meshugginah posts

[Matthew P Wiener]

>> >Almost unerring. I note in the New York Review of Books review
>> >that he he says something like "makes me meshugginah." Should be
>> >meshuga (crazy), not meshugginah (crazy person).

>> Well, maybe we're s'posed to get the sense that old Cunnel Washington
>>  just wasn't quite up to speed on his Yiddish studies?  Or maybe was
>> getting a
>> little--buzzed?

>(3) there's no mistake.
>>  Conceding little knowledge of Yiddish, I seem to recall hearing
>>  *meshugginah* used as an adjective  lots of times.  Is it never used
>>  this way, correctly I mean?

>It is never used this way correctly.

You are wrong.

The adjective is indeed "meshugeh", but outside of using it as a
predicate to modify the subject, the adjective gets declined.  A
crazy man is thus a "meshugginer" man.  When the noun is obvious,
it can be omitted, which means the derived noun is "meshugginer".

In the case at hand, the adjective is modifying the object.

(And in certain New York accents, the final 'r' is dropped, so we
get "meshugginah".)

>I actually studied Yiddish when I was 12 years old and my parents
>spoke it fluently. I never heard a native speaker of Yiddish use
>meshugginah as an adjective. Times do change and languages with them
>but I doubt that this usage would be considered anything more than an
>ignorant error.

I doublechecked with native speakers and one language teacher.  It
is not an ignorant error, although it is commonly "corrected".
--
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba at sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)