Yinglish

[Joan D. Levin <jdlevin...>]

There seem to be two sets and subsets of phenomena to look at --

1) The adoption of Yiddish words into mainstream English
        a) American English
        b) English as spoken in the rest of the English-speaking world

2) The adoption of English words into mainstream Yiddish
        a) Yiddish as spoken in the US
        b) Yiddish as spoken outside the US

There are also combinations of these, such as in which an English word or
structure is "yiddishized" and returned to English (hellacious, perhaps
being one) or in expressions such as "by me" or other adaptations of Yiddish
syntactical forms into English, or where a Yiddish word is adorned with
English morphological or grammatical forms, and passes into English, or
perhaps where the reverse occurs and an English word or expression winds up
in standard Yiddish with Yiddish morphological or grammatical markers.


Yiddish and English are both such permeable langauges, and watching them
interact is fascinating.  I guess Rosten has done the most published work on
this.  I am waiting for someone to produce an "Oxford Yiddish Dictionary"
with detailed descriptions of the histories or Yiddish words.   I wonder if
the OED has any histories of English words that include Yiddish.

Maybe this is straying too far from the topic of music and into linguistics,
but so often these patterns appear in songs -- and often early in their
adaptive process -- perhaps even initiating or accelerating the adaptive
process.

Joan







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