Epitaph for a Bronx Accent
There’s a saying that to lose a language is to lose a whole world. My uncle, Robert Tolchin (Americanized from Tolchinsky)—who died in September—was one of the last great speakers of Jewish Bronx, a particular nasal intonation of English so acid and sharp that, like radiation from Chernobyl, it could kill trees. Perhaps, indeed, it is why there are so few trees in the Bronx.
As a child, I was terrified of his accent. It could deliver withering disdain and disapproval; it seemed made of harder stuff than my flat Californian televisual patter. Words came out on rails, they were electrified; if I stood close enough, I could fall under their tracks and never get up.