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The Sounds of Yiddish
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
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42 The Sounds of Yiddish splat like matzoh broken and dropped in the egg-milk mix for matzohbrei. They knock you deep in the kishkes. They smart—kine ahora—with the schtick of the canny mensch who knows schlock when she sees it. You think I’m a pischer? Don’t drey mir kop. Yiddish knows an example is not proof, gives a tumler with a pisk the barbed shrug. When a schlimazel sells an umbrella the sun comes out. You should grow like an onion with your head in the ground. Yiddish hisses with chicken schmaltz sizzling for knishes. Not invited to the luncheon? Don’t worry; her knaidlach don’t float. Like the Sami with many words for snow, we have many for fool. Shtunk. Schlepper. Schlemiel. Shmuck. Hear that rumbling across Ukraine? Yiddish ran from a posse of hazards when my Bubbe left her shtetl, Russians at her back and a mongrel, Middle High German in her mouth. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy the saying goes. To which my peasant relatives reply, Spare us what we can learn to endure. ...