Hooray for Yiddish

Well, I finally did it. After a couple of years of browsing the better books section at the Friends of the Library sale, I finally found a book for which I was willing to shell out the extra money. I had enjoyed The Joys of Yiddish so much that I found it worth $3 to purchase its sequel. Well, actually, Hooray for Yiddish is only sort of a sequel. Like its predecessor, it contains many Yiddish words and phrases, each illustrated by a joke or two. (Which made Joys the first dictionary that's fun to read.) What makes Hooray different is that it focuses on the words or phrases that have entered into common American English usage. This leads to some pages that are entirely in English, though Mr. Rosten makes a good case for the entries' show more Yiddish roots. It's not as good as Joys, but it's still worth putting on my shelf.
--J. show less

This book is a treasury of jokes, folk sayings, witticisms, criticisms, and general kibbitzment surrounding one of our world's most expressive languages and the literary love of Leo Rosten, Yiddish. While his etymologies are sometimes specious and his jokes are older than Methuselah, Rosten delivers a strike with this sequel to his famous The joys of Yiddish. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the language, or merely in Jewish culture.

An essential reference for every language library. The jokes are funny, nu? It's like every other reference book, only more so!

Medley of words in process of integration into English