Talk:Mama from the Train

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Not Pennsylvania Dutch

Irving Gordon was born in Brooklyn and cut his teeth in the Catskills on the borscht circuit. Wikipedia doesn't say, but he was probably Jewish. Even if he were not Jewish, he would have heard Yiddish and Yinglish in Brooklyn, and probably throughout his life.

Yiddish and Pennsylvania German are different languages. But both sometimes inflect accusative and dative differently, so it would be natural for a native speaker to get the English word order wrong.

Even if you cannot speak Yiddish or Pennsylvania German properly, if you grew up in a community where they were widely spoken, these sentences would not be garden path sentences; they would be easily parsed, albeit with a chuckle — which was obviously Gordon's intent. -- Solo Owl 18:25, 12 January 2014 (UTC)