>>Speaking of Yiddish, did you ever read Billy Crystal's book "700 Sundays"? The title comes from the fact that when he was a kid, his dad had to work two jobs to make ends meet, and so they were only able to spend time together on Sundays. His dad died when Billy was 15, and he calculated that they only had 700 Sundays together.
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>>Anyway, it's a very funny book at times. He says his parents and his relatives all spoke Yiddish which he calls "a combination of German and phlegm". He says until he was 12 years old he wore a raincoat.
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>Haven't seen that one. I'll have to look for it.
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>I'm that odd Jew who was raised without Yiddish beyond what's in the popular culture. My father's father's family has been in the US since the early 19th century (and was likely Sephardic to start with). My mother was born in Germany, but left at age 7, and they didn't speak Yiddish anyway.
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>It used to drive my husband's grandmother nuts that I didn't know Yiddish. She couldn't imagine that there really were Jews who didn't use it.
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>Tamar

German Jews couldn't speak Yiddish because they spoke German. Yiddish is German that landed in Eastern Europe.