End of ADS-L Digest - 11 Feb 1998 to 12 Feb 1998
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From: Automatic digest processor (2/12/98)
To: Recipients of ADS-L digests
ADS-L Digest - 10 Feb 1998 to 11 Feb 1998 98-02-12 00:00:42
There are 14 messages totalling 369 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Resend Re: Origins of "shyster"
2. Sorry !
3. Japan(ese) (4)
4. Nagano
5. truncated Digest
6. Clipping Services
7. "Nagano"
8. theme for ADSn 1999
9. Nagano: its pron
10. Norman French influence
11. word choice
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Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 03:07:31 -0600
From: Mike Salovesh t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU
Subject: Resend Re: Origins of "shyster"
Ooops! Sorry, folks. I sent this message from an unfamiliar computer
on campus.
Line spacing and paragraphing got messed up because I didn't understand
its
Internet editor. Here's a clearer version of the same text:
Orin Hargraves wrote:
A small footnote to Barry Popik's fascinating discovery on the origins of
shyster: he queries the probability of there being a German policeman in
Chicago. At the turn of the century (and for some time before) Germans made
up more than 25% of Chicago's population; they were more numerous than the
next 3 identifiable immigrant groups combined. A lot of advertising from
the time was printed in both English and German. See "Chicago: Growth of a
Metropolis" (Mayer, U of Chicago Press) for a lot fuller background.
And as a footnote to Orin's footnote, both bilingual German/English
classes
and classes (even whole schools) taught exclusively in German were
common in
Chicago public schools a century ago. Non-English classes covered the
entire
curriculum, not just language instruction. Some Chicago schools offered
bilingual and/or monolingual education in other languages (notably
Polish
and Yiddish), too. So much for the "innovation" of Ebonics in Oakland
classrooms!
Bilingual public school classes ended as a side effect of World War I,
when
it was regarded as patriotic to "de-Germanize" American English.
"Hamburgers"
became "victory burgers" during the war, while wieners metamorphosed
into the
classic Chicago hot dog forever. Names also were changed to cut alleged
ties
to the Kaiser, as Schmidts became Smiths in droves. Some of my wife's
relatives with the suspiciously Germanic name of Lebrecht frenchified
the
spelling to LeBrecht in order to go with the patriotic flow.
.
Given the large population of German descent in Chicago, it probably
would
have been impossible to single out German bilingual ed for termination,
but
the anti-German trend was irresistable. The Chicago political solution
was
to close bilingual classes in K-12 across the board. (Ouch. What a
waste!)
Chicago's community colleges (then called "Junior Colleges") were under
the
same Board of Education as the K-12 schools. They continued to offer
non-language courses in languages other than English for years after
bilingual
ed was removed at K-12 levels.
Sorry I can't back this up with documentary citation: it comes out of
family
lore. Some of my uncles and aunts, as well as some of my wife's
relatives,
actually went to Chicago public schools where the languages of
instruction
were, variously, German, Yiddish, and Polish. (My functional
mother-in-law
was born in Chicago; she spoke only Polish at home and in school until
she
reached high school. I don't know whether she was in public school or
parochial school.) My youngest uncle attended a Chicago community
college
just before World War II, and he told me about non-language courses
taught
there in languages other than English. (That was part of his favoring
me
with an oral history of Wilbur Wright Community College, which he
attended,
when I got my first full-time college teaching job. The job was at
Wright.)
-- mike salovesh salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu
anthropology department
northern illinois university PEACE !!!