Talk:Chutzpah

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Judaism Portal Chutzpah is part of WikiProject Judaism, a project to improve all articles related to Judaism. If you would like to help improve this and other articles related to the subject, consider joining the project. All interested editors are welcome. This template adds articles to Category:WikiProject Judaism articles.
Project Judaism To-do: edit purge watch Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: Jewish and Biblical Units of Measurement or some such name, to include material of Ancient Hebrew units of measurement but also Talmudic units and use in Halacha (a la the Hebrew Wikipedia article he:מידות ומשקלות תורניים) Collaboration of the week { Cleanup: Jewish mythology - needs to be rewritten to be inline with our other mythology articles. Expand: Yom Ha'atzmaut - quite short for an article of such importance Wikiversity: School of Jewish Studies. Part of the new open content university, Wikiversity. Stubs: Category:Judaism stubs, Category:Tanakh stubs, Category:Synagogue stubs Update: Portal:Judaism is WikiProject Judaism's frequently updated portal. You can help make this the best portal on Wikipedia. Look at the talk page to see how you can help. Template loop detected: Template:WikiProject Judaism
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

This page was placed on Votes for Deletion in June 2004. Consensus was to keep; view discussion at /Delete.

Since we're keeping this, can we NPOV it a bit? Something a tad less gushy? NTK 01:31, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I can't seem to find an authoritative source that "chutzpah" came from Hebrew to Yiddish. Keeping in mind that Ben Yehuda reconstructed Modern Hebrew only at the beginning of the 20th century, and before then Hebrew had been a literary-only language for centuries, the key question is: did this word exist in any form of Hebrew before that time? If not, then Hebrew borrowed it from Yiddish, not vice versa. Queerwiki 01:09, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew words are distinctly recognisable. I'm sure a linguist could explain in precise terminology how to recognize Hebrew words; I'm not a linguist, just a native speaker of Hebrew, but I can tell you that suggesting that Hebrew borrowed "chutzpah" from Yiddish makes about as much intuitive sense to me as suggesting that Japanese borrowed "sushi" from English. My little desktop dictionary cites the talmud for some early examples of "chutzpa", I'm sure if I had a hefty etymological dictionary I could trace it back even earlier. It's Hebrew alright. --Woggly 22:34, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough - and if it's in the Talmud then I'm happy - but remember that anyone who is a native speaker of modern Hebrew is speaking a language that was reconstructed 100 years ago from a combination of biblical Hebrew and contemporary langauges. Just as English speakers can get confused about word origin, I'm sure there are many Hebrew speakers that are not aware whether certain words came from ancient Hebrew, or from languages like Russian and Yiddish that predate the resurrection of Hebrew. So I think it was still a valid question for me to ask. Queerwiki 02:01, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow. You came back 8 months later to look for a response to your question? Jayjg ^(talk) 17:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

LOL, I think I forgot to put it on my watchlist before I went travelling for a while. Queerwiki 19:01, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed you responded! Anyway, as I was saying, unlike English, Hebrew is a language in which borrowed words don't naturalise easily. Words borrowed from Greek that have been in use for centuries have distinct markers. Even many words borrowed from Aramaic or Arabic stand out, though these languages are extremely close to Hebrew! I'd almost describe Hebrew as a xenophobic language, a language that doesn't take kindly to borrowed words... in short, a native Hebrew speaker's intuitions about etymology of Hebrew words are probably more reliable than a native English speaker's intuitions about etymology of English words. Not that your question wasn't justified. --woggly 17:14, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Hebrew 2 Via Yiddish 3 English Meaning 4 Modern Usage 5 Chutzpah comes from Arameic

[edit] Hebrew

Since this is an English language article, and I (along with most of the potential audience, I guess) don't read Hebrew, a transliteration of the Hebrew source-word ' חוצפה' would be useful

Fourohfour 09:57, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

It's just the same - read hutz-pah. The letters are (right to left :) - het (throat h), vav (read as u in this context), tzadik, pe and hey (h silent at the end as in "Sarah"). As simple as that.

[edit] Via Yiddish

I think it's fair to say that Chutzpah came to English via Yiddish (rather than direct from Hebrew, or from Yiddish and Hebrew), based on the history of the immigrants who brought it here... so I removed a redundant edit by 89.138.44.19 (the article clearly explains in the next sentence that Yiddish got it from Hebrew). Queerwiki 05:56, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] English Meaning

While this discussion is interesting, English is probably the only language spoken today where the majority of its words are lone words imported from other languages. As this is an English language article, perhaps it should include discussion of the words meaning in English in addition to its meaning in Hebrew. I would say that in popular use today Chutzpah does not have a negative connotation. Rather the word would simply mean audacity or courage, more vulgarly stated “balls”. Rtb677 01:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modern Usage

White House Presidential Spokesman Tony Snow used the word "chutzpah" to make fun of President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for criticizing President Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby: "I don't know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it." (July 5, 2007)

[edit] Chutzpah comes from Arameic

The word does not exist in ancient Hebrew, but is common in Talmudic Arameic, from which it got into the Hebrew. DGtal (talk) 19:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The article does not contradict that statement, nevertheless to include it a source is needed. Jon513 (talk) 13:27, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

All it takes is a simple search in the relevant texts, freely available on the web (for example here). You will find חציף, חצוף, חציפא, חציפי and חוצפא (notice: not חוצפה, which is "hebrewised" by turning last א to ה) in the talmuds, but not in the bible or mishnah. Is this proof enough? DGtal (talk) 17:56, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that making the leap from us not being able to find it in the bible but being able to find it in aramaic texts to it originating from Talmudic Aramaic is one that would be original research, unless we can find some source that states that's the case. Yonatan ^talk 16:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with yonatan, that this needs a sources. Nevertheless, it is a bit frustrating to have something that you are very sure is true, but cannot include. At least the article does not contradict it. I will try to find a source. Jon513 (talk) 16:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)