[Ipg-smz] Yiddish

[Logan Harbaugh]

I have the same experience. I speak German well, can follow Dutch, Yiddish and (to a lesser extent) Afrikaans, because they're all a melding of German and English. Back when they were picking a national language for the U.S., English beat German by one vote - just think, if things had gone the other way, we might all be speaking Yiddish!


Thanks, 
Logan G. Harbaugh
logan at lharba.com
530-243-1346
1547 Magnolia Ave.
Redding, CA 96001
www.lharba.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Ipg-smz [mailto:ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org] On Behalf Of Esther Schindler
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2019 12:39 PM
To: ipg-smz at netpress.org
Subject: Re: [Ipg-smz] Yiddish

My grandparents were native English speakers, but their parents spoke Yiddish. My father told me that his parents would speak in Yiddish “so the children couldn’t understand,” which meant that, of course, the children were motivated to learn it.

But only as listeners. My father could understand what someone said in Yiddish (and in his youth apparently liked Yiddish theater), but couldn’t speak it very well.

And I, of course, know only the idioms.
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