Zhyd


Zhyd and zhydovka are terms for Jewish man and woman respectively in several Slavic languages. In the modern Russian language, it is an anti-Semitic pejorative, similar to the word "yid". In the modern Ukrainian language, they have become pejorative under the influence of Russian and were banned by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s.
In most other Slavic languages, such as Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, and Croatian, as well as Hungarian which is heavily influenced by Slavic languages, these terms are not pejorative as they simply translate as "Jew".

Russian language

In Russian, the terms became pejorative around mid-nineteenth century.

Ukrainian language

commented on this in his memoirs: "I remember that once we invited Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles...to a meeting at the Lvov opera house. It struck me as very strange to hear the Jewish speakers at the meeting refer to themselves as 'yids'". "We yids hereby declare ourselves in favor of such-and-such." Out in the lobby after the meeting, I stopped some of these men and demanded "How dare you use the word 'yid'? Don't you know it's a very offensive term, an insult to the Jewish nation?" "Here in the Western Ukraine it's just the opposite", they explained. "We call ourselves yids...Apparently what they said was true. If you go back to Ukrainian literature...you'll see that 'yid' isn't used derisively or insultingly".

Twenty-first century controversies

In December 2012, Ukrainian politician Ihor Miroshnychenko of the Svoboda party wrote on Facebook that Hollywood actress Mila Kunis is "not a Ukrainian but a zhydivka ". Ukrainian Jews protested the use of term. Svoboda officials and Ukrainian philologist Oleksandr Ponomariv argued that in the Ukrainian language the word does not always have the anti-Semitic connotations that it does in the Russian language, though Ponomariv warned that the term would be considered offensive by Jewish people. The Ukrainian Ministry of Justice declared that Miroshnichenko's use of the word was legal because it is an archaic term for Jew and not necessarily a slur. In a letter of protest directed to Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov the term Zhydovka was described by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center as an "insidious slur invoked by the Nazis and their collaborators as they rounded up the Jews to murder them at Babi Yar and in the death camps".
Iryna Farion defends the usage of the term "zhyd" in Ukrainian, claiming that the pejorative meaning to the previously neutral word was the result of Russification during the Soviet times, when the Russian word yevrei for "Jews" was forced into the Ukrainian language.