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Cargando... Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods (2005 original; edición 2005)por Michael Wex
Información de la obraBorn to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods por Michael WEX (Author) (2005)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. I was given this book by a friend who knows that I would like to learn Yiddish someday. Lots of really interesting things about the language and the customs, attitudes, and worldview both of and in it. ( ) I read up to page 139 years ago, and never felt the urge to continue. I seem to recall that the author annoyed me at one point by being overly condescending in his assumption of what any real Jew would know or how they would have been raised. I'm still interested in Yiddish and will seek out another book on the topic eventually. I really wanted to like this book and like the curate's egg, it was good in parts. Wex tells us early on that Yiddish is the language of complaint and sets out to prove that statement the entire rest of the book. The book is very scholarly and much of it is of interest but still, towards the end I was so depressed it was a struggle to finish it. Yiddish may be the language of complaint but its complaints turned humorous in possibly the most onomatopoeic language in the world. (Does schmuck sound anything but a stupid person? Does a schloff not sound like the nap you need after too big a lunch?) Jewish humour is a very strong strand in the humour of the US. Where the prevailing paradigm is to be on the side of the winner, always to have great self-esteem and to look good in the eyes of the world, the humour is the opposite: the small man who triumphs despite the odds. Two of the most well-known proponents of this are Woody Allen and Mel Brooks and where would they be without their joyous use of Yiddish? Indeed where would New Yorkers be if all the yiddish words were taken from their slang? The book would be best enjoyed by dipping into it now and again, no point in being heroic and finishing it straight through. A good book, a worthy book, but enjoyable - hmmmm? sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Pertenece a las series editorialesЧейсовская коллекция (2012) Premios
As the main spoken language of the Jews for more than a thousand years, Yiddish has had plenty to lament, plenty to conceal. Its phrases and expressions paint a comprehensive picture of the mind-set that enabled the Jews of Europe to survive persecution: they never stopped kvetching about God, gentiles, children, and everything else. In Born to Kvetch, Michael Wex looks at the ingredients that went into this buffet of disenchantment and examines how they were mixed together to produce an almost limitless supply of striking idioms and withering curses. Born to Kvetch includes a wealth of material that's never appeared in English before. This is no bobe mayse (cock-and-bull story) from a khokhem be-layle (idiot, literally a "sage at night" when no one's looking), but a serious yet fun and funny look at a language. From tukhes to goy, meshugener to kvetch, Yiddish words have permeated and transformed English as well. Through the fascinating history of this kvetch-full tongue, Michael Wex gives us a moving and inspiring portrait of a people, and a language, in exile. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)439.109Language German and Germanic Other Germanic languages Low GermanClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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