Yiddish and English: The Joys (and Pitfalls) of its Coexistence

by SARAH PONICHTERA

Yiddish – an Eastern European visitor that arrived on these shores at the turn of the twentieth century – has made a home in America like no other. Yiddish has become a part of the English language, contributing flavorful words like shmooze, kvetch, and shlep. However, the embrace in which Yiddish has been enveloped can be so tight as to threaten its own vitality as a distinct language, with its own grammar, literature, and historical specificity.

An unfortunate example of the latter tendency can be found in Thirteen-WNET’s recent quiz, “How Well Do You Know Your Yiddish?” As Rokhl Kafrissen has adroitly noted on her blog, this quiz relies on American commonplaces to the extent that it resembles a 2010 quiz by the magazine Heeb, which was sardonically intended.

In fact, Yiddish words frequently change their meaning in an American context.  For example, the well-known word shmooze connotes meaningless chitchat in English. However, in Yiddish it simply means to converse, whether at a dinner party or a high-level conference on foreign affairs. Similarly, in English, schmuck is a fairly mild term for a disagreeable fellow. But in Yiddish, it’s very salty language that no decent person would casually throw into conversation. The Channel 13 quiz was written by someone with only the most casual passing knowledge of the common English connotations of the Yiddish words it claims to define. To take just one example, in the first question, the term “kosher” cannot be said to mean any of the given options: “right or honest,” “crazy,” “gutsy or courageous,” or “non-Jewish people.” To find the correct answer here, the quiz-taker is better advised to consult his knowledge of American popular culture than Jewish law.

This writer is no foe of linguistic pastiche and creative reinterpretation. In fact I wrote my dissertation on a particularly fruitful encounter between English and Yiddish in the realm of modernist poetry. However, when the complex history between the two languages is reduced to the idiosyncratic memories of native English speakers who heard a few isolated Yiddish words and interpreted them through the eyes of a child, any meaningful opportunity for linguistic enrichment is lost amid a fog of confusion.

Sarah Ponichtera is a Processing Archivist at the Center for Jewish History. Sarah Ponichtera earned her Ph.D. in Yiddish Literature from Columbia University in 2012.