy Gevalt…” which, roughly translated, means “Oh, for crying out loud…”
> 
> In context: Epstein is verbally "rolling his eyes" and using a Yiddish expression that comments on the over the top, borderline ludicrous security measures being taken by the military in ordering everyone at Los Alamos to refer to the bomb only by the absurd word “gadget.”


...
@Inquisitive_Inquisitor


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## Mr.Dent

Great research L'irlandais!


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## Demiurg

Jan Eliasberg said:
			
		

> _Oishe Geveine Lech_ is a more formal version of the Yiddish slang phrase “Oy Gevalt…” which, roughly translated, means “Oh, for crying out loud…”


Does Jan Eliasberg speak Yiddish? To me "oishe geveine lech" looks like a spelling variant of "oysergeveynlekh" (German: _außergewöhnlich_) - _extraordinary_.


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## L'irlandais

I don’t know if the author speaks Yiddish, she has a Jewish surname.  However the main character was inspired by Lise Meitner, who did speak Yiddish.  Lise  Meitner | Jewish Women's Archive. So the author may have gotten help with it, if she doesn’t speak the language herself.


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## Haskol

This does indeed look like a mangled version of אויסערגעווענלעך (oysergeveynlekh), which means extraordinary/amazing/wonderful.

If that is true, it also seems very inappropriate to use it in such a novel, assuming it is uttered by the main character of the novel, Hannah. There is no reason why an Austria-Jewish woman living during WWII would be using a Eastern Yiddish phrase, or would speak as her native language anything other than German, really.


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