The recent tragic death of my “ shayneh cousinkaleh” was a profound loss to our family. My cousin was an eyshet chayil, an ibergigaybineh(devoted) mameh, a zisseh bubbeh and a gitteh neshumeh. For me, her death also signified the loss of a Yiddish speaker. I thought about my cousinkaleh when I read Always Carry Salt. The book is about “milk language…spoken by your mother when you are tiny, the intimate vulnerable language of safety, of closeness, trust and belonging.” In her brief book author Samantha Ellis speaks volumes about preserving endangered languages as she tries to “kiss back to life” her own dormant Judeo-Iraqi Arabic mameh loshen.

 

Of the more than seven thousand languages spoken today, according to UNESCO, 2,464 are at risk of erasure. Born in 1975 in London, Ellis learned to speak English. Neither of her parents taught her the milk language, she now craves. She wanted her son to grow up speaking both languages. Her linguistic history reaches back to 597 BCE in Aramaic-speaking Babylonia, now Iraq, when Nebuchadnezzar deported thousands of Jews from Judea “to dredge canals between the Tigris and Euphrates.” The ancient Hebrews fused Aramaic with Hebrew. The subsequent Persian conquest (539) followed by Arabic occupation saw an infusion of new words that ultimately gave birth to the “talk of the Jews,” Ellis’ Judeo-Iraqi Arabic language. Her indefatigable efforts to revive it started in her own home.

 

Ellis taught her son the word “fedwa” –a term of endearment that in her language literally means “I would die for you.” She softened its meaning for her babyson to “I love you dearly.” When he repeated “fedwa,” to her Ellis writes “I melted.” Ellis parallels the Judeo-Iraqi Arabic to Yiddish- “inflected with Slavic language over the centuries.” She similarly considers Yiddish, a language at risk. “Before WWll there were 13 million Yiddish speakers.” Now under two million speakers and dwindling.

 

Ellis explains, it’s the “color of language” that makes her “homesick.” She misses its idiom, its humor, its colloquialisms, exotic recipes, folk tales and intimacy. I can relate. In what language other than Yiddish do you hear “Hak mir nisht kaiyn chaynik” that literally translates to - “don’t bang on my kettle but is said to someone who annoys or bores you.” Ellis mentions several of these vivid, wry, often humorous utterances present in her Judeo-Iraqi Arabic “tongue”. One is “You have chopped onions on my heart” spoken to a person who upsets or insults you. She collects “a flood” of such terms in what she calls her “language ark” and valiantly attempts to connect the “here and now” with the “there and then.” The chapter on “bubbeh maiyses” (old wives’ tales) provides the book’s title which recalls the superstition how salt, sewn into hems of clothes spares the evil eye. Both savory and sweet Always Carry Salt contains chochmah, ta’am, and gelechter (laughter)—just like Yiddish.