The New York City Public Schools have officially declared Hebonics (Jewish English) as a second language. Backers of the move say the city schools are the first in the nation to recognize Hebonics as a valid language and a significant attribute of American culture. According to Howard Schollman, linguistics professor at Brooklyn College and renowned Hebonics scholar, the sentence structure of Hebonics derives from middle and eastern European language patterns, as well as Yiddish.
Prof. Schollman explains, "In Hebonics, the response to any question is usually another question, plus a complaint, implied or stated. Thus 'How are you?' would be answered, 'How should I be... with my bad feet?'"
Schollman says that Hebonics is a superb linguistic vehicle for expressing sarcasm or skepticism. An example is the repetition of a word with "sh" or "shm" at the beginning: "Mountains, shmountains. Stay away. You want a nosebleed?"
Another Hebonics pattern is moving the subject of a sentence to the end, with its pronoun at the beginning: "It's beautiful, that dress."
Schollman says one also sees the Hebonics verb moved to the end of the sentence. Thus the response to a remark such as "He's slow as a turtle," could be "Turtle, shmurtle! Like a fly in Vaseline he walks."
Schollman provided the following examples from his best-selling textbook, "Switched-On Hebonics."