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... but the current explanation doesn't work. Beautiful is indeed "schön" (with o-umlaut) in High German, but in Yiddish this becomes "schen" (pronounced like SHAYN), not "schon" (which is a different word in High German meaning "already, yet, right now"—the Yiddish form of this one is "shoyn"). I don't know enough Hebrew to exclude a Hebrew root, but the normal Hebrew word for beautiful is "yafa" in the feminine form.