Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

NEW YORK — Leo Rosten, who translated his mamaloshen into English and helped make words like "shlep" and "nosh" part of the American vernacular, has died at 88.

Perhaps best known for his 1968 book "The Joys of Yiddish," Rosten was an amateur sociologist who also authored dozens of nonfiction and fiction titles, including mysteries.

His first book, 1937's "The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N," which grew out of short stories he had published in the New Yorker magazine, affectionately recounted the struggles of people steeped in Yiddish culture and language who were trying to acclimate to life in America.

Early in his career, Rosten used the pseudonym Leonard Q. Ross. He was apparently trying — like many transplanted Jews — to go by a name that sounded to his immigrant ears more glamorous and American. Rosten was born April 11, 1908, in Lodz, Poland, to Samuel and Ida Freundlich Rosten. The family immigrated to the United States when he was 3.

In Chicago, Rosten was raised in a working-class environment whose population of new Jewish Americans formed the setting for his later writing.

His best-known character, Hyman Kaplan, was based on one of Rosten's students from night school.

The warmth and humor with which Rosten wrote about his indomitable Hyman Kaplan struck a familiar chord with many people who were striving at the time to blend into the melting pot.

Kaplan reappeared in two sequels, "The Return of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N," in 1959, and "O K*A*P*L*A*N! My K*A*P*L*A*N!" in 1976.

Rosten possessed the same ear for humor and the same affection for his characters that Sholem Aleichem and Mark Twain had for theirs, said Sol Steinmetz, an authority on the impact of Yiddish on the English language.

Hyman Kaplan's "is a loving story, and throughout his life Mr. Rosten tried to convey this tremendous love of the language and culture," said Steinmetz, author of "Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America" and editorial director of the reference division at Random House. Steinmetz was recently quoted by New York Times language columnist William Safire as differing with Rosten over the origins of the Yiddish word "shmuck."

Rosten "has made a lasting contribution to American culture and even Jewish culture. Jews who in the 1930s were ashamed of Yiddish, and throughout World War II felt funny about recognizing their Jewishness, learned through people like Rosten to feel proud of their Yiddishness without fear or shame," he said.

Decades later, Rosten wrote "The Joys of Yiddish" and helped bring to America's farthest reaches a familiarity with Yiddish patois.

Rosten "helped popularize the usefulness and interest and humor of Yiddish as it influenced American English — so people were not embarrassed, after his contributions, to use such words," said Steinmetz.

Today, even Dunkin' Donuts urges customers to try its new bagels through the use of billboards reading, "It's Worth the Schlep."

Words such as "mensch" and "chutzpah," which with their multiple nuances have no precise English equivalent, and uniquely Yiddish sentence forms such as "Shakespeare it's not" and "Enjoy, enjoy!" are now used by Americans totally removed from any connection to the culture from which this language sprang.

Today, "you can live in Minnesota and pick up a Yiddishism and not even be aware of what it is," Steinmetz said of Rosten's lasting influence.