Say the “eh”

No, not the Canadian “eh?” – the Yiddish “eh.” The one that belongs at the end of words like blintzeh and noodgeh. In English, we think that if something ends in “es” for a plural, it is because the last letter of the word is one of those consonants that it’s just to hard to say “s” after. We don’t have a lot of vowel-ended words in English, so we don’t realize that borrowed words from other languages do. Maybe it’s just an in-group thing, but if you want to be part of that particular ingroup, you call that crepe filled with cheese a “blintzeh” not a “blintz” and when someone keeps nagging you, you say, “Don’t noodgeh me” not “don’t noodge me.” The word “noodge” is a noun. It means one who noodgehs. Now you know.

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