New York Jewish Conversational Style

April 6, 2023 12:07 AM

New York Jewish Conversational Style (17-page pdf, 1981)
posted by aniola (30 comments total)

I was raised by an east coast parent with this style of communication but have spent most of my life in places where it's considered rude. So I spent many years being given a hard time about it until I adapted because I and those I was communicating with didn't realize it was just a different style of communication. So reading this was illuminating and fun.
posted by aniola at 12:47 AM on April 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

Mod note: Comment removed. Single link posts are absolutely fine, there's no need to question a poster about why there are not more links.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:05 AM on April 6, 2023 [13 favorites]

Deborah Tannen! Reading her work was the first time I really appreciated different styles of communication without being judgmental about them.
posted by cadge at 5:46 AM on April 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

I love listening to conversations like this but I lack the aggression to participate in them.

I liked the part about persistence. I’m not good at that. I find myself waiting until I’m absolutely sure the other person is finished talking, which often leads to them speaking again to fill the silence just as I finally start to speak at which point I have to stop because I feel like I’m interrupting.

I often leave conversations in which I spoke maybe 20% of the time feeling like I ran roughshod over the poor person who did the other 80%.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 5:55 AM on April 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

Toity Doity Boids.
posted by Splunge at 6:07 AM on April 6, 2023

I grew up in Oklahoma, in a non Jewish family, so when I first visited my Jewish ex's relatives in North Jersey for the first time for dinner, it was a shock.
The fast pace, the cross conversations... It was the several-threads-at-once thing that struck me most.
Over the years, I learned to love it. And converted to Judaism. All those years of Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah, and Passover...I miss them.
This Passover, my youngest will be with us for second Seder, but things will be a lot quieter. And that's okay too.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:19 AM on April 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

Apparently New Jersey Italians have a lot of the same linguistic features. I don't feel like I'm anywhere near an extreme example and am generally considered a good conversationalist even out here in the intermountain west, but yeah, this conversational style is what feels warm and friendly to me, and inter-turn pauses, etc. feel cold. Caused no end of awkwardness with my former in-laws. Cooperative overlap caused them to screech to a halt and a period of reproachful stony silence would ensue. Fun times.
posted by HotToddy at 7:44 AM on April 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

I didn't see the deleted comment, but this is the general audience article (not OCRed, also from 1981, via) for the paper I linked to.
posted by aniola at 8:49 AM on April 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I grew up in Central New Jersey, and all of this isn't quite so pronounced there. I went to college with a lot of people from northeastern New Jersey (and married one whose parents were Jews from New York), so I've picked up a lot of these mannerism over the years. When we lived in Minnesota, we used to tell people that if we're interrupting you, it means we're listening to you.
posted by mollweide at 9:12 AM on April 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

That was my comment. I did make a suggestion that a link to Tanner more generally would have fleshed out the post nicely, but mostly I was just trying to ask for more information on three related topics, not somehow make an indirect judgement on your post. (Ironic that my comment was interpreted as such, given the topic of the article, really.)
posted by eviemath at 11:16 AM on April 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

...
posted by Reverend John at 11:18 AM on April 6, 2023

Yeah, definitely feel this is in a lot of NY/NJ speech.

I don’t know if I get a “cold” feeling in places where people don’t do this so much as I find myself subconsciously repeating or filling gaps because I’m not sure if they heard me or were really listening? Switching gears between a more or less “participatory” conversation “style” takes a bit of effort!

In any case, this kind of participatory talk is not just something found in English. Consider aizuchi in Japanese.
posted by delicious-luncheon at 11:20 AM on April 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

According to the paper it's also found in the Middle East, and not found so much in German New York Jewish conversations.
posted by aniola at 11:26 AM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'd love an audio recording of those transcripts, or better yet, fly-on-the-wall cameras, each focused on upper bodies of the....combatants.
posted by lalochezia at 1:00 PM on April 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Apparently New Jersey Italians have a lot of the same linguistic features.

Brings to mind what Tony Soprano said about Italians being "Jews with better food."
posted by Ayn Marx at 1:35 PM on April 6, 2023

As a native New Yorker, this is great. So much of what I experienced growing up.

Also, compare with the competing dinners scene in Annie Hall.
posted by doctornemo at 1:40 PM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I believe the Irish do this too, which is why the Irish-Jewish match is so blessed. Curious to know if any ethnicities see themselves in this conversational style too?

I’m not Jewish but I do tend to interrupt and have a very hard time with people who are sensitized to it as “disrespectful.”

