177: #177 | Let’s Start With Komets-Alef: Learning About Yiddish With Meena & Arun Viswanath

Motherfoclóir

Recently, Yiddish became the fortieth language to join Duolingo, an achievement that followed hot on the heels of Harry Potter being translated into Yiddish. And would you believe that a brother and sister were responsible for these separate accomplishments? Well, when we found out about it we were struck by how many of the same kinds of conflicts and considerations that faced Irish came up again in thre context of Yiddish. So we had to find out more.
On today’s episode, Darach chats with siblings Meena and Arun Vishwaneth about their family’s relationship with Yiddish. They tell him how the phenomenon of Yiddish loanwords in slang has a downside when promoting the language, about the sense of post-assimilation loss that defines the relationship some American Jews have with the language. Meena (who worked on Duolingo) talks about dialects and the struggle to pick a flag to represent Yiddish on the app. Arun (who translated Harry Potter) tells of the process involved in translating house names, Quidditch itself and picking a dialect for Hagrid - as well as the matter of a major plot point hinging on an acronym.
You can find the Yiddish duolingo module on the app now.
You can follow Arun on Twitter at @a_a_vishwaneth
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