Yankees, Cookies, & Dollars

That's the catchy little title of a new book by etymologist Nicoline van der Sijs that details the influence the seventeenth-century founders of New Amsterdam (that's New York City to you and me) exerted on America's future mother tongue. As a translator and linguophile (can you believe that word isn't in Merriam-Webster? Well, I'm using it anyway), I can't wait to get my hands on it. Are you listening, Saint Nick?

I'll be reading the Dutch version (take notes, dear Nick), as penned by Ms. Van der Sijs; I want to read what she wrote, the way she wrote it. Besides, I've already seen an excerpt of the English translation, which includes the phrase

...the contributions of the Dutch language to American English are indelibly embedded to some of our most vernacular terms and expressions...

Perhaps it's just me, but I can't quite parse the orange bit; I'd have liked embedded in vastly better. But, as I often diplomatize when faced with linguistic infelicity bordering on outright American error: maybe it's a British thing.

Even the title's better in Dutch; they turned it into Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops in English. Whatever for?

The book debuts in both languages in New York tomorrow.