Sexual Astrology - Books : Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (P.S.)

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by: Michael Wex See Larger Image List Price: $13.95 Our Price: $11.16 You Save: $2.79 (20%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $2.75 Third Party New Price: $4.00 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 439.109 EAN: 9780061132179 ISBN: 0061132179 Label: Harper Perennial Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 336 Publication Date: August 01, 2006 Publisher: Harper Perennial Release Date: August 15, 2006 Sales Rank: 36157 Studio: Harper Perennial Related Items: Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won't Do) (P.S.) Drek!: The Real Yiddish Your Bubbe Never Taught You Shlepping the Exile Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Yiddish Yiddish with Dick and Jane see more Editorial Review: Product Description: A delightful excursion through the Yiddish language, the culture it defines and serves, and the fine art of complaint Throughout history, Jews around the world have had plenty of reasons to lament. And for a thousand years, they've had the perfect language for it. Rich in color, expressiveness, and complexity, Yiddish has proven incredibly useful and durable. Its wonderful phrases and idioms impeccably reflect the mind-set that has enabled the Jews of Europe to survive a millennium of unrelenting persecution . . . and enables them to kvetch about it! Michael Wex—professor, scholar, translator, novelist, and performer—takes a serious yet unceasingly fun and funny look at this remarkable kvetch-full tongue that has both shaped and has been shaped by those who speak it. Featuring chapters on curse words, food, sex, and even death, he allows his lively wit and scholarship to roam freely from Sholem Aleichem to Chaucer to Elvis. Perhaps only a khokhem be-layle (a fool, literally a 'sage at night,' when there's no one around to see) would care to pass up this endearing and enriching treasure trove of linguistics, sociology, history, and folklore—an intriguing appreciation of a unique and enduring language and an equally fascinating culture. Customer Reviews Average Rating: Rating: - "Kvetch" is a winner The title suggests a joke book (and it is quite funny) but it is quite scholarly scholarly in providing an enormous amount of information about the yiddish language. Rating: - Authentic Having been disappointed with most English-language books about Yiddish,such as Leo Rosten's classic, I was pleasantly surprised to find a book that is pretty much authentic and which depicts the Yiddish of the people who actually speak it in their day to day lives rather than an exercise in nostalgia for days gone by in the Bronx. Rating: - great book This is a great book; I was expecting just a fairly usual compendium of Yiddishisms, but Wex has shown how language is related to the philosophy behind the language, and how Yiddish is a window on the worldview of the Jews in their period of exile. But not as a dry academic treatise; at times I was, really literally, laughing out loud. Rating: - Mad Genius Only a mad genius could create a work like Born to Kvetch. This book is a potpourris of just about everything but the kitchen sink. A rumination on the language and culture of Yiddish, Wex takes his time translating the Yiddish mindset in hilarious English prose, weighing the two languages against each other with examples from Shakespeare, the Bible,American TV, Yiddish fiction, newspapers, translations of the Bible. His deep knowledge of religious and popular culture shows through in his unlikely ... Read More Rating: - You want Yiddish? I'll give you Yiddish! Is the man a genius or what? There is so much wit, wisdom and brilliant insight in this book that I am in awe of Wex's accomplishment. I have lived with Yiddish since I was a child. Wex has a very deep grasp of the neshomeh, the soul of the language and of Ashkenazi Jewry. I laughed so hard as I read and reread passages from Born to kvetch. The laughter of recognition. Often I would find myself stopping and shouting, Ot azoy! ( Right on!) Finally, someone has not only gotten it but ... Read More see more Browse for similar items by category: Jewish - World - History - Subjects - Books - General Jewish - World - History - Subjects - Books - General AAS Foreign Language - Dictionaries & Thesauruses - Reference - Subjects - Books - Yiddish Dictionaries & Thesauruses - Reference - Subjects - Books - Science Instruction - Foreign Languages - Reference - Subjects - Books - Yiddish