Yiddish Linguistics

Hannah Pollin-Galay, Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish (Ser.: Jewish Cultures and Contexts). Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press (published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies), 2024, index, 301pp; 9781512825909 (hdb), 9781512825916 (ebook).

Disclaimer: I am not a politician or a diplomat and I am not yet involved in political activism. I am just trying to do what I can to offer some ‘context’ as an entertainer by profession and an activist for Jewish culture and Yiddish language.

I grew up in, and love the concept and potential of the very young State of Israel.

Preamble:
According to Nobel Prize winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish is:
“a language of exile, without a land, without frontiers, not supported by any government, a language which possesses no words for weapons, ammunition, military exercises, war tactics.”

For those who cherish the goal of preserving small, endangered languages, some developments (and lessons) from the case of Yiddish might be illuminating, though not in the sense of some straightforward measure of 'success' or 'failure'. There is no consensus on the interpretation of the current curious-and contentious-situation. If the issues raised might serve as a point of departure for debate on its implications for other languages, particularly the potential damage from exaggeratedly purist 'corpus planning movements' as well as potentially associated 'linguistic disrespect' toward the majority of the living speakers of the 'language to be saved', then this chapter's modest goal will have been realized. Moreover, the perils of a sociolinguistic theory overapplied by a coterie with access to funding, infrastructure, and public relations need to be studied. 1 Ultimately, the backdrop for study of the current situation is the pre-Holocaust status quo ante of a population of Yiddish speakers for which estimates have been in the range of 10 to 13 million native speakers. 2 Nowadays, on the one hand, millions of dollars a year are spent on 'saving Yiddish' among 'modern Jews' (secular and 'modern Orthodox') and interested non-Jews. People may be academically, culturally, literarily, musically, sentimentally, ideologically, and otherwise attracted. The number of Yiddishspeaking families these efforts have generated is in dispute, but it is under a

IT is now twenty years since Egypt last changed masters, and the completion of these twenty years of British rule has been marked by the completion of a work of public utility, the great dam at Aswân, which will surpass any similar work carried out in the days of the Pharaohs. Simultaneously is published the fullest and most complete English history of Egypt under her ancient native monarchs, from the earliest times to the end of the native kingdom, a period of more than four thousand years. The publication consists of eight small and very handy volumes, all profusely illustrated with photographs and line-drawings of temples, tombs, mummies and other antiquities of the various periods, which are treated in succession. Dr. Budge may be congratulated on the production at a most opportune moment of this work, which should find a place on the shelves of everyone who is interested in the past history of the famous land which we have taken under our protection.A Hisiory of Egypt from the ...

Recent scholarship on the history of Hasidism suggests that the role of women within Hasidic communities before World War II was minimal, and that Hasidism eliminated women from its social structure by establishing a religious praxis that was exclusively male. Studies of post-war Hasidic life similarly minimize the presence of women and suggest that they remained an ancillary and silent population within the life of the movement, in large part because scholars have relied on written and experiential Hasidic modalities to gage female involvement. By analyzing the music of Yom Tov Ehrlich as an untapped source, I demonstrate that women appear to be seen, heard, and reckoned with in Hasidic life before and after the war. In Yom Tov Ehrlich’s musical texts, women are valued as religious and Hasidic actors, and serve a vital, if not precisely equal, role to that of their male counterparts, providing spiritual guidance, motivation, and agency. The 317 songs released publicly by Ehrlich feature women in significant proportion. Physical descriptions, both of women’s dress as well as their demeanor, proliferate within the song lyrics, and women and young girls are often described as beautiful. While Ehrlich’s representation cannot be construed as historical fact, female predominance within the songs, and the widespread acceptance and encouragement of this music even within the most stringent Hasidic groups, attests to a vocal and vibrant presence of women within the panoply of religious and Hasidic experience in pre-war Europe and post-war America.

