Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Visiting Committee of the Division of the Humanities who have sponsored the fieldwork on this project. We also thank the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the American Councils for International Education ACTR/ACCELS Title VIII Research Scholar Award for support in writing the book.

We are especially grateful to the speakers of Odessan Russian who have worked with us to understand the data, and numerous friends and colleagues who have taken time to discuss this project with us. Our search for speakers of Odessan Russian took us to Brighton Beach where we had considerable help in tracking down Odessans. Locating speakers who would be willing to talk to us was challenging, and we are very grateful to everyone who helped us. Odessans who speak Standard Russian were helpful in their metalinguistic knowledge of Odessan Russian, and in helping us understand the social culture of Odessa when they lived there. Barry Scherr invested considerable time in helping track down literary works written by Odessans, and in searching them for data. We are indebted to him for all his work and advice. Victor Friedman provided invaluable advice on how to think about place names and the implications of one spelling over another. We are grateful for all the discussions of the project with him over time. The book has benefited from discussions of the material and feedback from numerous colleagues and Odessan consultants, including: the Beytelman family, Sam Casper, Hannah Khromov, Sergei Gindin, Ida Mayer and Ilya Sher, and the many other Odessans living in Brighton Beach who worked with us. We are grateful for their support and help; any mistakes or misinterpretations are our own. Carmen Caswell of the University of Chicago created all of the maps used in this book; we are greatly appreciative of all of her help and support. Finally, we are also indebted to the anonymous reviewer of the manuscript who provided thorough and detailed feedback, especially on the Russian, Yiddish, and Ukrainian data.