Different Words for the Same Thing
Why do you think there might be more than one word for the same delicious dessert? In this movie, we use the word ayzkrem for ice cream, but there are also two more: lode and marozhene.
One clue is the word ayzkrem itself—notice how similar it sounds to the English word “ice cream”. This is no coincidence! Since Yiddish speakers lived in many countries, it sometimes happened that words for the same thing entered Yiddish from different languages at the same time.
This was particularly true for when there was no Yiddish word already for a specific object or idea. It might be hard to imagine, but ice cream has not always been as common as it is today. As ice cream was introduced and popularized in different regions of the world, different languages coined different words for it, and Yiddish received three of them:
- לאָדע (lode) — in Poland
- מאַראָזשענע (marozhene) — in Lithuania and Russia
- אײַזקרעם (ayzkrem) — in America
There are many examples in Yiddish of different words for the same thing, which is called lexical variation. Learning words like lode, marozhene, and ayzkrem is a great way to learn about the geographical diversity of Yiddish speakers — a diversity which is a large part of the richness of Yiddish.