This article (in Yiddish) recreates a lost chapter in the history of Yiddish Studies and German academic politics - the attempt to create a university Chair for Yiddish in Weimar Germany by an unlikely pair brought together by academic interest and practical need: Orthodox Jewish scholar Solomon Birnbaum and German nationalist scholar Heinz Kloss, who joined the Nazi Party and became a renowned scholar of language minority rights after WWII.

This article examines the use of and attitudes towards Yiddish among former Haredim. Using an interview- and questionnaire-based study, I demonstrate that Yiddish- speaking former Haredim generally have positive attitudes towards the language and continue to use it on a frequent, and even daily, basis while hoping to pass it on to their children. Furthermore, attitudes towards Yiddish develop from being largely practical when respondents were members of Haredi communities to emotional and ideological after having left. However, in the majority of cases the desire to continue using Yiddish regularly and to pass it on to the next generation is in conflict with the practical realities of finding opportunities to do so under increased pressure from the local majority language and a lack of institutional and community support. Overall, I argue that former Haredim have the power to determine the future life, death, or resurrection of secular Yiddish.

This article discusses the notion of 'Jewish surnames,' considering it to be synonymous to the expression 'surnames borne by Jews.' This can be particularly helpful if we want the definition to add real value for the search of etymologies. The article describes most important peculiarities of Jewish surnames, categories of names that are exclusively Jewish, and various cases when a surname is shared by both Jews and non-Jews. It shows that certain alternative definitions of the notion of 'Jewish surnames' (such as surnames found in all Jewish communities, surnames used by Jews only, surnames based on specifically Jewish linguistic elements) either have internal inconsistencies or are useless and sometimes misleading for the scientific analysis of the etymologies of these surnames.

"Mame-loshn" by Nahum Stutchkoff, with an introduction by Leyzer Burko and Miryem-Khaye Seigel. Nahum Stutchkoff's program "Mame-loshn" aired Sunday afternoons on the "Forverts" radio station WEVD in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In "Mame-loshn" he made accessible to the broad public the great riches of Yiddish phraseology included in his Thesaurus of the Yiddish Language. Stutchkoff is ever entertaining and informative, a wonderful resource for advanced students and all those who wish to deepen their knowledge of the language.

This article examines the use of and attitudes towards Yiddish among former Haredim. Using an interview- and questionnaire-based study, I demonstrate that Yiddish- speaking former Haredim generally have positive attitudes towards the language and continue to use it on a frequent, and even daily, basis while hoping to pass it on to their children. Furthermore, attitudes towards Yiddish develop from being largely practical when respondents were members of Haredi communities to emotional and ideological after having left. However, in the majority of cases the desire to continue using Yiddish regularly and to pass it on to the next generation is in conflict with the practical realities of finding opportunities to do so under increased pressure from the local majority language and a lack of institutional and community support. Overall, I argue that former Haredim have the power to determine the future life, death, or resurrection of secular Yiddish.

This article examines the use of and attitudes towards Yiddish among former Haredim. Using an interview-and questionnaire-based study, I demonstrate that Yiddishspeaking former Haredim generally have positive attitudes towards the language and continue to use it on a frequent, and even daily, basis while hoping to pass it on to their children. Furthermore, attitudes towards Yiddish develop from being largely practical when respondents were members of Haredi communities to emotional and ideological after having left. However, in the majority of cases the desire to continue using Yiddish regularly and to pass it on to the next generation is in conflict with the practical realities of finding opportunities to do so under increased pressure from the local majority language and a lack of institutional and community support. Overall, I argue that former Haredim have the power to determine the future life, death, or resurrection of secular Yiddish.

In this article we present basic reflections into investigating the mechanisms of imitating closely related language varieties. We first conducted a survey for which speakers of German had to imitate one of five continental West Germanic lects. Furthermore, we carried out a study on imitations of Yiddish in German literature of the 19th century. In this short overview we will summarize our main results and methods from these studies, and offer some perspectives on future research in this field, which will play an important role in perceptual dialectology, psycholinguistics and even the study of language change.

