Smajovics answers dialectological questionnaire items put by Kerler. They cover words for foods and household objects (porridge, mouse, windowpane, wall), colours, adverbs of time and degree, sentences to translate, religious terms, parts of the body, kinship words and forms like 'this/that'. He also gives the words for apostasy and for a wealthy man, the comparative forms, and numerals. He says which words he knows from his town and which only from other speakers, Poles, Russians or Hungarians.
Gives details on which words he knows from Chernivtsi usage, Polish, Russian and Hungarian.
Smajovics offers to sing a song and performs it more than once, with Kerler asking him to repeat it line by line so he can write down the words. It is a humorous song about Aunt Pesl in a lane of the shtetl and a rabbi found with her. In between Kerler asks about the meanings of terms such as dybbuk and golem.
Includes questions on the meaning of dybbuk and golem, and repeated performances of the song so Kerler can transcribe it.
Smajovics talks about language use in the Soviet Union after the war. He and others spoke Ukrainian at work, Yiddish at home, and many Jews' children could not speak Yiddish. His own children, though, learned Hungarian from newspapers he ordered, and his daughter could work as she could read, write and speak the language. Kerler then asks for another song.
Smajovics sings the song "Papirosn", about an orphan selling cigarettes in the cold. Kerler asks about other songs; Smajovics says he has forgotten some and recalls a song about a fire on the hearth in winter. He mentions the boys of his village, of whom he is the only one still living, and a friend in Brooklyn he sees on visits. He begins another song about a faithful hasid.
Mentions the group of boys from his village and a friend he visits in Brooklyn.
Smajovics sings a comic Yiddish song in which the speaker vows to be a faithful hasid, with a hot mikveh in summer, a silk kaftan and a shtreimel, and shaking at prayer to entertain the rebbe. Kerler asks him to repeat the lines slowly so they can be written down, and asks about their sense. Smajovics sings the whole song several times.
