Slips of the Tongue
What the use of Yiddish phrases can tell us about contemporary American Jewry
| 7:00 AM Nov 18, 2009
The results are in: the words “shpiel” and “klutz” have been thoroughly absorbed into the American vernacular, while “mensch” and “kvetch” remain primarily in the linguistic domain of Jews. A third of Jewish Americans who did not grow up in New York have nonetheless been told that they sound like they’re from that city. Sixty-eight ...
