Yinglish in New York City, 100 years ago

Mon Jun 10 15:44:04 UTC 2013

The use of left-to-right ordering for numbers is normal both in Modern Hebrew and in Yiddish orthography. Here's a line I just copied from a Haaretz article (I think this should come through...)

×›×ª×‘×ª×™ ×¢×œ ×©×ª×™×”×Ÿ ×¡×™×¤×•×¨×™× ×œ×‘×œ×•×’ ×ž××•×™×¨ ×©×›×ª×‘×ª×™ ×‘2008 ×‘××ª×¨ ×©×œ ×”× ×™×• ×™×•×¨×§ ×˜×™×™×ž×¡

The relevant digits are, as you might guess, a date, and the letter preceding (on the right, of course) is the preposition 'be', meaning 'in'.

On the other hand, the sign is primarily not in Yiddish at all, but rather English. There are only a few Yiddish words. Chris's transcription is pretty accurate--there's only a couple of places where I would quibble.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
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and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
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----- Original Message -----

> From: "Amy West" <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 9:20:07 AM
> Subject: Re: Yinglish in New York City, 100 years ago

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
> Subject: Re: Yinglish in New York City, 100 years ago
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> 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

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