Re: Sh!

Hello,

> > Incidentally, 'sha!' is the rude analogue of this in
> Russian. It can be
> > used as an equivalent of 'Shut up!', or as a signal to finish doing
> > something (quarreling, or working). It was originally the
> slang of the
> > townsmen from Ukraine, which was the hub of Jewish
> population. I think I
> > will not err in pronouncing this a Yiddish borrowing.
>
> Do you mean a borrowing into Yiddish, or out of Yiddish?
> (The evidence
> is probably nil either way, but I wondered which you had in mind.)
Out of. The lower classes in Odessa and elsewhere in the south borrowed
a lot from Yiddish, and some it later spread over much of the rest of
the Russian language. One can also name _xipesh_ 'scramble' and _tsimes_
'mishmash'.

It became popular probably because much of the Russian 20th century
intelligentsia was Jewish, and it was also much used in the popular
stories by Isaac Babel.

Pavel
--
Pavel Iosad               pavel_iosad@mail.ru

Is mall a mharcaicheas am fear a bheachdaicheas
                 --Scottish proverb