Ji FU reviewed The New Joys of Yiddish by Leo Calvin Rosten
I guess it's OK for a dictionary?
2 stars
I'm not really quite sure what I thought this book was going to be. The intorduction was really good and I think is closer to what I was expecting, more of a story/history about Yiddish in the U.S. He speaks of how most linguists harrumph at the use of Yiddish in the States as an accent to the primary language, and with most Jews now living in either the U.S. or Isreal (where Hebrew, not Yiddish, is the default tongue) Yiddish as a language is dying. But the author thinks the way it has worked its way into the general lexicon is actually great. After the intro it becomes, more-or-less, a dictionary of Yiddish words that are heard in American (what the author calls Ameridish or Yinglish) and what they mean, occasionally with a history of its use, either in the old world or the new, and often with a …
I'm not really quite sure what I thought this book was going to be. The intorduction was really good and I think is closer to what I was expecting, more of a story/history about Yiddish in the U.S. He speaks of how most linguists harrumph at the use of Yiddish in the States as an accent to the primary language, and with most Jews now living in either the U.S. or Isreal (where Hebrew, not Yiddish, is the default tongue) Yiddish as a language is dying. But the author thinks the way it has worked its way into the general lexicon is actually great. After the intro it becomes, more-or-less, a dictionary of Yiddish words that are heard in American (what the author calls Ameridish or Yinglish) and what they mean, occasionally with a history of its use, either in the old world or the new, and often with a story, that claims to be numerous, about its use. Very dry, not that funny. Eventually I stopped reading each one and just skimmed ahead to words I've actually used or heard others use.