We hear words like nosh, schlep, and schmutz all the time, but how did these words come to pepper American English? In Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land, Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle trace the influence of Yiddish from medieval Europe to the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. This comics anthology contains original stories by notable writers and artists such as Barry Deutsch, Peter Kuper, Spain Rodriguez, and Sharon Rudahl. Through illustrations, comics art, and a full-length play, four major themes are explored: culture, performance, assimilation, and the revival of the language. The last fully realized work by Harvey Pekar, this book is a thoughtful compilation that reveals the far-reaching influences of Yiddish.Praise for Yiddishkeit: “The book is about what Neal Gabler in his introduction labels ‘Jewish sensibility.’ It pervades this volume, which he acknowledges is messy; he writes: ‘You really can't define Yiddishkeit neatly in words or pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.’ The book does this with gusto.” —New York Times “Yiddishkeit is as colorful, bawdy, and charming as the culture it seeks to represent.” —Print magazine “every bit of it brimming with the charm and flavor of its subject and seamlessly meshing with the text to create a genuinely compelling, scholarly comics experience” —Publishers Weekly“Yiddishkeit is a book that truly informs about Jewish culture and, in the process, challenges readers to pick apart their own vocabulary.” —Chicago Tribune “a postvernacular tour de force” —The Forward “A fascinating and enlightening effort that takes full use of the graphic storytelling medium in an insightful and revelatory way.” —The Miami Herald “With a loving eye Pekar and Buhle extract moments and personalities from Yiddish history.” —Hadassah “gorgeous comix-style portraits of Yiddish writers” ––Tablet “Yiddishkeit has managed to survive, if just barely, not because there are individuals dedicated to its survival, though there are, but because Yiddishkeit is an essential part of both the Jewish and the human experience.” —Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, from his introduction

    You see, survival of the colored race in America is at a difficult point where it has to be taught to our youth. The old practices of lynching and segregation which are thought to have been eradicated from our society lives on but in various other forms: police brutality, income inequality, unemployment and single motherhood… designs to keep our communities in perpetual turmoil and slavery.This book should be required reading for the youth and a lesson to any group that man’s inhumanity to man has not ended in America and is practiced around the world.

    Discusses the basics of the Arabic language and provides instruction in the Arabic alphabet.

    Transcripts of lectures present to an Honors Book of Morman class at BYU,1988-1990Has the smallest print I have every seen!!

    All it takes is 15 minutes a day and this highly effective mini-course. Start boosting communication skills with a simple 12-minute quiz that highlights your current proficiency. Keep the pencil ready and go through the workbook which guides you in writing, saying, and using new words continually until they become second nature. Find out how to identify the etymology of a word, memorize odd words, use verbs and adjectives with remarkable power, choose a synonym, and create a personalized plan for vocabulary growth. It will increase your potential for success.

    If you are looking for a basic Japanese for beginners textbook that teaches Japanese kanji, vocabulary, and grammar, you will not find it here. But if you are struggling with the question of how to learn Japanese more effectively or if you have trouble speaking Japanese, why not try something new and different? Half of the people who see the title to this book might be thinking, "Learn Japanese by watching anime? What a load of crap!" Such a thing certainly sounds like a crazy pipe dream that a great number of anime fans share. And if you watch anime with English subtitles like most people, Japanese fluency will remain merely a dream. You will not learn Japanese outside a small handful of basic words. If you turned off the English subtitles, however, you would be taking your first steps towards a successful Japanese language learning program. Of course, this is not the only step either. The following steps contained within this book describe a fascinating process of how anyone can learn to speak Japanese fluently through mostly reading and listening to native Japanese language materials. Inside of this book is a system that allows you to learn and never forget thousands of new Japanese kanji, vocabulary words, phrases, and grammar structures that you encounter from any Japanese language source of your choice. This includes anime, manga, dramas, movies, videos, music, video games, visual novels, and anything else that uses the Japanese language. Whether you are at the basic Japanese for beginners level or intermediate levels, use this book to help you learn Japanese to fluency faster and easier starting today!

    As much a travel book as a tour of words at play, The Prodigal Tongue goes beyond grammar and vocabulary to discover how language is irrevocably changing the people of the world in far-reaching ways. On his travels, Abley encounters bloggers, translators, novelists, therapists, dictionary makers, hip-hop performers, and Web-savvy teens. He talks to a married couple who corresponded passionately online before they met in “meatspace.” And he listens to teenagers, puzzling out the words they coin in chat rooms and virtual worlds. Everywhere he goes, he asks what the future is likely to hold for the ways we communicate. Abley balances a traditional concern for honesty and accuracy in language with a less traditional delight in the sheer creative energy of new words and expressions. Provocative, perceptive, and often hilarious, this is a book for everyone who cherishes the words we use.

