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Title: A Scholarly Book for Serious Students of Yiddish
Review: Too many books that purport to teach you Yiddish treat it as either a joke or a relic. Prof. Weinreich's "College Yiddish" treats Yiddish as a living, expressive and literary language, not as a compendium of phrases to say to your bubbe when she visits, or as a collection of cursewords. The book consists of 30 graded lessons, each based on a text which covers some aspect of Jewish life, culture and history, and especially of the Jewish communities of central and eastern Europe for whom Yiddish was a bond. At the end of the book is an excellent precis of Yiddish grammar. But this book isn't "dry as dust," either: Prof. Weinreich takes Jewish humor as seriously as he does Jewish culture and literature! Very highly recommended.
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