Tag #157127 - Interview #78067 (abraham pressburger)

I would say that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, my ancestors in Bratislava and Galanta spoke the same language. Jews used the German language, it wasn't Yiddish but it definitely was colored by Yiddish. My father's generation that lived at the beginning of the 20th century also spoke Hungarian. Slovak was quite foreign to them, and they perhaps didn't even learn it until after the founding of the Czechoslovak state [see First Czechoslovak Republic] 5, and only very superficially. The rabbi's sermon in the synagogue was always in German. To illustrate what the coloring sounded like, I'll tell you something that has stuck in my head. Once on Schondorf, today's Obchodnej Street, Bratislava, some woman fainted and many people gathered around. And one man, a non-Jew was asking one Jewish boy what had happened. He answered, 'Gar nichts. A goyte ist schicker.' That means, nothing's happened, one goyte - non-Jewish woman - is drunk. Words like 'oylem goylem,' that the world is stupid, or that all are 'ganoven' - thieves, that was that coloring in the German language that was used. But all in all, it wasn't Yiddish.