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 p...

review of Wexler, Paul. Silk Road Linguistics: The Birth of Yiddish and the Multiethnic Jewish Peoples on the Silk Roads, 9–13th Centuries. The Indispensable Role of the Arabs, Chinese, Germans, Iranians, Slavs and Turks. Studies in Arabic Language and Literature, 10. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2021 (pp 355-357). Slavonic and East European Review. Volume 100, Number 2, April 2022

The plan to create a Chair for Yiddish at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania (previously the Polish Stefan Batory University) not long after the outbreak of WWII was cause more for acrimonious debates among Yiddishists than for collective rejoicing. Given the highly politicized and factious nature of interwar Jewish society, this should come as little surprise. The case of the Chair reflects as much personal rivalries and antagonisms as it does differing perspectives among Yiddishists on the very value and viability of secular Yiddish culture at a moment that was widely understood to represent a crossroads in Jewish history. Beyond this, it offers an opportunity to examine relationships between Jews and their neighbours in Eastern Europe in this tense period and to consider contemporary Yiddishists’ own evaluations of prospects for extraterritorial national cultural autonomy for Jews in differing political environments.

The article presents the first evidence of the emergence of a new animacy-based verbal agreement pattern in Israeli Haredi Yiddish. A study of recordings from the years 2017-2020 reveals that plural verbal agreement is always maintained with animate plural nominal subjects, but it is usually lost with inanimate plural nominal subjects. It is suggested that this linguistic change may be supported by the sociolinguistic setting of Israeli Haredi Yiddish speakers.

The paper describes main linguistic characteristics of the Yiddish language. It is focused on the aspects related to historical linguistics: phases of its historical development, earliest attestations, historical dialectology, settlement history of Yiddish speakers, relation of Eastern Yiddish and Western Yiddish to various German dialects, incorporation of Hebrew and Aramaic elements, substratal elements of Old French and Old Czech origins, results of contacts with other languages. The paper also addresses the state of research in this domain.

In this paper, we address the problem of automatically discriminating between inherited and borrowed Latin words. We introduce a new dataset and investigate the case of Romance languages (Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan), where words directly inherited from Latin coexist with words borrowed from Latin, and explore whether automatic discrimination between them is possible. Having entered the language at a later stage, borrowed words are no longer subject to historical sound shift rules, hence they are presumably less eroded, which is why we expect them to have a different intrinsic structure distinguishable by computational means. We employ several machine learning models to automatically discriminate between inherited and borrowed words and compare their performance with various feature sets. We analyze the models' predictive power on two versions of the datasets, orthographic and phonetic. We also investigate whether prior knowledge of the etymon provides better results, employing n-gram character features extracted from the word-etymon pairs and from their alignment.

For those who cherish the goal of preserving small, endangered languages, some developments (and lessons) from the case of Yiddish might be illuminating, though not in the sense of some straightforward measure of 'success' or 'failure'. There is no consensus on the interpretation of the current curious-and contentious-situation. If the issues raised might serve as a point of departure for debate on its implications for other languages, particularly the potential damage from exaggeratedly purist 'corpus planning movements' as well as potentially associated 'linguistic disrespect' toward the majority of the living speakers of the 'language to be saved', then this chapter's modest goal will have been realized. Moreover, the perils of a sociolinguistic theory overapplied by a coterie with access to funding, infrastructure, and public relations need to be studied. 1 Ultimately, the backdrop for study of the current situation is the pre-Holocaust status quo ante of a population of Yiddish speakers for which estimates have been in the range of 10 to 13 million native speakers. 2 Nowadays, on the one hand, millions of dollars a year are spent on 'saving Yiddish' among 'modern Jews' (secular and 'modern Orthodox') and interested non-Jews. People may be academically, culturally, literarily, musically, sentimentally, ideologically, and otherwise attracted. The number of Yiddishspeaking families these efforts have generated is in dispute, but it is under a

