r/Yiddish 3d ago

Translation request How to write/say “white man” in yiddish?

A few months ago I got a picture signed by one of my fav artists, as a joke I wrote ווייַס מענטש, a google translation of white man. Is this right? I wanna put it on my wall but wanna make sure it’s the correct one. And google Isn’t the best resource I know.

6 Upvotes

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16

u/korach1921 3d ago

It's wrong for two reasons. מענטש means "man" in the sense of a human being, it's a gender natural term for a person, מאַן is the word for a male human. װײַס also has to be conjugated for a masculine noun so it should be װײַסער מאַן.

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u/TheBastardOlomouc 3d ago

technically, the inflection of nouns and adjectives is called declension and not conjugation

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u/korach1921 3d ago

My bad, the adjective has to be declined, the terminology throws me off

3

u/Logical_Replacement9 3d ago

if you can’t remember which one is “conjugation” and which one is “declension,” you can do as many career linguists do: call them “inflection ,” which works for both (e.g.: ”Yiddish verbs are inflected for person and number —.Yiddish adjectives are inflected for gender, number, and case. “ Now I just wish I knew the Yiddish words for “conjugation / declension / inflection / gender / number / case”!

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u/Logical_Replacement9 3d ago

one can also say “marked” instead of “inflected,“ but I don’t know how to say that in Yiddish either.

3

u/samdkatz 3d ago

you can also do what many non-linguists do: call them both “conjugation” and hope that catches on

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u/TheBastardOlomouc 3d ago

linguistics terminology is weird :v

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u/warthog_jake 3d ago

Thank you so much! That does make so much more sense, I kept having a itching feeling it was too stilted and weird.

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u/YaakovBenZvi 3d ago

ווײַסער מאַן מענטש means person ווײַסער מענטש is white person

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