Yiddish Linguistics

This chapter discusses a contested case where language planners committed to revival applied Heinz Kloss’s Ausbau theory of weaker languages ‘too similar’ to stronger languages needing to be ‘made further’ by means of normative planning. Katz argues that the purist strain of revivalism that emerged pitted its followers against the aging native-speaker writers and speakers of the language. This was followed in short order by an unexpected dramatic demographic increase in traditionally religious communities, whose language use (and more generally, traditionalist beliefs) the revivalists do not approve of, leading to further layers of alienation. The author asserts that the case of Yiddish can serve as a warning that well-intentioned revivalism coupled with Ausbauist purism can be counterproductive. The chapter, rooted in the classic descriptivist stance, provides a glimpse into the complex interfaces of revivalism, corpus planning, and non-linguistic alienation. A 1000-year prehistory of the debate is provided for context.

This article examines debates in Poland since the 1860s concerning Jews' naming practices and attempts to resolve the practical and social problems they engendered. Polemics within the Jewish press in Poland, particularly in Warsaw's Yiddish dailies, reveal competing conceptions of what constitutes an authentic and socially appropriate Jewish name. They also reflect changing perceptions of Yiddish, which had left its stamp on the inventory of names used by Ashkenazic Jews, and its growing place in urban life.

The article discusses several definitions of the notion of Yiddish that exist in linguistic studies. The Germanistic approach emphasizes differences between various German and Yiddish dialects. The Judeo-Centric approach, developed during the second half of the 20th century as an alternative method to that used by the Germanistic school, puts the uninterrupted chain of languages spoken by Jews in the center of its linguistic analysis. For the representatives of this school, Yiddish is a fusion language from its inception, the process they generally posit to the period when the first Jewish communities appeared in German-speaking territories. As suggested in this article, for the adequate understanding of the development of Yiddish, several notions used by the two approaches should be combined. Only the Germanistic approach provides appropriate frames for analyzing the genesis of Yiddish according to the Language Tree model. Its (re)application shows the inadequacy of certain basic positions of the Judeo-Centric Approach. Yet, several notions introduced by the proponents of the latter method still represent a major contribution in Yiddish studies. The notion of " fusion " creates an appropriate theoretical tool for studying the development of Yiddish varieties. The consideration of the uninterrupted chain of languages spoken by Jews sheds light on factors that were invisible within the Germanistic approach. The article also suggests a classification of languages spoken by Jews useful for the analysis of their historical development.

The article deals with the question of the unity of the German component of Yiddish. Before the 16th century, the languages used in works compiled by various Jewish authors from western German-speaking provinces show close similarities to dialects spoken by local Christians and do not represent texts written in a single specifically Jewish language. Texts dating from the 16th to 17th cen turies demonstrate the existence of two separate Jewish idioms: western and eastern. The former covers western Germany and northern Italy and is mainly based on East Franconian and Swabian. The latter characterizes works written in Bohemia and Poland. It is closely related to Bohemian colonial dialect of German. It is inappropriate to consider all varieties of modern Yiddish to be dialects of one single language. Indeed, the analysis shows that in many aspects, Southwestern Yiddish inherits features of East Franconian, while Eastern Yiddish is primary based on Bohemian. Its consonantal system was later adapted to the Silesian dialect spoken by German Christian urban population in Polish towns. These two Yiddish idioms inherit numerous features from the two languages, western and eastern, respectively, that existed during the 16th to 17th centuries. As a result, as a whole, Yiddish is not descending from any hypothetical Proto-Yiddish. 1 This article could not be written without Erika Timm. Firstly, her works represent a basis for numerous elements of the analysis presented here. Secondly, during the preparation of this text, she shared with me copies of numerous quite helpful sources and answered to many questions of mine.

Jonatan Meir, "The Discovery and Publication of Joseph Perl’s Yiddish Writings"

The attitude of Tarnopol satirist Joseph Perl (1773–1839) towards the Yiddish language has been discussed by a number of scholars. In particular, researchers have examined his views with regard to his most well-known satire, Sefer Megaleh temirin, which was printed in Hebrew in Vienna, 1819, with a partial Yiddish translation of the work appearing in Vilna, 1938. However, there remains much to be said concerning the creative process which guided Perl’s writing in Yiddish, as well as the later discovery and publication of his Yiddish works, both of which are chapters in the wider story of the development of Yiddish literature in the first half of the nineteenth century and the increasing scholarly interest in it at the outset of the twentieth century. This article briefly describes these multifaceted matters and then offers suggestions for the future study of Perl’s writing in particular, and maskilic Yiddish literature in general.

This article shows what we can learn from Vienna Jewish cabaret, so called Jar-gontheater 'jargon theater' and the language situation of Vienna Jews at the end of the 19th century. By analyzing one of the most popular plays of this genre, we can see how structures from Yiddish dialect fused with Viennese German and what may have caused the 'Vienna Jewish speech,' a Judeo-German city variety in the First Austrian Republic (1920s and 1930s).