Talk:baruch HaShem

Regarding the question, "Is this English?"

The very first guideline in the Criteria for inclusion page is: A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means.

In many English-speaking areas, perhaps most notably a number of communities in the New York City metropolitan area, Yiddish and Hebrew terms are used extensively even by people who do not speak either Yiddish or Hebrew fluently, and even by people who are not themselves Jewish. Additionally, a number of organizations, both Jewish and non-Jewish, which are and serve primarily English-speaking communities, use "Baruch HaShem" as part of (or the entirety of) their organization names.

Furthermore, since Hebrew is written using a different alphabet than English, most English-speakers unfamiliar with the meaning of "baruch hashem" would have no idea how to spell it in Hebrew in order to look it up in the Hebrew Wiktionary... assuming they knew to look in a Hebrew or Yiddish dictionary at all.

In my opinion, this entry clearly belongs in the English Wiktionary. I used the entry myself precisely because I came across it and didn't know what it meant! I'm very glad the entry was here, because most other online dictionaries frankly just aren't as user-friendly, comprehensive or accurate as Wiktionary, and I dislike having to resort to other sites. Makingyouhungry 23:16, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

RFV-passed

See this. — Beobach972 19:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process.

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

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baruch HaShem

Header was: [[Baruch HaShem]]. —Ruakh_TALK 18:35, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Baruch translates as Blessed; Ha = the; and Shem = Name. HaShem being the common Hebrew substitute name for G-d. — This unsigned comment was added by 67.225.40.55 (talk) at 02:05, 15 August 2009 (UTC).

Right. So, what did you want verified? —Ruakh_TALK 03:48, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, is this English and are the caps okay? Mglovesfun (talk) 08:40, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Whether this is English is open for debate. My vote is "yes", since it's used in English contexts. The caps on "HaShem" are O.K.; in order of frequency, the second word is sometimes written "Hashem", sometimes "HaShem", sometimes "haShem". The caps on "Baruch" are wrong IMHO, just as the lemma form of "Thank G-d!" would be thank G-d. —Ruakh_TALK 15:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, it all hinges on if we're a descriptive or prescriptive dictionary. Baruch hashem, in descriptivist terms, is most certainly an English word, just like burrito or Beijing are. — This unsigned comment was added by 74.199.108.74 (talk) at 23:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC).

Cited IMHO. I ended up giving up on citing this from Google Books, because — despite what the anon seems to imply — most of the hits clearly indicated that this was not English. But with some effort, I was able to track down some Google Groups hits with this capitalization that did not indicate that this wasn't English. (Funnily enough, one of the hits explains Shalom, but not this!)

Also, move to [[baruch HaShem]].

—Ruakh_TALK 18:29, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm late to the party but I'm a bit confused: Is WHAT "English"?
"Baruch ha-Shem"? Yes those ARE English letters, aren't they?
Is this an "English" or "Hebrew" phrase? It can be said in both languages. Look at the "Entry" page: the Hebrew for this phrase is written in red and in the form of a link.
Ruakh: you vote "yes", do you? Are you saying that throughout history, until England came to be recognized AS "England", no Semite, ever, said... in Hebrew, mind... "Baruch ha-Shem"?
NOT being sarcastic! Honest! I just don't 'get' the question NOR the reply (except for the literary parts). (Duane44 14:14, 1 November 2010 (UTC))

No, those are letters in the Latin script, used at some point or other for every language in the world, including Hebrew. Is this phrase one being used in English as English, or is it merely a foreign phrase stuck in English? That is the question.--Prosfilaes 14:59, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Any language can be written in any script. The Hebrew language is most often written in what's called "the Hebrew alphabet" (‎א, ב, …‎), but it's also sometimes written in what you're calling "English letters". For example, this Usenet post is written entirely in Hebrew in English letters; the sentence "En maspik pratim batmuna mehareshet" is not any less Hebrew than if it the poster had spelled it אין מספיק פרטים בתמונה מהרשת. So the question is … when someone writes "Baruch HaShem" in an otherwise English context, is that English? Or is it a bit of Hebrew (or potentially sometimes Yiddish) interspersed into an English context?

In some cases I think it's clearly presented as Hebrew; for example, this page has “He was lying in bed, having died in his sleep. Baruch HaShem. Blessed be the Name.”, with "Baruch HaShem" italicized and immediately translated. And if we can trust the quoted snippet that Google Book Search gives, this book has a sentence that begins "Many traditional Jews use the Hebrew (Baruch HaShem) even in English conversations, at least with other […] " — that is, that author feels that "Baruch HaShem" is Hebrew, not English, even when it's used in English conversations.

So, that is the question — is this ever "English"? My "vote" is that it is: it's sometimes used in English contexts, without any sort of indicator that it's not English. I added three quotations from Usenet that show people using it that way. But I still think it's up for debate. I think a reasonable person could disagree with me and say that no, this is always Hebrew (or potentially sometimes Yiddish).

—Ruakh_TALK 15:26, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

(By the way, my "vote" is colored by the fact that we only include Hebrew written in "the Hebrew alphabet", since other scripts are more or less "misspellings". If a Latin word were borrowed this shallowly into English, I'd probably be O.K. with just treating it as Latin; but for Hebrew, we won't have this entry at all unless we treat it as English. —Ruakh_TALK 15:42, 1 November 2010 (UTC))

This seems to be English. IMO, if the cite shows the word in an English context, unitalicized, giving no indication at all that it's from another language, then it's English. --Yair rand (talk) 21:44, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I more or less agree, but in all fairness to the other viewpoint — the b.g.c. cites pretty uniformly italicize it. The cites in the entry are from Usenet, which doesn't support italics, so their lack of italics can't really be taken as an argument. —Ruakh_TALK 22:53, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

RFV passed. Also, entry moved to [[baruch HaShem]]. —Ruakh_TALK 18:35, 8 November 2010 (UTC)