![]() ![]() Qualifizierungsverbund Soziales & Gesundheit (Vorarlberg): Network of social. Perhaps this has to do with it being used much less often in the UK than in the US. term resilience and the German direct or non-literal translations should be. I have to say I was surprised that the OED identifies it as not yet naturalized. This is not to say that it is not used in Yiddish-derived, as the modern German word is, from earlier versions of German-just to say that most Americans identify it (correctly, from an etymological standpoint) as being a German word. I talked with my mother this afternoon, and as soon as I mentioned the word, she volunteered that it was a German word. I myself grew up in a rural area in Central Illinois and always recognized the term as German. I expect that most Americans, including those that live in cities with large Jewish populations, think of "gesundheit" as German, not Yiddish. While the Wikipedia article claims that the usage of "gesundheit" in American English increased due to an influx of East-European Jews, it neither identifies it as a "typical Yiddishism," nor says that Americans see it as such.Īs to the origin, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and the Oxford English Dictionary say it derives from German, and the one reference given in the Wikipedia article is a link to a Random House Word of the Day page which explicitly denies that it comes from Yiddish: "It comes from German-no, not Yiddish." This does not have the religious connotation of being cursed or the sneezer receiving some sort of heavenly wrath.I disagree with your sentence, "As mentioned in Wikipedia, I think 'gesundheit' is seen in America as a typical Yiddishism." "Gesunheidt," which literally means "healthy hood" in German, probably came into the English-speaking countries as an alternative to "bless you" in the early twentieth century as Germans began to migrate to the US and other English-speaking countries. This may have been because it is overt to hear someone sneeze, since we cannot necessarily “see” the actual bubonic plague symptoms of regularly dressed people, such as headaches, fatigue, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, etc. Since this plague killed a third of Europeans between 13, there was paranoia that sneezing was a definite symptom of the bubonic plague and considering it to be a heavenly curse. Some attribute the phrase "Bless you," from "God bless you," to Pope Gregory the Great, who said it in the sixth century during a bubonic plague epidemic. Romans would say "Jupiter preserve you" or "Salve" which means "good health to you." Since the Romans obviously spoke Vulgar Latin, it is not surprising that in Spanish and Portuguese, two of the romance languages evolving from Latin during the Roman Empire breakup from 711 to 1492, also use words that mean "health" when we say "salud" and "saúde" in Spanish and Portuguese respectively. ![]() Historically ancient civilizations have directed their well wishes to sneezers. Why all this special treatment when someone sneezes? It is not the custom to say anything when a person coughs or burps. In Spanish the listener states "salud" and in Portuguese "saúde." you or Bless you, or the literal Good health are rough synonyms in English for gesundheit, but they dont have quite the same feel. Literal translation, direct translation or word-for-word translation, is a translation of a text done by translating each word separately, without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence. The first two expressions, "Bless you" and "Gesundheit" are common expressions used in the US directed to someone after he or she sneezes. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |