This study explores the influence that a minority migrant group can have on language at the national level, investigating self-reported familiarity with ‘Jewish English’ lexical items—terms that entered English from languages like Yiddish and Hebrew—by Jewish and non-Jewish English speakers in Australia and the United States. Benor (2011) has examined Jewish English and its influence in the US. However, this topic is largely unexplored in the Australian context, which differs from the US in the demographics and dispersion of its Jewish population.

The current study expands upon Benor (2011) by focusing on 36 target lexical items divided into six hypothesised categories based on if they are incorporated into general English, found broadly in Australian (but not American) English, or specific to Australian Jews. A total of 611 respondents (88 Jewish Australians, 162 non-Jewish Australians, 253 Jewish Americans, and 108 non-Jewish Americans) reported their familiarity with and use of each item. Results were analyzed using a cumulative link mixed model in R.

Overall, Jewish people and Americans were more familiar with Jewish English terms, but both Jewish and non-Jewish Americans were less familiar with those items specific to Australia, like shemozzle (all p < 0.001). Certain items such as barmi ‘bar mitzvah’ that use hypocoristic word-formation strategies particularly common in Australian English, were familiar mainly to Jewish Australians (p < 0.001), demonstrating the combined linguistic influence of Jewish and Australian identities.

These results suggest that while Jewish people’s cultural ties result in shared vocabulary across countries, and influence of Jewish English was seen in both countries at the national level, there is also an interaction between national identity and Jewish lexical knowledge which results in innovative terms specific to Jewish Australians.