Also … is it just me, or did Teams/Zoom improve a lot over the pandemic to facilitate overtalking ? The beginning of the pandemic work-from-home was aggravating in part because Teams seemed to silence speakers as soon as someone else spoke up more loudly. But that seemed to get much better.
posted by haptic_avenger at 3:39 PM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

My side of the family that does this is, as best I know, Irish Catholic and Polish Catholic.
posted by aniola at 4:14 PM on April 6, 2023

I suspect this happens the world over and is cultural/regional and probably also situational. There’s probably a spectrum from strict turn-taking, through light back channeling (yeah, uh huh), up to chaotic participatory overtalking.
posted by delicious-luncheon at 4:39 PM on April 6, 2023

We definitely did this at home growing up (mom is Jewish from Northern NJ), and both my parents are lawyers too so the conversations were always pretty combative. At school I got in trouble for interrupting.
posted by subdee at 5:15 PM on April 6, 2023

Grew up in the Boston area, with a lot of family members from the West End of Boston (before it was torn down). The style of speech was pretty similar. I had to read a Deborah Tannen book before I could communicate well with other people who had different conversational styles.
posted by rednikki at 6:06 PM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Shortly after I moved to Boston, singeing explained to me that it was rude to wait until someone was done talking. "Like a grumpy schoolteacher who won't open her mouth until the class settles down," he said.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:54 PM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Does the article give any insight into why users of this NY/NJ/Northeastern/MidAtlanticStates? speaking style also (seem to, in my experience) innately understand & use the otherwise Australian 'Yes, No' and 'No, Yes' constructions?

The former word is a starting point for the phrase; the latter determines if the meaning is positive or negative.
Nah, Yeah = Yes / Yeah, Nah = No

Tourist: Excuse me, we're trying to get back on the highway; can you give us directions?
Local: Nah, Yeah, you missed the turn-off back there, happens all the time.
Tourist: So..we just go back one exit?
Local: Yeah, Nah, that'll just get you even more lost, it's a complicated intersection. Nah, Yeah, all you have to do is keep going a half mile straight ahead and take the next exit. That'll get you back on the main road you're looking for. Big sign, cant miss it.
Tourist: Thank you, that's very helpful. Sorry to bother you.
Local: Nah Yeah Nah, no worries, mate! Glad to help.
posted by bartleby at 7:38 PM on April 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

we used to tell people that if we're interrupting you, it means we're listening to you
I think this kind of thing also applies in cultures where 'if people close to you don't make fun of you, it means they don't like you'.
I know this doesn't make sense to some people.
posted by bartleby at 7:42 PM on April 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

ooohh, the "Yeah, no, uhm" construction. I've noticed I do this a lot. I don't think I reverse it to the "Nah, yeah" form, but I feel like I'd know what it means if I heard it. Interesting.
posted by mollweide at 8:06 PM on April 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

no yeah ok I just wanted to make sure you got it that's fine thanks
posted by bartleby at 9:06 PM on April 6, 2023

A very brilliant Jewish friend made up a song about this communication style. It goes:
“These Jews were made for talking
And that’s just what they’ll do.
One of these days these Jews are gonna
Talk right over you.”
I love that friend and this article so much.
posted by sleepingwithcats at 9:24 PM on April 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

Far as I can tell, everyone in North America thinks the "Yeah, no"/"No, yeah" thing is regional to wherever they're from.

I was raised by Los Angeles Jews but somehow developed this conversational style independently early in life -- my mother has given me shit for interrupting for as long as I can remember, when to me it feels like I'm actively participating, so clearly I didn't learn it from her. Then again, when we have the whole family together, we get very overlappy, so maybe my mom's the odd one among us ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I live in England now, i.e. the ancestral homeland of the W.A.S.P.s, and boy oh boy is it a trip learning how to talk and listen to people here! Even at synagogue nobody but the Americans interrupts! Though my in-laws are working class Essex types and when they get excited they know how to have a good combative back-and-forth. I appreciate that about them very much.
posted by cabbage raccoon at 1:04 AM on April 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn't read the whole thing but it's right there on page 2. We weren't Jewish but my mom always told me that she had to take speech therapy to lose her Brooklyn accent before she could teach in NYC public schools, in the early to mid 1950's. She was always correcting my speech.
posted by lordrunningclam at 6:46 AM on April 7, 2023

I moved directly from NYC to Hawaii, and my experience was extremely rough. I'd never lived outside of the northeastern USA before, and when I tried to engage people in conversation they found me to be extremely rude and pushy, to the point that people broke off contact rather than listen to me speak. Being Hawaiians, they wouldn't tell me what the problem was, or even that there was a problem at all, because pointing out that I was being rude would be embarrassing for me - except that among New York Jews, no, it wouldn't be. Having no context, I didn't understand what I was doing wrong, particularly since (by NYC standards) I was always told I was excessively polite! Finally, someone broke down and told me that he didn't want to be friends because I was "a pushy asshole." For my part, I found Hawaiian people to be superficially friendly but then aloof and unapproachable.

Moving to California years later was not as bad, but it was similar. It was very, very hard to stop interrupting people or changing topics rapid-fire, which is just how I was socialized to speak. Even today, my wife (who's not from NYC) says that she sometimes has trouble following our conversations, since I can maintain three or four separate conversations with just the two of us speaking.

It shocks me that people took it for granted that the authentic vernacular of the place and culture where they grew up was something that needed to be suppressed.
posted by 1adam12 at 10:55 AM on April 13, 2023