Yiddish and English: The Story of Yiddish in America

Yiddish arrived in America as the mother tongue of millions of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. Gradually it infiltrated the majority language and
Jewish English
was created, with words such as
kosher
and
chutzpah.
Yiddish had first developed from language sharing as Jews of northern France and northern Italy migrated into the German-speaking region of the Rhine Valley in the Middle Ages. The author traces the development of such words as
bonhomme
from the old French meaning
good man
to the Yiddish of
bonim , or
shul
for synagogue derived from the German
schuol , meaning
school,
which had come originally from the Latin
schola .