Yiddish word(s) of the day: I’ll have a ‘love’ on rye?
Published January 11, 2022
Yiddish has style.
The style comes not just from the incredibly humorous sounding words, but from the literal way our great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents, and grandparents sounded when they said the words. I’m referring to their voices and the style of speaking that they brought with them from the Old World.
They spoke Yiddish, and then English, with a special tone, that most of us can “do” if we really try. About a decade after they landed, linguists began paying attention. “People start noticing, huh, they speak English kinda funny,” says Rachel Steindel Burdin, a linguist at the University of New Hampshire who studies Jewish English. So, really that is why you should love Yiddish.
It’s just so simply cool.