May
28

Yiddish: All Up In New York’s Face (and a bit of Florida’s, too) Schlep - being a New Jersey native, I am quite familiar with this word, intimate even. We use schlep as a way to describe hauling something from one place to another. We even have a mover in the Garden State called, ‘Schleppers Movers’. Oh, New Jersey. Example: I am tired of schlepping your rock collection all over the damned place.  or, You better not get wasted tonight. There is NO way I am schlepping your ass around Times Square.  misspepita: This map shows where the majority of Yiddish speakers are located in the United States, as of the 2000 Cenus. It reminded me of a PBS documentary I watched in my Linguistic Anthropology class called “American Tongues”. In one part, they briefly showed people from NYC describing a particular word in Yiddish, and then showed people from other regions of the US (if I recall correctly, it was people from the South and then the Midwest) attempting to describe the same word. Seeing as how the documentary was from 1988, it made me wonder if nowadays, people not from the New York or the surrounding area would be able to accurately describe the same word, or if they’d still struggle with defining it. So here is my quick question for you, tumblr! Reblog if you can describe what the word ‘schlep’ means. (naturally, this question is off limits for Yiddish speakers)

Yiddish: All Up In New York’s Face (and a bit of Florida’s, too)

Schlep - being a New Jersey native, I am quite familiar with this word, intimate even. We use schlep as a way to describe hauling something from one place to another. We even have a mover in the Garden State called, ‘Schleppers Movers’. Oh, New Jersey.

Example: I am tired of schlepping your rock collection all over the damned place. 

or, You better not get wasted tonight. There is NO way I am schlepping your ass around Times Square. 

misspepita:

This map shows where the majority of Yiddish speakers are located in the United States, as of the 2000 Cenus. It reminded me of a PBS documentary I watched in my Linguistic Anthropology class called “American Tongues”. In one part, they briefly showed people from NYC describing a particular word in Yiddish, and then showed people from other regions of the US (if I recall correctly, it was people from the South and then the Midwest) attempting to describe the same word.
Seeing as how the documentary was from 1988, it made me wonder if nowadays, people not from the New York or the surrounding area would be able to accurately describe the same word, or if they’d still struggle with defining it.

So here is my quick question for you, tumblr! Reblog if you can describe what the word ‘schlep’ means. (naturally, this question is off limits for Yiddish speakers)

Source misspepita

Reblogged from misspepita

Notes

  1. florina-turner reblogged this from languageshellyeah
  2. birdkid reblogged this from languageshellyeah and added:
    i’m Floridian and we definitely do use...schelp, or at least my family does. i’m not so...
  3. rheaball reblogged this from bummmercamp and added:
    Schlep is when you’re carrying a bunch of shit!
  4. bummmercamp reblogged this from misspepita and added:
    boner for linguistic anthro. My grandmother’s mother...a native Yiddish speaker who...
  5. languageshellyeah reblogged this from misspepita and added:
    New York’s Face (and...Florida’s, too) Schlep - being a New Jersey native,
  6. romanitas reblogged this from misspepita
  7. misspepita posted this