Getting over the feeling that Yiddish is just for old folks

[Behind the Aegis]

I’ve recently pondered: “When is a person old enough to flavor one’s language with Yiddish expressions?” There have been many times where a Yiddish expression was so on-target that I would use it, but I would always attribute it to my mother or grandmother, implying that Yiddish was only a language for older folks, as in: “My grandmother used to say she’s hocking me a tshaynik [driving my crazy].” Or, when explaining how to cook something, I might say: “My mother would add a bisl of this, and a bisl of that [a little of this and a little of that].”

So now I believe the time has come, as I have reached my Medicare birthday and have four grandchildren, to own up to those Yiddish expressions that have filled my mind, but have hesitated to say on my own. I envy my friend who uses Yiddish in her conversations with such confidence and ease. Maybe that’s because Yiddish was her mame loshn, her mother tongue; her family immigrated from Poland and spoke it freely and often. My parents, on the other hand, were American-born, so Yiddish became a language spoken by their own parents to hide secrets from the kinder, from the children.

Later my parents, especially my mother, began to use Yiddish phrases here and there. Now I’m ready too. I’ve already begun with my friends. We’ve been talking about buying a group home where we could all live together when we’re old, each having our own spacious quarters with hired staff to care for us all. I call this fantasy property the “Villa d’Khaye” (a pun on the Yiddish expression, vilde khaye, which means a wild animal, usually used when speaking about an unruly child!)

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I have been slacking on my Yiddish, but for those that don't know, you can learn Yiddish on Duolingo! Check it out. Also, if interested, The Forward has a YouTube channel that teaches Yiddish words and phrases; here is the one for pets...

[elleng]

1. I wish I had more;

not enough time spent with parts of the family who might have provided it to me. Recently learned that Grandpa (Dad's father) spoke it at home.

[RainCaster]

2. A different view of Yiddish

The kind of people who spoke mostly Yiddish, which is a combination of German and phlegm. This is a language of coughing and spitting; until I was eleven, I wore a raincoat.

Billy Crystal, 700 Sundays

[Igel]

3. Language death happens.

Not the current term, but it's still around.

At the same time, language is deeply social. You pick and choose your language to show who you are, who you want to be.

The first is trendy. We "code switch" to show solidarity with "our people" and wall off "not out people." (Okay, a strange allusion: " 'Ami' versus "lo 'ami", but it's not a Yiddish reference.)

It went to "prestige" (a tautologic term that meant the group that spoke it was looked up to and you wanted to be like them. I note that this is now dismissed as retrograde, mostly because it yields undesirable outcomes. The "prestige," "trendy" forms of language are not "NBC English." Dog.)

The second is also of long standing. Back in the '60s Labov showed that those with no hope or aspirations to be "middle class" in NYC were r-less, i.e., "car" was "cah". But if you had social climbing aspirations, you were "car" (not firmly, but mostly).


Back in the late '70s I was in a "house church" and we'd go over to this one woman's house for shabbat (or pick her up and drive her to services--she had some genetic disorder that made it impossible for her to speak or, on bad days, to even look where she wanted; she was taken advantage of horribly by her tenants; she lived in an old Jewish section of Newark, NJ, long very much non-Jewish by 1978, and even the racism I saw at the time made me cringe). I saw that she had a very nice Torah, and next to it was something in Yiddish--I knew the alphabet, but the words were strange. It was her first language. I found something in the school library that explained Yiddish phonology and orthography and it made sense. A week later I was wandering up 1st Avenue (she lived in NE Jersey, I went to school a 15-minute walk and 15-minute PATH ride from NYC) and saw a newspaper in Yiddish. Bought it. Next shabbat took it with me and read the news from her. My accent must have been horrible, but she said she hadn't heard the language spoken even that well, apart from set phrases picked up by goyyim, for years.

Now I'm merely amused at how it appears that Israeli Hebrew sometimes uses Yiddish spellings for Western, obviously non-Hebrew, names. Sort of like how "Tomaszewski" (pron. "Tom-a-shef-sky&quot is Polish in orthography and at odds with English orthographic systems.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Wow. What a wonderful story.

My (now ex) husband is Jewish, grandparents from what today is Poland or Russia. Once, early in our relationship, we went to services at a nearby synagogue, and when the rabbi started speaking to him in Yiddish, he had to say, "I'm sorry, I don't really understand." His parents spoke almost no Yiddish, certainly not enough for him to be at all conversant or even understanding of it.

But here's the real kicker. When we got married in 1980, we went to Eastern Europe on our honeymoon. When we were in Krakow, Poland, every time we were out somewhere someone would approach him, start speaking in English, and then when he looked confused would say, "You're Jewish, aren't you?" Because my husband, in this country was NEVER taken for Jewish. He learned at a fairly early age to figure out ways to signal his Jewishness to other Jews. Which I saw him do more than once. It also meant he could be a fly on the wall in many places, since no one who didn't already know, never guessed he was Jewish.

So anyway, on the streets of Krakow they'd say, "You're Jewish aren't you?" and he would of course say yes. As someone whose grandparents all came from Ireland, I was invisible to the local Polish Jews. The whole experience was fascinating, both for me and for my husband. One time we were led up to an attic where they'd saved what records they could of the local Jews prior to WWII. It was very moving to be presented with that.