Oy vey iz mir, I'm so meshugenah I could plotz.

[tzikeh]

ETA: Well, crap. Polls created in dreamwidth don't port to lj. You can still take the poll over there, even if you don't have a dreamwidth account, simply by using your LJ identity with openID

Comments

[brewsternorth]

Wonder how much of it is specifically how New York culture has appropriated Yiddish, and it's spread outward from NYC?

(Funnily enough, someone I know uses "schmear" to mean abstract artwork, but I don't know anyone else who uses the word with that meaning.)

[tzikeh]

Wonder how much of it is specifically how New York culture has appropriated Yiddish,

That's my thought, which is partly why I created the poll.

[hubbit]

I converted to Judaism in 1990, but my childhood was filled with MAD Magazine, which of course had all that dreck. :) My guess is that, especially in the entertainment world (stage, screen, broadcasting) it started in New York and from there went to Los Angeles for a bicoastal assault on the rest of the nation.

I kvelled like a mofo during the White Collar episode in which Peter was held by Keller in a "schmatta shop". :)

[azriona]

I think a lot of it has to do with being in New York. I've never lived in New York, but I still consider myself culturally Jewish, and I don't think I've ever heard most of those words in conversation. I use even fewer of them in my own, and only one or two with any amount of frequency. But one of my best friends is a New Yorker (she grew up on Lawn Gyland) and I know she uses many of those words often, without thinking twice about them.

[mamculuna]

Are you familiar with linguaphiles? People in that community love this kind of question. I can link them to it, if you want.

[tzikeh]

I'd *love* it if you could link them; the hiccup is that they have to be able to comment at dreamwidth. But yes, please do!

[mamculuna]

Can't you comment at DW without being signed on? Of course, I'd love for all communities to move over there. That one may have a presence on DW, but it won't be all the people who read.

I'm also thinking they may have done a somewhat similar poll in the past on LJ, and maybe someone will remember where it is.

[tzikeh]

You have to use OpenID or something in order to take polls.

[darthrami]

I took it over there, but feel like I ought to have prefaced my answers with the fact that my step-dad's family is Jewish, and that I've been immersed in Jewish culture for the last ~15 years, and am married to a Jew, and work at a Temple. LOL.