    Over 20,000 quotations from every era and every location bring you the wisdom of ages and the sound bites of today. The text is a browser's paradise that allows the reader to identify who said what, and when, and where. Here readers will find in one volume the wit and wisdom of humanity--the finest lines to be found from Shakespeare, the Bible, Mark Twain, Alan Greenspan, and hundreds of other writers, philosophers, political figures, and entertainers. This new edition contains over 200 new entries including sixty-one quotable Americans. This updated sixth edition encompasses current trends in politics and culture with quotations such as States like these constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world (George Bush), and It's a good thing (Martha Stewart). Many other new additions are older in origin, yet enlighten events of the twenty-first century. Each illuminating entry contains in-depth details of the earliest traceable source, biographical cross-references, birth and death dates, and a career brief. With both a thematic and keyword index, scholars and readers thumbing through the book will easily be able to find quotations for all occasions. Ranging from the profound, to cogent, to witty, these quotations will add spice to your writing and conversation. An ideal reference for any home or office library, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is a perennial source of entertainment and inspiration for public speakers, writers, or anyone else who enjoys a sparkling line or spirited reply.

    But this attitude is a relatively recent development in the sweep of history. In The Pun Also Rises, John Pollack — a former Presidential Speechwriter for Bill Clinton, and winner of the world pun championship — explains how punning revolutionized language and made possible the rise of modern civilization. Integrating evidence from history, pop culture, literature, comedy, science, business and everyday life, this book will make readers reconsider everything they think they know about puns.

    Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words.For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin's work.

    Get ready for hundreds of pages filled with surprising revelations, inside information, obscure trivia, and universal cosmic destruction. This legend of localization doesn’t stink!

    I was born into Russian; transposed into Czech, then German; introduced to Hebrew; and finally adopted by English.' Elena Lappin was born in Russia. Her parents speak Russian to one another, and to their children. Elena speaks Czech to her brother, but he writes in German and she writes in English. What does it mean to be brought up in family that speaks several different languages, and where all members are writers? Elena Lappin explores what it is to be a writer, what language is, and it's also a wonderful look at the life of a woman who has moved from country to country looking for a language to think in.

    (Was it just bread, or was it chapatti, rye, dal, or pita?) Brand-new word spectrums show where your word falls in a line between two polar opposites (passable is three-quarters of the way from beautiful to ugly).Other features include quick guides to easily confused words; helpful, real-world usage guidance to tricky sticking points of grammar and word choice; and careful, expert distinctions among awkward synonyms. All Oxford American dictionaries use an easy-to-use respelling system to show how entries are pronounced. It uses simple, familiar markings to represent common American English sounds. The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus will unlock the power of language and is certain to be the thesaurus that stays on the desk--and stays open.

    , 546 pages, 448 pages with index in English followed by Hyms in Hindi, colour and black and white illustrations

    Geoffrey K. Pullum's writings began as columns in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory in 1983. For six years, in almost every issue, under the banner "TOPIC. . .COMMENT," he published a captivating mélange of commentary, criticism, satire, whimsy, and fiction. Those columns are reproduced here—almost exactly as his friends and colleagues originally warned him not to publish them—along with new material including a foreword by James D. McCawley, a prologue, and a new introduction to each of these clever pieces. Whether making a sneak attack on some sacred cow, delivering a tongue-in-cheek protest against current standards, or supplying a caustic review of some recent development, Pullum remains in touch with serious concerns about language and society. At the same time, he reminds the reader not to take linguistics too seriously all of the time. Pullum will take you on an excursion into the wild and untamed fringes of linguistics. Among the unusual encounters in store are a conversation between Star Trek's Commander Spock and three real earth linguists, the strange tale of the author's imprisonment for embezzling funds from the Campaign for Typographical Freedom, a harrowing account of a day in the research life of four unhappy grammarians, and the true story of how a monograph on syntax was suppressed because the examples were judged to be libelous. You will also find a volley of humorous broadsides aimed at dishonest attributional practices, meddlesome copy editors, mathematical incompetence, and "cracker-barrel philosophy of science." These learned and witty pieces will delight anyone who is fascinated by the quirks of language and linguists.