Unlike other Yiddish dialects that were diminished to the point of virtual obsolescence in the decades following World War II, Hasidic Yiddish remains the dominant language for several hundred thousand Hasidic Jews across the globe. And yet, a survey of the research on Yiddish linguistics published during the second half of the 20th century does not reflect this reality. In this article, I review how the ideological underpinnings of Yiddish linguistics created and perpetuated a disciplinary preoccupation with a hypothetical standard at the expense of theoretically informative empirical studies of an evolving Yiddish dialect. Specifically, I show how linguistic chauvinism, a series of calamitous events, and historical anti-religiosity complicated by new resentments, led to the erasure of Hasidic dialects from Yiddish scholarship. Finally, I highlight significant contributions that recent empirical studies of Hasidic Yiddish are making to the field of linguistics.

En el siguiente trabajo veremos cómo es que Borges retoma el rol histórico que se ha adjudicado la colectividad judía como pueblo elegido para configurar muchas de sus tramas y protagonistas. La ofrenda sangrienta interesa al autor no solo por su naturaleza atávica y bárbara, sino también por su carácter ritual y místico: el sacrificio permite, tanto para el tributo como para los que lo ofrecen, estrechar y reavivar los lazos con la Divinidad.

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.

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.

Kultur-Lige była jidyszystyczną ligą artystów i działaczy kulturalnych, założoną na Ukrainie w 1917 roku. Jej głównym celem było rozwijanie nowoczesnej, świeckiej kultury żydowskiej i kształtowanie kulturalnych upodobań mas żydowskich poprzez zakładanie szkół, bibliotek, kółek teatralnych i muzycznych oraz wydawanie książek. Szybki rozwój Kultur-Lige na Ukrainie zatrzymał się jednak w 1920 roku. Po zakazaniu jej działalności przez reżim sowiecki grupa przeniosła się do Polski, mając nadzieję na wznowienie swojej pracy. Kultur-Lige starała się odbudować sieć swoich instytucji, jednak sytuacja polityczna nie pozwalała jej na niezależną działalność, bez konieczności przyłączenia się do istniejących żydowskich partii politycznych. Wielu kluczowych członków Kultur-Lige zaangażowało się więc w działalność edukacyjną Centralnej Żydowskiej Organizacji Szkolnej (CISZO), związanej z partią Bund. W artykule prześledzono wpływ pierwotnego projektu edukacyjnego Kultur-Lige na działalność CISZO w Polsce, za pomocą analizy artykułów publikowanych w Warszawie w broszurach Kultur-Lige oraz w czasopiśmie Szul un Lebn w latach 1921-1926. Mimo że oznaczało to rezygnację ze znacznej części początkowych celów, członkowie Kultur-Lige kontynuowali odbudowywanie swojej wizji i dostosowywali ją do zmieniających się okoliczności.

This paper discusses the hitherto undocumented wh-ever constructions in contemporary American Hasidic Yiddish. Employment of these Germanic constructions in both written and spoken American Hasidic Yiddish raises the question of their origin and the possibility that several Germanic varieties have influenced this seemingly new pattern. Specifically, these constructions might have originated from Germanized Yiddish varieties and past contact with Judeo-German, and then gradually become entrenched in American Hasidic Yiddish through contact with English. The paper uses this particular construction to offer some more general reflections on the possibility of historical impact of German on American Hasidic Yiddish during the formation of Hasidic Yiddish varieties in Williamsburg (New York) in the 1950s.

Este articulo analiza la mixtura de ídish, castídish, español estándar de Buenos Aires y lunfardo presentes en tres canciones del cantautor comediante Max Perlman (1909-1985). Su repertorio ha alcanzado la popularidad en el marco del teatro ídish argentino durante la primera mitad del siglo 20.

