Round two: Craic vs שלימזל, shlimazl
(poll at the end)
Craic (Irish Gaelic)
[kɾˠac]
Translation: Fun, good time, chat, but can also be used in ways like "what's the craic?" to say "what's up?"
Irish Gaelic is an Indo-European language belonging to the Celtic branch. It has 141 000 native speakers in Ireland and 1 030 000 people speak it as a second language. It is taught in schools as a second language, but the population actually speaking Irish Gaelic on a daily basis either live in small areas where English never took over (around 2% of Ireland’s population) or are groups in urban areas mostly speaking it as a second language. Many only speak Irish Gaelic within the education system.
Motivation: The spelling is pretty cool, it’s a culturally specific word, and I love how confused people get when I use it, it’s funny to see people thinking I am talking about drugs when I am not.
שלימזל, shlimazl (Yiddish)
[ʃləˈmɑːzəl]
Translation: A person with perpetually bad luck
Yiddish is an Indo-European language belonging to the Germanic branch, today spoken by 409 000 people. It originated among Jews in Germany who mixed German with Hebrew from the Tanakh, with records going back to the 8th century. After 1250 the Yiddish-speaking Jews got contact with Slavic Jews and spread the language there. The dialect that evolved in contact with the Slavic languages later on became the prominent one. Yiddish was spread beyond Europe due to persecution of Jews in eastern Europe that led to emigration. Around half of the Yiddish-speaking community was murdered in the Holocaust, and due to that as well as further prosecution in Soviet and voluntary switching to Hebrew, there are far less speakers now than before WWII, when Yiddish had 11 million speakers.
Motivation: It’s a fun word
Which is the best word?
Craic
שלימזל, shlimazl









