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Yiddish & English: The Story of Yiddish in America
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Yiddish & English: The Story of Yiddish in America Paperback - 2001 - 1st Edition

by Sol Steinmetz


From the publisher

This is the only book to seriously treat the intriguing linguistic and cultural phenomenon of the intimate contact between Yiddish and English over the past 120 years.

Yiddish arrived in America as the mother tongue of millions of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. Not only did this language without a homeland survive in the great American melting pot, it infiltrated the majority language, English, with a wide variety of new words and expressions and helped to establish a new ethnic language called "Jewish English." New Yorkers, in particular, have adopted a long list of Yiddish words, including the well-known "kosher," "chutzpah," "klutz," "yenta," "nosh," "mavin," "schlep," and "shmo."

Yiddish had first developed from language sharing as Jews of northern France and northern Italy migrated into the German-speaking region of the Rhine Valley in the Middle Ages. Sol Steinmetz traces the development of such words as bonhomme from the Old French meaning "good man" to the Yiddish of bonim, or shul for synagogue derived from the German schuol, meaning "school," which had come originally from the Latin schola, for example. With a rich collection of quotations from literature and the press, Steinmetz documents the unusually high lexical, semantic, and intonational exchanges between Yiddish and English in America. He offers more than 1,200 Yiddish words, expressions, idioms, and phrases that have melted into the English vernacular.

Yiddish and English is important for Judaica collections with its two appendixes-one on the romanization of Yiddish and another of Yiddish-origin words, a Jewish-English glossary, a selected bibliography, and an index. But this slim volume is so entertaining and informative for the general reader that it is recommended for anyone who delights in word derivations and language.

Details

  • Title Yiddish & English: The Story of Yiddish in America
  • Author Sol Steinmetz
  • Series Judaic Studies
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition number 1st
  • Edition 1
  • Pages 188
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University Alabama Press, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
  • Date July 2, 2001
  • ISBN 9780817311032 / 0817311033
  • Weight 0.55 lbs (0.25 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.58 x 5.6 x 0.56 in (21.79 x 14.22 x 1.42 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Yiddish language - United States, Jews - United States - Languages
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2001017106
  • Dewey Decimal Code 439.109

Media reviews

Citations

  • Univ PR Books for Public Libry, 01/01/2002, Page 45

About the author

Sol Steinmetz is a lexicographer and general editor of the World Book Dictionary and coeditor of the Second Barnhart Dictionary of New English.

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Yiddish & English: The Story of Yiddish in America
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