Mensch, bentsh, and balagan: Variation in the American Jewish linguistic repertoire

Based on a large-scale survey, this paper argues that the speech of American Jews should be analyzed not as a separate ethnolect or language variety but as English with a repertoire of distinctive linguistic features stemming from Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other sources. Jews make selective use of this repertoire as they index their identities as Jews and as certain types of Jews. Older Jews, Orthodox Jews, and non-Orthodox Jews who are highly engaged in religious life use different Hebrew and Yiddish words and grammatical constructions and different Hebrew pronunciations. Some Jews use distinctive meanings of Yiddish words, regional pronunciations of English words, or discourse styles. These trends are analyzed in relation to ethnolinguistic variation and Jewish languages.