Talk:Oy vey

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[edit] OY VEY!

OY VEY!

There is a page about oy vey.

Wikipedia has a page on almost everything I can think of.

Oy vey,

Psdubow

[edit] Vey: from Aramaic?

In Bamidbar (Numbers) 24:23, Balaam says (in the KJV) "Alas!" The Hebrew for this is "oy", spelled aleph-vov-yud (I dunno how to get this thing to display Hebrew text). The Targum Onkelos for this is "Vai", spelled vov-yud. I'd always assumed that "Vai", so pronounced, was the Aramaic translation for the Hebrew "Oy". (cf. Latin "Vae", as in Emperor Vespasian's last words, "Vae, puto deus fio") Of course my family spoke the Galician dialect of Yiddish, so "Vey" would have been pronounced "Vai" anyway.

Shalom S. (talk) 01:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

  • If you look through the page, this has already been covered. It's pretty much a coincidence -- "vey" in Yiddish comes from "Weh" in German, meaning "woe". The use of "oy" in the Hebrew text could be related, but that's assuming a pronunciation trait that happens to exactly parallel phonetic developments in Yiddish two millennia later is preserved unchanged. It's like saying Uri Geller does his unspectacular tricks with psychic powers -- it could be true, but it's more likely he's just a magician, and a rather uncreative one at that. Haikupoet (talk) 02:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of 'oy' and 'vey'

To put it mildly, there is absolutely no sense discussing the origin of this phrase, which is entirely Germanic, a fact that no scholar of Yiddish or linguistics has ever questioned; in Middle High German the phrase "ou wê" (and variants of it) occurs frequently, and this phrase persists in many Modern German dialects as "au weh" or "o weh." Apply the historical vowel changes and you get modern Yiddish "oy vey." Furthermore, in older Yiddish texts we find the interjection "או װײ," and though we may not know how this was pronounced, it proves that there is no connection between the ancient Hebrew noun "אױ" and the Yiddish interjection "אױ." This makes sense, since these texts predate the vowel change that turned various different vowels into "oy" in Yiddish. Bws2002 (talk) 14:50, 27 December 2005

Thanks Bws, that's what I suspected. Do you want to make the appropriate edits? RMoloney (talk) 20:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of 'vey'

Are there any sources which argue that 'vey' is of Hebrew origin, rather than, say, German 'Weh'? As it stands, this claim looks like original research RMoloney (talk) 18:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

  • RM: Do you read or understand Hebrew? If you do then the following section in the article is perfectly legitimate and is not "original research": "While the expression Oy used alone has become common, the usage of Oy Vey probably has its roots in such verses from the Book of Proverbs 23:29 as: Lemi oy lemi avoy (לְמִי אוֹי לְמִי אֲבוֹי) "Who [cries] oy who alas...?" [1] " A similar expression is still used in modern Israel Oy VaVoy to denote "Woe, and Alas" meaning something like "Woa! You're in big trouble" or "Wha! This is terrible". Furthermore, Hebrew has always been the core language of the Jewish people and has never been lost. The German language arrived on the scene much later in history relative to Hebrew, and if anything, it may have absorbed words from the Hebrew due to the long presence of the Jews in the lands of present-day Germany and Austria. In turn, of course, the Jews absorbed words from Old German and applied it to the (historically) newer language of Yiddish. What exactly don't you like? IZAK 19:21, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
What exactly I don't like is the 'probably'. That seems POV, as my assessment is still 'probably germanic'. I'm not saying that your argument isn't persuasive. But I don't think it's the universally accepted etymology. There's an interview here with a linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann (who seems reasonably credentialled) in which he mentions that 'vey' comes from the German 'Weh'. If there's an expert who disagrees with this, then we'll just say that the origin is disputed, and include the relevant sources. RMoloney (talk) 20:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
As for 'oy', it could be an old Hebrew expression; it could also be an artifact of the o->oy vowel shift common in some Yiddish dialects. 'Vey' is clearly derived from German 'Weh' -- they are identical in pronunciation and have identifiable cognates in other Germanic languages. There is a distant possibility of it being a Semitic borrowing, but even assuming the information in the article is true (not being a Hebrew speaker I'm in no position to gainsay it), it doesn't prove that the 'vey' part of 'oy vey' is anything but Germanic in origin. (Indeed, considering the expression "oh woe is me" is common to English, German, and Yiddish, there's a distinct possibility it's a very old Germanic expression indeed.) Also, I sense a hint of identity politics in IZAK's assertions -- I could be wrong, but if you check the history of the Urdu page you can see what kind of trouble identity politics cause when discussing linguistic issues. Haikupoet 20:53, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