Yiddish for granted and did not even question the right of Yiddish to exist (inf. #22). The Yiddishist arguments, i.e. arguments favouring Yiddish, found in the articles were mostly advanced by those Jews who originated from the Pale of Settlement or by their children, who mastered Yiddish.s They were naturally able to read Yiddish newspapers from abroad. One reason for the lack of a Yiddish press was the fact that it was impossible to print with Hebrew letters in Helsinki (see Chapter 5 $1.). Unfortunately, we do not always know the names ofthese persons, since they appeae under pseudonyms. 4 5 sequently, an association called JidiÉe literatur klub'Jewish Literature Club' was founded the same year in order to disseminate knowledge of Yiddish literature Yiddish name Cionistiíe jugntfareín ha*ijo' 7 To*inrn 1989: l14. 8 To.uin.n 1989: I13. According to the records of the association, the name was initially Hoklub ho-ivri, Ihen Ha-moiadoin ho-ivri and ftnally Chug lvri' 9 Weinstein 1956. Stjrirnan is Swedish for'The Star'' l0 These were Chevra-Kadischa (1864), Chevra Bikur-Cholim (1879), Chevra Hachnosasorchin (lgg5), Judiska Fruñìmmers Itölgörenhetsþrening (1898) and chevra Gemilus-H as o dim v e H achnos as-Kal o (1904)' I I The chronicle (written in Latinized Yiddish) was called Historik zum 75 joringen iubileum ,Chronicle for the 75th Jubilee' (Finnish National Archives, SJA/K 337). According to documents attached to the manuscrìpt, Jac Weinstein gave a speech in Yiddish at the jubilee and read a festive poem entitled Di menoire 'The Menorah" which he had written in Yiddish for the occasion.

Das XXV. Symposium für Jiddische Studien in Deutschland findet vom 5. bis 7. September 2022 in Düsseldorf statt. Wir würden uns selbstverständlich sehr darüber freuen, dieses besondere Ereignis in Präsenz mit Ihnen zu erleben. Wir sind uns jedoch der sich ständig verändernden Lage aufgrund der Corona-Pandemie bewusst und werden (zeitnah) eine Entscheidung treffen, die unser aller Wohl berücksichtigt.
Dieses jiddistische Forum wird jährlich im Wechsel von den Jiddistik-Lehrstühlen der
Universitäten Trier und Düsseldorf veranstaltet.
Wir laden Sie herzlich dazu ein Vortragsangebote, in Form einer kurzen Zusammenfassung, an die Symposiumsleitung einzusenden. Vorschläge für Sitzungen mit 2–4 Vorträgen müssen zusammen mit Abstracts für die einzelnen Vorträge eingereicht werden.
Die Vorträge können auf Jiddisch oder Deutsch gehalten werden.
Es steht Ihnen eine Redezeit von 20 Minuten zur Verfügung.
Zusammenfassungen können bis zum 1. Mai 2022 eingesendet werden ([email protected]).

Mit dem Ausbau der modernen jiddischen Literatur nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg
verband sich die Frage nach Zugehörigkeit: Wie sollte der Zusammenhalt jiddischer
Kulturinseln gewährleistet werden? Auf welche Weise haben jiddischsprachige
Kulturschaffende teil an den kulturellen Prozessen der herrschenden Kulturen,
in denen sie leben? Was muss jiddische Literatur leisten, um der
Weltliteratur anzugehören?
Anhand vonÄußerungen und Handlungenvon Literaten und Kulturaktivisten
werden in diesem Aufsatz einige Grundzüge ihrer Welt- und Selbstbilder rekonstruiert,
und es soll gezeigt werden, wie die ausgreifenden kulturellen Erwartungen
auf einen autonom gestalteten historischen Wandel des jiddischsprachigen
Kollektivs und seiner Stellung in der Völkergemeinschaft zielten.

A bibliography of works about the life and career of Max Weinreich, a leading figure in YIVO (The Yiddish Scientific Institute in Vilna, later New York) and pioneer in the fields of Yiddish Studies and Jewish interlinguistics. Apart from his magnum opus, The History of the Yiddish Language, Weinreich is best known for popularizing the quip, "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

An exploration of the phonetically precise, multi-dialectal spelling system developed by linguist Solomon Birnbaum as part of his Orthodox Jewish religious ideology and his battle against secular influences on the Yiddish language (in Yiddish).