Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won't Do)

With Just Say Nu, Michael Wex has again given us something rare in popular literature about Yiddish, a laugh out loud synthesis of scholarship and humor. It's an entry point to Yiddish that I wish had been around when I started studying the language as an undergraduate.

In fact, Just Say Nu should probably have been published before Born To Kvetch. It covers the basics that Kvetch (which covers much more advanced cultural contexts of Yiddish life) skipped over. Just Say Nu literally starts at the beginning, covering the nuances of language basics (like greetings and interjections) and delves into the many non-verbal aspects of Yiddish conversation.

Just Say Nu will give the you the conversational tools to handle any Jewish situation, whether it's running into Rabbi Goldberg at the burlesque house or getting your pain in the ass brother or sister to pass the milk at the table.

I only have one quarrel with Mr. Wex. He claims that Yiddish is unique in that it can diminish human misery without providing a concomitant increase in happiness. Yiddish brings me closer to the entirety of Jewish experience, both the good and the bad, the cursed and the blessed, the happy and the reserved. Just Say Nu, and the richness of Yiddish within it, did indeed provide an increase in happiness.

a waste of money.

my chief criticism is the author's idiosynchratic phonetic spelling of the yiddish words. by doing this he made the written yiddish almost indecipherable. it was the flip side of the author who translated shakespeare into yiddish and then boasted his translation was new and improved.

Oy, Shprintse, what a book! It's a lecture on Yiddish, no doubt, and also on religion as the essential part to understand what's going on in the language. And it's so funny on such a high level that one may think the jokes will be missed -- but that's what I feared when I read "Born To Kvetch" already which has turned into a hit instead. Wex is not resting on the success of BTK (don't even think of Dennis Rader or the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company). JSN risks to introduce its own transliteration on top of YIVO's. But, hell, it works and turns pronunciation into fun! This is not a Yiddish for Dummies. Kvelling on scholarship, life and love, Just Say Nu manages to unite science, fun and understanding of a language that -- and this book proves it -- has SURVIVED hell.