Many Yiddish words have crept their way into the English vernacular, which poses many potential problems:
- If you consider Yiddish a galus language, you may see its survival as undesirable.
- If you consider Yiddish an extremely sacred language, then you may not want goyim using the holy words.
- If you want to boycott all Jewish-related entities, you are definitely not worthy of using the word mentsch.
- The pronunciations and spelling of Yiddish words transliterated into English are typically ambiguous.
- Some of the words may not be in ‘auto-correct’ on your phone.
In order to address these concerns, we need to come up with English equivalents of typical Yiddish phrases. The equivalent may be an English word that is already in use, a portmanteau word (a combination of multiple words), or an entirely new word that follows the phonetic rules of English.