Yes! Obituaries for Either are Premature
At "Dance Under the Influence," the marvelous "feast" -- "The New York Times" called it that -- the audience was invited to ask questions of the performers afterward. One woman asked Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards and Jared Grimes, the evening's tap-dancing duo, whether they worried about the tap's future. The way the audience-member asked the question, it reminded me of similar hand-wringing I've heard around the future of Yiddish. Dormeshia answered the question and her response was similar to mine about Yiddish, which was that it's hard to dignify such a question with a response, rich as the art-form and language both are.
Still, a week later, I must have been slightly haunted by the question, as I was playing randomly in Pinterest, and I decided to create a board called, "Yiddish words & phrased I picked up through listening to my parents' conversations." Here are the first five I've posted on the board so far, and which I heard either fairly often, or memorably; I've translated them based on my parents' explanations when I'd ask, and am spelling them out phonetically, with the disclaimer that I have no idea how to spell them correctly, using either Hebrew or English characters:
Source: sarah-siegel.polyvore.com via Sarah on Pinterest
Source: sarah-siegel.polyvore.com via Sarah on Pinterest
Source: sarah-siegel.polyvore.com via Sarah on Pinterest
Source: sarah-siegel.polyvore.com via Sarah on Pinterest
Source: sarah-siegel.polyvore.com via Sarah on Pinterest
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