Yinglish in New York City, 100 years ago

Alice Faber faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU
Mon Jun 10 14:05:09 UTC 2013


This is correct. The numbers in Hebrew and Yiddish work exactly as in
languages written with the Roman alphabet. (Hebrew religious texts have
a different system, whereby letters of the alphabet represent numbers:
aleph=1, bet=2, ... yod=10, kaph=20, etc., and so forth.)

On 6/10/13 9:20 AM, Amy West wrote:
> What I found intriguing about the Yiddish sign, because I am completely
> ignorant of the Hebrew alphabet, is the Arabic numerals plopped into the
> text: 15000 and 15. The text, I'm assuming, is read right to left, but
> the numbers aren't. So either the direction of reading has to be
> reversed for them, or they're just read immediately as a whole.
>
> Is this how numbers are usu. treated in Hebrew alphabet texts or is this
> an aspect of it being Yiddish or an aspect of it being Yinglish (like
> the borrowings)?
>
> ---Amy West
>
> On 6/9/13 12:01 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
>> Date:    Sat, 8 Jun 2013 10:49:09 -0800
>> From:    Chris Waigl<chris at LASCRIBE.NET>
>> Subject: Yinglish in New York City, 100 years ago
>>
>> A light-hearted look at a bilingual (English/Yiddish) 1908 sign from
>> the Lower East Side:http://chryss.eu/?p=431
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> --
>> Chris Waigl --http://chryss.eu  --http://eggcorns.lascribe.net
>> twitter: chrys -- friendfeed: chryss
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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