History of the English Language at the U of S

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Quinnton Weiman

After spending the past few months with my nose in books about the topic, and shlepping them all over between the Murray library and student coffee klatches around town, I’ve decided to finally quit my kvetching and get this blog post written. It is no small task to sift through the storied, thousand-year-old history of the expressive mame loshn Yiddish and the (very long) short list of the languages it has influenced and been influenced by, but thankfully in regards to English specifically, there is a definite and relatively recent starting point. This period, known as the great migration, spanned roughly between 1870 and 1914. Fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe, Jews sought out greener pastures in the western, primarily English-speaking world, with as many as two million Jews emigrating to the United States during this period alone (Weinstein 133). English, seen as a pathway to a better life, was adopted with gusto by many of these emigrés, whose mordant and cynical humour, tempered by centuries of oppression in Europe, was also readily absorbed into English. This can be largely attributed to the decline of Yiddish as it was subjected to the cultural melting pot of English America. Miriam Weinstein, in her book Yiddish: a Nation of Words, also attributes this decline to a strong desire to fit in and to quickly cast away the “otherness” of Yiddish – as she describes it, “no other people would feel such ambivalence about what they had left [behind]” (142). This loss of language was hailed as tragic by many, in particular in the wake of the cultural genocide and virtual extermination of Yiddish in Europe during the Holocaust. However, little could stop the language from occupying the niche of humour, in particular among its own people as they embraced their new English lives and left the past behind. As Weinstein puts it, Yiddish had slid from being the “golden key to Jewish tradition” to being an “easy laugh at the immigrants’ expense” (and delight, mind) within a generation (143).

[Bei Mir Bistu Shein, by Jacob Jacobs, was originally part of a Yiddish-American musical before being covered in English by the Andrews Sisters. This translation launched the song into popularity in the English-speaking world. Bei Mir Bistu Shein translates into English as “I think you’re beautiful”, but remains unchanged in the song, which lends to its cheeky character. Video: YouTube.]

It is perhaps this insistence on preserving the trenchant humour of Yiddish that led so gracefully to its assimilation into the English lexicon. Leo Rosten writes in the introduction to The Joys of Yinglish about the astonishing body of creative work produced by the Jewish diaspora in America, which since the migration has produced a “galaxy” of writers, journalists, critics and scholars (xix). Naturally, this talent has sublimated into the media industry, with Jews claiming prominent roles in vaudeville comedies and later in the direction of Hollywood, which film critic Neal Gabler has described as “a ferocious, even pathological embrace of America. Something drove them to deny whatever they had been before settling here” (206). It is through the medium of film and television that the offhand and jocular use of Yiddish has most efficiently proliferated in the English speaking world. It is through television – the comedian’s shtik and the actor’s chutzpah, that these neologisms were brought to the American living room, and absorbed so readily into common English parlance. The current edition of The Oxford English Dictionary contains 172 words of Yiddish origin, indicating a healthy growth from the 144 words remarked by Miriam Weinstein in her book, written in 2001 (263). Here is a list of some of those words, selected for their relative commonality.

shlock, dreck	n. Rubbish, trash, useless debris
shemiel, shlimazel, klutz	n. A clumsy person who is prone to accident
shmoll, shlump, shmuck, putz	n. An idiot or fool
shlump	n. Dull-witted, slow (affectionate)
shtick	n. An act or strange routine
shmooze	n. Chat, gossip
shmeer	n. Bribery, corruption, flattery
shlep	v. To haul, carry, drag
chutzpah	n. Brazen impudence, gall
kvetch	v.  To complain, to whine
klatch	n. A visit; a coffee-party (orig. German)

 

There is an obvious and reoccurring pattern in this list, namely the frequency of words that begin with the consonant sequence sh-. This sequence, while common in Yiddish generally, seems to be disproportionately represented in English – the most likely reason being that sh- is frequently associated with playfully pejorative terms imported wholesale from the Yiddish sense of humour, which derides incompetence. Another significant example of this sequence being used is as the reduplicated particle shm-, appended to the beginning of a word to express mockery or scorn. We’re all familiar with this one – we all have a dad who has turned on the radio only to mockingly deride the music as jazz shmazz. But it doesn’t end with neologisms – the average English-speaking mensch is also likely well acquainted with a number of Yiddish proverbs in translation, such as the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, or if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas (Weinstein 263). Other flavorfully incisive expressions we may take for granted also originated in the shtetl, such as don’t ask, better you should know, and I should care, which are all literal translations of original Yiddish usage and absorbed into English by their use on television (263).

For a language whose history has been rife with tragedy and marginalization, and which now faces an uncertain future, it’s fortunate for Yiddish that at least some of its idiosyncrasies have been preserved in English. At the very least, the relationship seems to be mutually beneficial and nearly seamless – the English language has made a cozy and likely permanent home for all of those misplaced words, sayings and expressions, with all of the unique chutzpah they bring with them.

Works Cited

[OED]. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press, June 2017, www.oed.com (various entries). Accessed 6 January 2018.

Rosten, Leo. The Joys of Yinglish. Penguin Books USA Inc., 1989.

Weinstein, Miriam. Yiddish: A Nation of Words. Steerforth Press, 2001.