The Dread Slender Gnome
· 3d
"Oy vey" is Hebrew, right, not Yiddish?
Both that and Arabic are Semitic, so no matter what a bot says, it's not an unreasonable conclusion to come to.
(No idea what linguists say.)
I suspect it might be even more basic/far back than that, a general sound of exasperation going maybe even to pre-PIE like โmamaโ et al.