As regards 'oy', Rosten mentions in The Joys of Yiddish that it is Slavic in origin, and it seems that there is a Ukrainian exclamation "Oy!" or "Oy-yoy!" [2]. I have to say, I always thought it fell into the category of natural exclamations, like 'ah' or 'oh', but with a Yiddish flavour. Anyway, is anyone aware of a dispute regarding the etymology? RMoloney (talk) 02:15, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge the Hebrew Oy and VaVoy precede both the Germanic and Slavic versions. Proof for that is simple enough: They are can be found in the most reliable of texts: The Hebrew Bible, as in Book of Proverbs 23:29 as: Lemi oy lemi avoy (לְמִי אוֹי לְמִי אֲבוֹי) "Who [cries] oy who alas...? [3] . What's so hard to grasp or accept about that? IZAK 23:37, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, to me, the 'oy' is plausible enough to be included, as a note at least, but the 'avoy' is definitely too much of a stretch. There are no sources indicating that "oy avoy" was ever used as a phrase prior to the Yiddish "oy vey", and there are no sources indicating an evolution of the word "avoy" to "vey". Since "weh" is the commonly accepted origin, we should just go with that.
I'm not saying that the phrase was never used with a nod toward the biblical verse; that seems quite possible. However, I would suggest that attempting to say that there is an explicitly religious connotation to the phrase is speculation. Certainly in the last century, it was as secular as any other Yiddish phrase; and even if it's true that "oy vey" has a biblical origin, I don't see that there's any proof that Yiddish speakers were widely aware of this origin.
Finally, Hebrew predates the Germanic/Slavic influences: so what? That doesn't guarantee its survival into the modern language (half of whose speakers had little to no Hebrew). Indeed most experts reckon that less than 20% of Yiddish words are of Semitic (Hebrew/Aramaic) origin. RMoloney (talk) 02:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

TM:So how does "weh" with a soft German "w" become "Vey" with a very strong "v"? For you the "the 'avoy' is definitely too much of a stretch" because you are not a learned Jew, but to anyone familiar with Judaism, as most Jews were historically before they began assimilating, they absorbed uncountable words from their Tanakh that most knew by heart into their everyday vernaculars. You are seeing this in too limited a light I fear, to your own detriment. IZAK 02:40, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

  • What do you mean "soft German "w""? The sound is /v/ in German and Yiddish, no matter how it's spelled. Furthermore, your hypothesis seems to violate Occam's Razor -- two languages, obviously closely related, sharing the same phrase constructed exactly the same way, and with the Yiddish word under dispute being identical in pronunciation with a German word with exactly the same meaning, and you're asserting that it came from Hebrew? Haikupoet 02:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Haikupoet:You obviously know very little about Yiddish, and Hebrew for that matter. The German "w" is much softer than the Yiddish "v". Vay in Yiddish is pronounced with a "v" identical to the Hebrew "vav", a very heavy and emphatic sound which it is not in German. As for "Occam's Razor" it doesn't sound very Jewish (which is the translation of the word Yiddish) to meIZAK 03:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Occam's razor states, in a nutshell, that the simplest, most straightforward explanation that fits the evidence is the one to follow. (That's the funny thing about logic -- it works no matter the cultural origin of the problem.) In this case, since the word "weh" in German and "vey" in Yiddish are used exactly the same way in exactly the same context, there is no reason to assume anything but a common origin (in this case Middle High German) for the words -- it's only complicating things to assume a more baroque explanation. It's a little like Uri Geller -- yes, he could be a real psychic, but in light of the fact that he a) is a trained amateur magician, b) has repeatedly been caught cheating, and c) his tricks can be duplicated with magical techniques, it's highly unlikely. Now I suppose you could be right about "oy", but at best it's a convergence of a Hebrew exclamation with a German idiom, perhaps with a dash of folk etymology thrown in. Haikupoet 02:32, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

"It is also a very Jewish thing for someone to say. So if you hear someone use this term they are most likely Jewish" I am not extrmemly experienced with wiki and I've tried to change this, but I haven't had enough time to figure out how. I feel this should be deleted from the main article. I'm not arguing that it's Jewish or not, but feel it's entirely out of place in an encyclopedia. Blueboxbandit 06:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)blueboxbandit

sorry for the poor editing just figured it outBlueboxbandit 06:40, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Articles for Deletion debate

This article survived an Articles for Deletion debate. The discussion can be found here. Owen× ☎ 21:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Swedish "oj"

Does anyone know if the swedish expression "oj" (pronounced just like oy), meaning something like oops, has any connection with "oy". It certainly seems like it, but i wouldn't want to edit an article to find myself beeing completely wrong.

OGOL 21:18, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, by comparing the entries for Svenska Akademins Ordbok and Deutsches Wörterbuch, it seems plausible, but we'd need a better, more explicit source. On the other hand, interjections are often bad choices for etymology, since they're prone to occhur naturally, and are easily loaned between languages. (However, a common origin somewhere in the German-Dutch language continuum doesn't sound unlikely, from what I could find out.) 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 10:01, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ø

Someone I know claims that this "Øy Vey", any truth to this? 81.227.124.56 17:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] In popular culture

I'm editing out this section it doesn't add anything to the article. Whispering 14:49, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

It's been put back. I tend to agree with you, and think that "popular culture" sections are too often used for "piles of stuff I find vaguely interesting", with a sudden lack of the quality control the rest of the encyclopedia gets. I've added an {{unreferenced}} template, and I think it would be perfectly reasonable for anything that's not sourced after a reasonable period to be removed. For example, the "Oy Oy Seven" Bond parody has no referencing at all, and should not remain. 86.132.138.84 (talk) 14:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitrary Citations

The footnotes in the introduction are overused and sloppy. For instance, there are two different articles cited from two different papers, but they are clearly articles on the same story. The problem is they are used to cite two different things... That makes no sense and takes the legitimacy away from both of the citaitons. Citations are not to be arbitrarily doled out to one sentence or another. They are supposed fit with sentences/clauses like a locks and keys. There are a lot of arbitrary citations here... Someone should fix... ask123 (talk) 19:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)