Approaches to the Yiddish Sociolect of American English

The paper is devoted to the functioning of the Yiddish sociolect, known as Yinglish, Yeshivish etc., within American English. The American Yiddish sociolect is considered as an element of the structure of the broader phenomenon of “Jewish English languages”.

The authors attempt to define the terms describing Jewish English languages and to outline their limits (contours). The hierarchical structure of the American Yiddish sociolect is set forward on the phonetic, morphemic, lexical, and syntax levels. The approaches are offered as to the distinction between the sociolect proper and separate borrowings or loan translations from Yiddish into American English, the latter shared by all American English speakers. The authors also give a classification of Yiddishisms in American English as juxtaposed with the classification of lexical units in the Yiddish sociolect.

In this study, the relationship between the “outside” and “inside” views of the American Jewish culture is taken as a premise. We prove that, while the sociolect of American English-speaking Jews represents an “inside” code inaccessible to the non-Jewish “outsider”, Yiddish borrowings are adapted by the target language (American English) and become subject to partial (or, in some cases, complete) semantic reduction.

The data for the study were taken from the English prose translations of American Jewish writers as well as from the Jewish American Web forums and communication platforms, the latter revealing the contemporary state and dynamics of the sociolect.