Ken Valentine Wrote:Also, the hard accentuation of the "g" sound as in words like ringing, and singing. They come out like ring-ging-g and sing-ging-g.
I suspect that this is a result of substituting English words for the Germanic words (Yiddish is a dialect of German) while keeping Germanic pronunciation of the alphabet, and the Germanic gramatical structure. ("W" is pronounced as "V", and "V" is pronounced as a combination of "V" and "F".
So you will find statements like, "Throw the cow over the fence, some hay." Or, "Bring Mama home in a bag, some bread."
Mountains, shmountains, I should care about mountains?
My own belief, is that people came to the U.S. as adults, and while struggling to earn a living, never learned English properly. They spoke the "old language" at home and used what English they knew only in public or at work. Their children grew up speaking Yiddish at home as their parents did, but improved their English at school. Culturally, they possibly kept many of the mispronunciations and much of the gramatical structure out of respect for their parents.
Ennyway, That's how Ah see it.
Ken V.
InfinityLtd Wrote:Oy!
XiaoYu Wrote:Haha, nice Monty crack there...
Kenji...Abe says "Nu" in every Jack book, I think. Otherwise I wouldn't have noticed it.
In "The Tomb" when Abe first appears:
Abe: "What's eating up your guderim?" (by the way, what's that mean?)
Jack: "Saw Gia today."
Abe: "Nu?"
I figured "Nu" means different things depending on context and how it's said...on the cadence, I might just have to rewatch Ocean's 11...
Just because I'm so excited about this, I have to say it: I just got Hosts and Haunted Air in the mail today. Now I can reread them whenever I want!!! Wohoo
Ken Valentine Wrote:Oy! Is right. My mother grew up speaking Slovak at home. Another thing I didn't mention is that when people go far from home, they tend to cluster together. It's comforting to be among people with the same language and culture when living in a foreign country.
This does not, however, help them learn the language any better. But as long as they can communicate enough to get along . . . .
Ken V.
XiaoYu Wrote:It never fails to amuse me that I can read parts of written Japanese 今日 (today)...hehe. Chinese anyone?
Just curious, what's "Jack" in the Japanese translation? It would be 杰克 in Chinese.