We were given slips of paper that read, "You'll be having Shabbat dinner by the family, who live at ", which suggests that "by" is used for the people who live in a house and "at" for the physical address. On the question of "by" instead of "at" (as in, we're having dinner by Becky tonight)-I think Martha was correct that this is a Yiddishism, and it seems to be a standard usage among the more religious/orthodox groups, particularly Chassidim, and even among native English speakers.ĭuring a weekend I spent in Tzfat, in Northern Israel, local families invited visitors for Friday night dinner. I agree that German (or the Germanic Yiddish) is the most likely origin. Perhaps this nonstandard use of by crept into some dialects of English to fill a perceived gap in English.
In English you have to use a longer phrase, like: at someone's place. My parents, raised likewise, used this construction as well.Įnglish does not have a convenient preposition of locality analogous to those found in many languages to represent someone's place (e.g., German bei + dative French chez + prepositional Russian у + genitive perhaps Old Spanish onde Hebrew בֵּית Latin apud + accusative).
All sorts of religions, languages, accents, and dialects were present. While neither of my parents spoke any language other than American English, and I have no Jewish (Hebrew or Yiddish) family ties, I did grow up in an ethnically diverse, pan-European, urban neighborhood. I was intrigued by the discussion of "by me." As I mentioned in response to another thread, (by George!) using by with a person to represent their house is a part of my informal language range. This could all be cleared up by saying "It is at half capacity", but I doubt that will happen anytime soon for most people, heh. One might say "But what if you walk in and see a glass and it contains half of it's capacity of liquid, what then?", I would say more than likely it is "half-full" unless it's surroundings indicate it has been emptied for some purpose (lip-marks on the rim of a water glass for example) since it had to have liquid added by default even if half was removed.Īs to the trash I would say "half-full" fits best, as you generally do not empty your own trash can. If you are filling a glass with wine and you stop halfway it is now "half-full", if you fill a glass and drink half it is now "half-empty". I have always seen half-full or half-empty as a description not only of what one is seeing, but also the circumstances of how it got that way. I would say that the girl with the trash bag was neither a pessimist nor an optimist, but a forward-thinking speaker.
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