" An utshebe zavadyenye may be out of the question, but there’s not a barishnye who wouldn’t like to be znakome with Zola, Pushkin, or dazhe Gorky …” So she says to me, my beauty, half in Yiddish and half in Russian, although the Russian was more like two-thirds. "

― Sholom Aleichem , The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl, the Cantor's Son