VOA标准英语2010年-By Most Accounts, Yiddish is Dying

A funny thing is happening in the world of language instruction.  Only it's not funny at all for one language in particular.

Because of the growing importance of global commerce and contact, foreign language instruction is booming at U.S. colleges.  But because of the tight economy, many colleges are eliminating fulltime language-teaching positions or filling them with cheaper lecturers who are not faculty¹ members at all.

 
Library of Congress
This 1917 poster, urging immigrant Americans to cut down on their use of wheat so it could be shipped to Allies fighting in World War I, is written in Yiddish

This is the case at the University of Maryland's flagship College Park campus, a prestigious² state-run school in the eastern United States.  To save costs, the university plans to cut its one Yiddish-teaching position.  It's the latest blow in what has been a steady decline in the study and use of Yiddish, which began among European Jews in the Middle Ages as a conversational⁴ Germanic language that uses Hebrew characters.

At one point, before the Nazi⁵ genocide of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust⁶ of the 1940s, an estimated 10 million European Jews spoke⁷ Yiddish as their everyday language, while worshiping in formal Hebrew.  Yiddish thrived among Jewish immigrants to the United States, including famous comics who brought colorful, consonant-laden Yiddish words into the greater English vocabulary.  Schlep, for example.  To schlep is to walk or carry things clumsily.

Wikipedia Commons
Jonathan Winters was one of many Borscht Belt comedians⁸ who performed at clubs catering⁹ to a working-class Jewish clientele in New York's Catskill Mountains

Today, Yiddish is struggling to survive.  It's thought that fewer than 500,000 people, mostly the elderly, speak it worldwide.  Most young, acculturated Jews speak only their countries' principal language, plus Hebrew during worship.

The Holocaust Museum archive in Washington, D.C., is full of Yiddish materials, University of Maryland language professor Miriam Isaacs told the Baltimore Sun newspaper.  Who is going to read them?

Read more of Ted³'s personal reflections and stories from the road on his blog, Ted Landphair's America.
 

1 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

2 prestigious   

adj.有威望的，有声望的，受尊敬的

参考例句：

• The young man graduated from a prestigious university.这个年轻人毕业于一所名牌大学。
• You may even join a prestigious magazine as a contributing editor.甚至可能会加入一个知名杂志做编辑。

3 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

4 conversational   

adj.对话的，会话的

参考例句：

• The article is written in a conversational style.该文是以对话的形式写成的。
• She values herself on her conversational powers.她常夸耀自己的能言善辩。

5 Nazi   

n.纳粹分子，adj.纳粹党的，纳粹的

参考例句：

• They declare the Nazi regime overthrown and sue for peace.他们宣布纳粹政权已被推翻，并出面求和。
• Nazi closes those war criminals inside their concentration camp.纳粹把那些战犯关在他们的集中营里。

6 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。

7 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

8 comedians   

n.喜剧演员，丑角( comedian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The voice was rich, lordly, Harvardish, like all the boring radio comedians'imitations. 声音浑厚、威严，俨然是哈佛出身的气派，就跟无线电里所有的滑稽演员叫人已经听腻的模仿完全一样。 来自辞典例句
• He distracted them by joking and imitating movie and radio comedians. 他用开玩笑的方法或者模仿电影及广播中的滑稽演员来对付他们。 来自辞典例句

9 catering   

n. 给养

参考例句：

• Most of our work now involves catering for weddings. 我们现在的工作多半是承办婚宴。
• Who did the catering for your son's wedding? 你儿子的婚宴是由谁承办的？