1985: Bad Loans: Yiddish to English May 22, 2020

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Just because a word is adopted from another language, doesn't mean at all that the original meaning is kept. For instance, many Yiddish word in English, like 'chutzpah', 'glitch', and 'mentsh' have different meanings, often by a degree of intensity. 'Chutzpah' in English is positive, being synonymous with 'moxie' and conveying toughness, but in Yiddish חצפה means 'insolence' or 'audacity'. Likewise, 'mentsh' (מענטש) in English refers to a great, upstanding person, but in Yiddish merely means 'person' in a very generic sense. 'Glitch' is a little different too, but partly because it often is used to refer to technological issues which would not have possibly existed when the word, glitsh (גליטש), meaning 'slip', was adopted into English.

This has been talked about with regard to Spanish in Tagalog

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