Publisher's Synopsis
Yiddish arrived in America as the mother tongue of millions of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. Gradually it infiltrated the majority language and ""Jewish English"" was created, with words such as ""kosher"" and ""chutzpah."" Yiddish had first developed from language sharing as Jews of northern France and northern Italy migrated into the German-speaking region of the Rhine Valley in the Middle Ages. The author traces the development of such words as ""bonhomme"" from the old French meaning ""good man"" to the Yiddish of ""bonim"", or ""shul"" for synagogue derived from the German ""schuol"", meaning ""school,"" which had come originally from the Latin ""schola"".
