Calques

Hello, you have a wait with words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, who’s this?

Hi, Grant.

Hello there.

Hi, this is Shana from Somerville, Massachusetts.

How are you?

Hi, Shana.

What’s going on?

So I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish kind of environment, and I work in the Jewish community now, and I’ve noticed that a lot of times people use Yiddish grammar constructions, but in their English. For example, people would say, oh, I’m eating by Martha’s house tomorrow, meaning they’re eating at Martha’s house, which is the same way you would say it in Yiddish. And I don’t know, I just kind of was wondering if that was a phenomenon with other languages, if there was any more you could tell me about that. I found it really interesting.

Yeah, I encountered a similar phenomenon when I lived in New York City. For a time, I lived in a building that was entirely Orthodox Jews. And so I encountered the same thing as well, where you’d get what’s called, this is the word, the calc. C-A-L-Q-U-E. A calc is when you take the pattern, usually the syntax of language A, and you match the words from language B to that syntax. And so it sounds a little odd to the people who speak language B natively. So a calc is sometimes it’s just a word. The classic example is the word skyscraper, which has been calced from language to language. It’s grazielle in French and something similar in German and something similar in Spanish, but they literally translate to each other across all these different languages. And so because of the long history of, for example, Yiddish speakers in New York City, we see some patterns in New York City, even among people who are not Jewish, that are related to the original syntax from Yiddish as it was spoken mainly in Eastern Europe.

For example, if Martha and I go out for dinner and I’m like, you know, this is not a good choice. We didn’t really do well. She’s like, what’s Nusra like? Look at this. We’ve got beautiful food, great vegetarian fare. The wine is good. The sunlight is good. We’ve got friends nearby. So the what’s not to like is also a classic borrowing from the structure of Yiddish, with a little bit of German thrown in there. Because don’t forget that German was the number two language for a very long time in the United States. So when Yiddish showed up, it kind of fit naturally into some places where German had already been spoken and left some residue of its own.

Interesting.

That’s really cool.

So there are a ton of people who have researched this sort of stuff. I don’t have anything at my fingertips to refer you to, but I would really encourage you to Google the word Kalk, C-A-L-Q-U-E, in Yiddish and English. So Google those three words together, and I believe you’ll come across some from really comprehensible stuff written by experts who’ve sometimes from within the community and sometimes without have studied this as a phenomenon.

Yeah, you could also Google structural borrowing. That’s another term for it. And it’s not just New York City, of course. I mean, in Wisconsin, you hear a lot of things like that, you know, where the streetcar bends the corner around, you know, or throw the cow over the fence some hay once. And the come with construction that people associate with Chicago and the Great Lakes region, that also probably is a Germanic borrowing from German.

Right.

Kommen’s emit to come with me.

Right.

Mitkomen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shannon, do you have any other examples from your experience?

I made a little list just of things I was hearing.

We like lists.

So, know from, like, I don’t know.

Oh, right.

What do you know from matzo balls?

You’re from the Midwest.

Yeah, they’re great.

Great example.

Hold by or hold with. I was having a discussion with a co-worker about our policy in regards to paying for coffee in the office. And he was like, okay, I agree with what you’re saying. I’ll hold by you as opposed to holding by with somebody else’s opinion.

Oh, interesting.

I’m not sure I’m explaining that quite right.

I think I got it.

Okay.

So, like, yeah, kind of going in accordance to someone’s opinion. In Jewish law, you’d say, oh, I hold by Rabbi so-and-so. So, I don’t know. That’s just kind of a construction that has branched out, I’ve noticed.

Okay.

What about if I say, if you and I meet, we both come home from work at the same time, some dinner you want? Instead of saying, do you want dinner? Do you use that one?

Yeah, that’s definitely one I hear a lot. Giant books have been written on the influence of Yiddish and English. It won’t take you long to find them. But thank you, Shaina, for sharing what you know and what you’ve experienced on your own. It’s always nice to abstract ourselves from the academic world and get the real world experience.

Thank you for talking to me.

Yeah, sure.

I’m really excited.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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