Word: yiddishisms
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...Choice. The Puerto Ricans' problem is that their island is so close. They move back and forth between it and the mainland and thus keep their language, which in turn insures that they remain isolated (Spanish is more solidly established in New York City schools than Italian or Yiddish ever was). Migration is tough on Puerto Rican families. Mothers who had plenty of relatives to help with the children in Puerto Rico become hard pressed in New York. But Puerto Ricans have established 4,000 businesses in the city-more than the Negroes have-and they have formed...
...soiled-so often that a Mirror rule, which limited him to only one byline a day, has forced him to appear under such pseudonyms as Amos Coggins, Gabriel Prevor, Reg Ovington, Jaime Montdor (Spanish-French for Hymie Goldberg), Robert Benevy and Veigh S. Meer-a phonetic rendition of the Yiddish for "Woe is me." Goldberg rarely has trouble cornering subjects. "When they see me come, all fear vanishes," says he. "There is first my distinguished white hair. Then my baby-blue eyes. Also, most of them are bigger than I am." This disparity in size did not dispel the suspicions...
...British camp on the Isle of Man. She had an international repertoire of folk songs by the time she left England, but when she came to the U.S. in 1948, she rarely escaped the Borsch Belt and Hadassah-club audiences that wanted a strictly Kosher diet of Hebrew and Yiddish songs. Since then, she has made four albums of international folk songs, but record stores are still likely to keep her in the Jewish bin; when she packed Town Hall for her first New York concert, a friend who had followed her Catskill career asked, "What did you do-give...
Fred Gardner's story "Admiration" talks about the seamy side of garment worker society in the Depression. Gardner's hero is a Jewish gangster, with a heart, naturally. "Admiration" is not a world-shaking story, but Gardner writes Yiddish dialogue with accuracy and verve...
...Benny Profane, a schlemiel (the Yiddish word for chronic bumbler), is the novel's antihero. Shouts of triumph or yelps of protest are not for schlemiels; Benny's conversation is limited to "What?" and "Wha." The alligators come into it when he arrives in New York after a Navy hitch-the liberty scenes in Norfolk are done with loving verity-and needs a job. So he gets one shooting alligators for the city. This keeps him in beer, and more he does not need. He sleeps in the bathtub of a West Side apartment belonging to the Whole...