Yeshivish

This article is about sociolect of English. For the group of people who are commonly referred to as "Yeshivish", see Misnagdim § Litvishe.

Yeshivish (Yiddish: ישיבֿיש), also known as Yeshiva English, Yeshivisheh Shprach, or Yeshivisheh Reid, is a sociolect of English spoken by Yeshiva students and other Jews with a strong connection to the Orthodox Yeshiva world.[1]

"Yeshivish" may also refer to non-Hasidic Haredi Jews.[2] Sometimes it has an extra connotation of non-Hasidic Haredi Jews educated in yeshiva and whose education made a noticeable specific cultural impact onto them. In the latter case the term has ambivalent (both positive and negative) connotations comparable to these of the term "academic".[3]

James Lambert writes that the term may be a portmanteau word of yeshiva and English, or may simply be formed from yeshiva + the adjectival suffix -ish.[4]

  1. ^ "How To Understand Yeshivish". Forward. 23 February 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
  2. ^ JPPI. "The Yeshivish Community". jppi.org.il/en/. The Jewish People Policy Institute. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
  3. ^ Cross-Currents, Special to (10 July 2013). "The Yeshivish Brand". Cross-Currents. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  4. ^ Lambert, James (2017). "A multitude of "lishes"". English World-Wide. 38 (3): 1–33. doi:10.1075/eww.00001.lam.