Re: Yinglish

Joan:

There's a book that just came out on the History of Yiddish...check the Traditions book of the month website. Maybe there is some info there.

Trudi

>From: "Joan D. Levin"

>Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org

>To: World music from a Jewish slant

>Subject: Yinglish

>Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:22:24 -0500

>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