On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 02:18:17 +0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
wrote:
Thanks, Jeff. Very informative.
Y'er welcome.
I don’t speak it, but Yiddish seems to me
to be the language that has words for things that other languages wished
they had words for.
Yep. Languages tend to go into more detail describing things with
which the culture is most familiar. The classic example is that
Eskimos allegedly have 50 words for "snow".
https://readable.com/blog/do-inuits-really-have-50-words-for-snow/
The real number is more like 8 names, but I'll pretend that I didn't
read that. Similarly, Yiddish has even more names for "fools".
https://www.aish.com/j/fs/48929367.html
I could probably add a few more.
Incidentally, my parents were Polish. After WWII, they ended up in
Germany where I was born. When I was 5, the family emigrated to the
USA and eventually settled in Los Angeles. I initially spoke German.
My parents continued to speak Polish, so I learned some Polish. Some
family friends spoke Russian, so I learned a little Russian. I
attended a school where instruction was in Yiddish but also taught
some Hebrew:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Workers_Circle
Lingua Fracta was the order of the day. I thought nothing of
assembling a sentence from 4 different languages.
1953 was the trailing end of McCarthyism and the Red Scare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
If someone spoke any language other than English, or did not act like
a genuine American, they were labeled a Communist. My parents and
friends were seriously worried about being "denounced" and deported
back to Europe. It took a while for them to realize that this was not
the way America operated. Meanwhile paranoia was the order of the
day. Therefore, I was encouraged to only speak English in public,
handle my knife and fork in the American manner, and try to look like
an American. My parents also bought two books on etiquette (by Amy
Vanderbilt and Emily Post) and tried to use it as a guide for setting
the dinner table. It was quite a surprise when we discovered that
Americans didn't eat like that.
--
Jeff Liebermann
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558