April 03, 2006
Yiddish in Australian?
While Googling to read about Yiddish, I found this article in The Australian about Yiddish in Australia, which includes this fact:
Yiddish has left its mark on colloquial Australian, too, with words such as cobber, motser and shickered.
Huh? Yiddish words that are obscure in the USA have entered the very day vocabulary of Australia? Funny how, when the same languages (English+Yiddish) mix in different locations, the result is different!
So what do these words mean? A quick Google search reveals that cobber means pal/buddy; shickered means drunk; and the most interesting is, motser (also spelled, "motza"), which means, "Motza is an Aussie slang term meaning a large amount of money or more specifically a large gambling win .. it can also refer to a 'certainty' that would ensure such a win" (according to this). Note the etymology: it is from matzoh, so it is literally "bread money" - note the connection between bread and money.
Posted by Morgan at 12:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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