After the Great Giga/Jigga Debate, I’ve got to know how y’all pronounce “mishmash.”
A couple of Jewish friends insist it should be “mishmosh” while everybody else seems to use “…mash.”
I think those friends should know, but once again, I suppose common usage trumps correctness.
From m-w.com
mishmash
One entry found for mishmash.
Main Entry: mish·mash
Pronunciation: 'mish-"mash, -"mäsh
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English & Yiddish; Middle English mysse masche, perhaps reduplication of mash mash; Yiddish mish-mash, perhaps reduplication of mishn to mix
: HODGEPODGE, JUMBLE
So, both are right, I guess. I say mishmash to rhyme with cash.
Mishmash as in mashed potatoes!
They can pronounce it their way. They can not dictate what others do.
They are only half right.
The online dictionary says ‘mosh’ is acceptable.
For what it’s worth, my grandmother, who was Irish-American, always pronounced it mish-mosh.
I’m a “mosh” gal myself, albeit a gentile one. (“Do not go gentile into that good mishmash…”)
An adage should burn and rave at close of day…
Me?
Mish – mash, I was takin’ a bath…
I pronounce it to rhyme with “gosh,” and until recently that’s the only way I’ve ever heard it.
The traditional Yiddish pronunciation is “mish-mosh.” See Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish. IMHO, there’s no good reason to use a Yiddish word and pronounce it non-traditionally, if the traditional pronunciation is easy enough to achieve with ordinary English phonemes. Which isn’t to say “mash” is wrong; it has, as has been pointed out, made the dictionaries. But I do think “mosh” is the better pronunciation.
I say mash, not mosh. But wouldn’t “ä” be pronounced closer to a “u” than an “o” if you were trying to approximate the correct Yiddish sound in English? I’m assuming the Yiddish pronunciation would be similar to the German pronunciation.
For some people mash does rhyme with cash, but is also pronounced similarly to mosh. When spoken, they sound like mahsh and cahsh. I believe that this is the “broad a” that is somewhat common on the East Coast.
I spent about 15 years as a New Yoakuh, so for me it’s pronounced ‘mosh’, not ‘mash’.
Hey John Mace. Bear in mind that Yiddish was written with the Hebrew alphabet, not the German alphabet. See, e.g., Wikipedia. Mish-mash is a transliteration (no umlaut, btw). (Which is why many Yiddishisms have alternate English spellings.) Mash is intended to convey the broad “a” of father, as distinguished from the oh-so-subtly different short “o” of mop.
That ä is not the a-umlaut of German, but a character used in American dictionaries to represent the a of father.
And I agree with *P-Bear42 that this sound is not the same as would be heard in mosh.
According to the reference quoted by FilmGeek, this is not solely a Yiddish expression imported into English. It’s also a Middle English word, so it’s perfectly legitimate to give it an entirely English pronunciation. So, if you pronounce it to rhyme with “cash,” then you’re using the English word; if you pronounce it the Yiddish way, you’re using Yinglish.
So, does that mean that the jumbled mess I’ve pronounced as mish-a-gosh is actually spelled mishagash?