The word of the week is Jingoism.Jingoism is a term used to describe extreme nationalism and favor towards ones own country. It is usually used to describe a foreign policy which is extremely combative. The term was coined in 1878 in England according to encyclopedia Britannica.com, and comes from a popular saying of the time, by jingo, which appeared in a popular jingle, quoted from Encyclopedia Britannica.com “We don’t want to fight, yet by jingo, if we do,We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,And got the money, too!”The phrase is still used nowadays in the US to represent a country’s political ambitions. Used in a sentence:”This war represents an expression of jingoistic tomfoolery.”
The subject of the week is Yiddish.Yiddish is an international language resulting in a hybrid of medieval German and Hebrew dialects spoken by Ashkenazic Jews, who come from Eastern and Central Europe according to a website www.jewishvirtuallibrary.com.In the beginning Yiddish was simply a German dialect that came about by combining a Jewish/French dialect called Laaz, with German. In order to avoid persecution the Jews slowly moved more and more East until the center of European Jewish culture found itself centered in Poland where more Slavic parts were added to the language. As western Yiddish, in France and Germany, declined Eastern Yiddish came to be Yiddish itself.In the greater view of Jewish culture Yiddish is believed to have linked many Jewish communities internationally by giving them a common language that broke barriers. However, this language separated them out from other Europeans and made the Jews distrusted. Many Western European Jews attempted to shed this persecution by changing their language to Hebrew, or abandoning Jewish languages all together.Due to the Holocaust and events afterwards Yiddish almost disappeared. With most of the 6 million Jews in the Holocaust coming from Eastern Europe, and Stalin’s postwar Soviet Union not allowing it to be spoken, fleeing Ashkenazic Jews had to come to places like the US and Israel, where Yiddish was spoken little if at all.Today Yiddish is experiencing a comeback. It is being studied by many universities, and is used by several modern populations.