THE HAGUE Dutch teenagers are using Jew akin to cool or awesome in English, according to a linguist from Leiden University.
Professor Marc van Oostendorp wrote this week on his blog that he heard the new usage of the word jood (pronounced yode) at a high school in Leiden shortly after learning about the phenomenon from an online forum about the Dutch language.
One is at first unsettled by it. The word Jew is still a slightly sensitive issue if used improperly, van Oostendorp wrote, adding an example of how soccer fans use it as a pejorative.
Van Oostendorp notes that Dutch already has one positive exclamation connected to Judaism in tof, which was borrowed from Yiddish and means good, but he writes that its not clear if those two are connected. I dont believe too many people are aware of the etymology.
He notes that the ideal word to express teenage enthusiasm would make parents raise their eyebrows but would not invoke disciplinary intervention.
The word Jew is apparently suitable in that regard, van Oostendorp wrote.
