Today's Post had a nice story on a survey of migration of Yiddish words into English. Yiddish is a strange creature--itself a hybrid language of mostly German and Hebrew. It's also rapidly dying as a primary spoken language. But it's unique expressive qualities are causing more and more words and phrases to be used widely.
"The study aims to determine who uses Yiddish and Hebrew words and how, as well as other distinctive hallmarks of Jewish speech such as phrasing and pronunciation.
The researchers sent out their queries about a month ago, hoping for 2,000 responses. They wound up with more than 41,000 and have started analyzing the data earlier than expected. (For more information on the survey and to contact the researchers, go to www.huc.edu.)"
We need this study like a hole in the head.
Showing posts with label Yiddish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yiddish. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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