It’s been a long time since I’ve found a fun survey for Friday. Here’s a Survey of American Jewish Language, in which you can sort of self-assess how you use language as well as contribute to academic research.
There’s no way to post any sort of score here, but if you’d like to leave an expression you use in comments that might be interesting. My mom grew up in Northern New Jersey, which is sort of in the New York Metropolitan area, and apparently that explains her use of Yiddish.
July 18th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I don’t have any expressions I use, exactly, but I wanted to share that I grew up in Southern California and use words like “schmendrick,” “noodge,” “nosh,” “schmooze,” and “schmutz” regularly; they’re a nicely descriptive part of my vocabulary at this point in my life. But when I moved to Nevada I would use these words and people would stare at me like I’d grown a second head; they just hadn’t ever heard them.
July 18th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I have noticed that sort of thing too. Language is funny in how regional it is.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I didn’t really know any Jewish people growing up (of course now, I know a couple gazillion of them), but I was surprised at how many Yiddish words I knew. Or, rather, how many words in common usage are actually Yiddish.
July 20th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Well, you knew Jewish people in high school….
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Yeah but by that time it’s too late… I mean, I had to get to a public school to meet Jewish people, yet I read Anne Frank and Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place four times in elementary school. It was a weird, weird thing.
And, you will have to admit that the Jewish culture is not nearly as pervasive as it is here. SB was very WASPy.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I’d say a quarter to half the folks I knew growing up were Jewish. I think it just depends what circles you travel in.