Review by Choice Review
A wonderfully readable book for both a general audience and immigrant historians. Steinmetz is a lexicographer who comes to this task of chronicling the intrusion of Yiddish into English during the last century with considerable love, as well as expertise. There is a general historical overview of the Germanic origins of Yiddish, the geographical expansion of the medieval Germanic dialect to various corners of the world; and the most recent century-long absorption of Yiddish into the Anglo-American idiom, along with the romanization of the Yiddish alphabet, traditionally the Hebrew letters written from right-to-left in other Judaeo variations, but not in America. What is revealed is the inevitable duality of anything associated with the Yiddish language: the sublimely scholarly and the delightfully down-to-earth. After all, the language has already produced a Nobel Prize winner as it experiences its death throes. For sociologists, for linguists, and for lovers of Yiddish, this is marvelous summer reading.-S. Gittleman, Tufts University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
