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According to etymonline, the noun chutzpah came into English from Yiddish, with the term originally coming from Hebrew. I am wondering if the term has also entered German. I found the term chutzpadik in this German dictionary and Chuzpe in this one. Could I expect a well-educated native German speaker (not of Jewish descent) to understand the terms chutzpah or chutzpadik, or is it an uncommon word?

Jan
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Ellen Spertus
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    We learn from this question, that it is not sufficient, to find somewhere a dictionary listing the word, to conclude that it is known. If it is not in the Duden, chances, that it is known are VERY small. By the way I would have assumed from the ending, that it is a substantive analoguous to [Apparatschik].(http://www.duden.de/suchen/dudenonline/Apparatschik). – guidot May 10 '16 at 09:07
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    @guidot I have the impression that the Slavic-looking ending -ik is the key feature that makes the word difficult to understand for Germans. If it were written with -ig (different spelling, but the same pronunciation, due to Auslautverhärtung), the word formation would be a lot more transparent. – Uwe May 10 '16 at 09:23
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    The first link points to "internationale-worterbuch.com". "Internationale Worterbuch" is not a well-formed German expression; it should at the very least be "internationales Wörterbuch" with an s at the end (I don't mind substituting o for ö so much). Don't trust a "dictionary" that can't even get its URL right. – Stephan Kolassa May 10 '16 at 14:29
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    Stephan is right: The site is full of misspellings and seems to have no value at all, as far as I can tell. - Chu(t)zpe is is rather well-known, Chutzpadik does not exist. If you want an adjective or adverb you could say 'mit Chuzpe' or 'ganz schön dreist'. – TaW May 10 '16 at 15:59
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    @Uwe: Standard pronunciation for a word ending in -ig is with a final [ç], not [k], though. – chirlu May 10 '16 at 16:40
  • Haha: „Bitte helfen Sie uns zu erweitern die Bedeutung von chutzpadik indem eine alternative Definition oder Beispiel oben. Bitte fügen Sie Kommentare, um uns bei der Verbesserung der Website.“ – Carsten S May 11 '16 at 23:14
  • The Yiddish -dik ending is the equivalent of standard German -dich, not a Slavic or other ending. It was presumably written with a K to indicate orthographically that Yiddish speakers pronounced it /k/ rather than /ç/ as in standard Hochdeutsch. – Paul Legato May 12 '16 at 00:38
  • @PaulLegato My point was that "-ik" looks Slavik to the average German, even though it isn't. – Uwe May 12 '16 at 05:32

5 Answers5

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I’ve never heard or seen the word chutzpadik in German. Chuzpe, on the other hand, is well-known. It’s not a word that the average German is using in everyday speech, but it occurs occasionally, say, in newspaper articles, sometimes with, sometimes without explanation.

Jan
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Uwe
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  • Thank you. "Chutzpadik" is less common in English too. Would a German speaker be able to figure out the meaning of "chutzpadik" if they knew "chuzpe"? (Forgive my ignorance. I know nothing of the grammar of German or Yiddish.) – Ellen Spertus May 09 '16 at 21:24
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    @espertus no, it would not be immediately intuitively accessible for an average well-educated native speaker. Maybe with some thinking or more context. – hiergiltdiestfu May 09 '16 at 21:50
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    I've never heard "Chuzpe" before. Is it maybe used only regional? – Iris May 10 '16 at 06:01
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    If I have heard or seen “Chuzpe” in German, then it must have been some time ago, I could not really tell. I would understand it though, because I know “chutzpah” in English and am aware that it is Yiddish. – Carsten S May 10 '16 at 06:39
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    @Iris: It appears in newspapers all over Germany at least, as Google News shows: https://www.google.com/search?q=chuzpe&tbm=nws – chirlu May 10 '16 at 07:12
  • never had chuzpe either and i was born in germany – Gigala May 10 '16 at 07:50
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    @chirlu I first intended to write that it's likely to occur in FAZ and Spiegel and unlikely to occur in BILD, but it turned out that even BILD had some hits. – Uwe May 10 '16 at 08:15
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    (Disclaimer: Not a native speaker) In six years in Germany, the only time I've heard Chuzpe is when I used it, assuming that native speakers would understand it. The only ones who did, however, were those who knew American English very well. – errantlinguist May 10 '16 at 11:49
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    In my family as well as with many friends the word "chuzpe" is well known and is also used in appropriate cases. Moreover I know it from many places in literature - but maybe with a bias to authors with jewish background (don't know really a statistic). However, I've never heard or read "chutzpadik". (my parents stem from prussia but I've grown up in west germany and I have visited the "gymnasium" and have had many friends in the political context) – Gottfried Helms May 11 '16 at 00:59
  • Much like Mr. Helms. I know chuzpe. Most of my family does and many Germans know the books by Salcia Landmann. I have never heard chuzpedik, but immediately knew what it meant. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salcia_Landmann – Ludi Dec 22 '17 at 12:22
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I am a historian and I had never encountered chutzpadik in German sources. I have found the word, however, in a Jüdisches Lexikon published in Berlin in 1927:

Ein chuzef, auch chuzpenik oder chuzpedig = frecher Mensch

and also in the 1903 issue of the Jewish magazine from Berlin Ost und West:

Gotteslästerer ... chuzpedige Lümmel

the latter passage being from a German translation of a Yiddish theatre piece.

fc7
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I’m a native speaker and I have never heard that word.

Perhaps it is a bit more common in other regions then the one where I have grown up and live. There are local differences concerning the vocabulary of the spoken language. But I don’t think so in this case.

I think I’ve read chuzpe in a magazine once.

But long story short: Chutzpadik is not a common word in German.

Wrzlprmft
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user21585
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Native speaker (Rhineland) here. I know and understand

  • jmd. hat Chuzpe (allgemein gehalten)
  • jmd. hat die Chuzpe, etwas zu tun (auf einen speziellen Fall bezogen)

and I know that other native speakers, at least those of higher education, should understand.

The word "Chutzpadik", as "freche Menschen", is unknown in modern German. Before Shoa, more Yiddish/Hebrew terms were known to everyday Germans than now.

Alexander
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The -dik ending is Yiddish, meaning "having this characteristic" and generally used to make an adjective from a noun.

Chutzpah is something one can have, a noun. Chutzpadik is an adjective meaning "having chutzpah." (Example: That answer was really chutzpadik.)

-dik does not come from Hebrew, and may come from the archaic high German from which Yiddish is also derived. But in any case, it's not modern German.

Jeff
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  • The Yiddish -dik suffix is the transparent equivalent of the modern German suffix -dich, which has exactly the same meaning and almost exactly the same pronunciation. Yiddish is closely related to modern German to the point where regional dialect variations in German pronunciation are in many cases much greater than the differences between Yiddish and standard German. – Paul Legato May 12 '16 at 00:31
  • This is really only very tangentially an answer to the question. The answer is hidden in the final sentence after an elaborate etymological derivation of chutzpadik. – Jan May 12 '16 at 22:49