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My mother grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at a time when the neighborhood was largely inhabited by Yiddish-speaking Jews. This led to the amusing situation of her Irish-born grandparents, and a lesser extent, her parents, speaking a fair amount of Yiddish at home.

She doesn't remember most of the Yiddish she used to know, but when I was growing up, I was sometimes told to

"Mach nacht und geh schlafen"

(I'm spelling this via a combination of phonetics and my very limited knowledge of German).

The first time I tried to translate the phrase, I came up with something a bit too literal: I think it was "Make night and be laying down".

My question is twofold:

  1. Are my grammar, conjugations, word form, etc., correct?

  2. Is the literal translation of the phrase: "Make night and be laying down"?

maciejwww
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Wad Cheber
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  • "make night and go sleep" – In German, you wouldn't say the the former part but the latter part is common. I don't know about Yiddish. – Em1 Aug 09 '15 at 09:02
  • @Gerhard - Debatable. http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/3641/is-yiddish-a-dialect-of-german?rq=1 – Wad Cheber Aug 09 '15 at 09:35
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    @Gerhard - Better close this one too, and this one, and this one, and this one. – Wad Cheber Aug 09 '15 at 09:36
  • @Gerhard - All other considerations aside, the fact that I obtained the translation by using a German-to-English translators suggests that it shouldn't be off-topic. – Wad Cheber Aug 09 '15 at 10:07
  • Note that there already is a Meta discussion on the on-topicness of Yiddish. Please bring up any arguments regarding this there or vote on existing answers. Also note that you can retract close votes by clicking on close again (cc @Gerhard). – Wrzlprmft Aug 09 '15 at 10:38
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    do "night" and go to sleep. If I translate the first part into Hebrew (at least, the spirit of it), then it would translate to "say/bless goodnight". As often happens in languages the all-purpose verb "do" replaces whatever proper verb should've been there, and do night is actually do "(good)night" and off to bed! – Ran G. Aug 09 '15 at 18:55
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    As in: "Yossi, go to bed!",
    "but MOM, I can't go to bed now... I ... I .. didn't tell everyone goodnight!", - "then do 'goodnight' and go to bed".

    (a 3-6 years old boy, home alone with mom...)

     – Ran G. Aug 09 '15 at 18:57
  • @WadCheber: All four questions that you've linked in your comment have a connection to German language and therefor are on-topic in German-SE. But your question is missing this direct connection to German language. You ask for a translation of a Yiddish (i.e. Not-German) sentence into English (also Not-German), and beside a general similarity between both languages there is nothing that makes a Yiddish-English question on-topic for a board about German language. But this general similarity is not enough. Also Dutch is very similar to German, and questions about Dutch are off-topic too. – Hubert Schölnast Aug 13 '15 at 21:26
  • @HubertSchölnast When I type the words in Google Translate, with "Detect Language" selected, it "detects" the language as German. This isn't a case of similarity, it is a case of identity. – Wad Cheber Aug 14 '15 at 02:04
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    @WadCheber: No, it's not. Yiddish is written in hebrew letters, German in latin letters. Type in the Yiddish sentence the way it is written correctly (i.e. in hebrew letters) and then click “detect”. Or enter this correct German sentence and then click “detect”: “Tom ist blond, arrogant, intelligent, minimal paranoid und total sentimental.” Google will report, that this sentence is English. Does this mean, that English and German are identical? – Hubert Schölnast Aug 14 '15 at 08:27
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this site is about the usage and rules of modern German language, it's old forms and its dialects. Yiddish is neither modern German, nor an old form of German nor a German dialect. It's another language. When a questions about a foreign languages has no connection to German language, then it is off-topic in German StackExchange. – Hubert Schölnast Sep 06 '15 at 07:59
  • @HubertSchölnast - I was actually surprised that it was still open. – Wad Cheber Sep 07 '15 at 22:27
  • see https://translate.google.de/?ie=UTF-8&hl=de&client=tw-ob#en/yi/turn%20out%20the%20lights%20and%20go%20to%20sleep and https://translate.google.de/?ie=UTF-8&hl=de&client=tw-ob#auto/yi/Mache%20nacht%20und%20geh%20schlafen – äüö Nov 20 '15 at 14:45
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this question is not about German language, not about a German dialect and not about an old form of German. It is about another distinct language. – Hubert Schölnast Dec 31 '15 at 06:13

3 Answers3

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A better Yiddish speaker than I recently apprised me of the fact that there is indeed such an expression in Yiddish as "machn nacht," meaning, roughly, "get ready for bed." "Mach nacht" is the imperative form one would use to address a child. The second part of your quote, "gey shlofn," undoubtedly means "go to sleep." So the what your mother said is in fact "Get ready for bed and go to sleep," or in Yiddish:

"מאַך נאַכט און גײ שלאָפֿן"

SAH
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Answers to your questions:

  1. It would be “Mach Nacht und geh’ schlafen”
  2. Yes, the literal translation is “Make night and go to sleep”.

But: Mach Nacht makes — as the English translation — no sense. In German you would rather say “turn off the lights and go to sleep” (“Dreh’ das Licht ab und geh’ schlafen.”) or something similar.

Jan
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geruetzel
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    This is a question about a Yiddish text. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to treat it like it were German. There are differences, and "mach Nacht" may well be one of them. – Rudy Velthuis May 30 '18 at 19:17
  • @RudyVelthuis yes you are completely right. – geruetzel Sep 11 '18 at 11:03
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    Although Mach Nacht is indeed uncommon in current German, there are analogue forms like Mach Wochenende ("Finish work for the week"), Mach Feierabend (call it a day), Mach Rest (Finish the food) [in Saxonian]. So, Mach Nacht (finish the day) seems to fit in perfectly. – Jonathan Scholbach Feb 01 '22 at 09:23
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I do not think, that "Mach Nacht" makes no sense as @geruetzel says. It is just very unusual and you may never hear it in everyday language. There are other expressions like "Feierabend machen", "Pause machen" which follow the same precep. You would have to think about it, but I think you would get its message.

Also, while "Mach Nacht" is very uncommon you may tell your children

Mach Bubu

which translates to "go to bed", but is viewed as "childish language" or something you only say to a children. But as your mother said it to you while you were growing up it may fit.

mtwde
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