This is the first of two articles on the origins of the yiddish language. In his 1976 book, the thirteenth tribe, arthur koestler made the startling. Manaster ramer at wayne state has uncovered evidence that some of yiddish s slavic words like nebbish, referring to a pathetic individual were part of the original language that grew into modern yiddish. It originated during the 9th century in central europe, providing the nascent ashkenazi community with a high germanbased vernacular fused with elements taken from hebrew and aramaic as well as slavic languages. Why are the yiddish and german languages so similar. The influx of vocabulary from hebrewaramaic and slavic sources has created numerous. Slavic influences on the culture of eastern germany. But serious linguistic and genetic challenges have made it a much tougher call.
As western yiddish was dying out from the 1700s on, slavicinfluenced eastern yiddish became the dominant variety among ashkenazi jews and the basis for modern standard yiddish. He has also found traces of western german dialects. Why the mystery of the origins of yiddish will never be solved. Though the base of the language is slavic, many alphabetical, grammatical, and vocabulary forms are distinctly foreign. It originated during the 9th century in central europe, providing the nascent ashkenazi community with a high germanbased. This helps to express an activity that starts suddenly, is abrupt or momentary. The new approaches to russian and east european jewish culture series aims to bring to the public the finest scholarship on russian and east european jewish culture. As a result of languagecontact influences, yiddish allows a number of consonant clusters that do not occur in other west germanic languages, for example dlonie palm of hand, mrukgrumbler slavic borrowings.
It thrived most recently as the language of jewish communities in the austrohungarian and russian empires and vast numbers of its speakers emigrated at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the united states. Yiddish literature, the body of written works in the yiddish language of ashkenazic jewry. In addition to yiddish terms of slavic, greek, romance and german origin which express aspects of the jewish religion and folk culture, the book shows that many elements of ashkenazic folklore and religion themselves were of slavic origin either west sorbian and polabian or balkan slavic. Dutch, italian, french, arabic, yiddish, and others that helped to mold it into the language known today. Hi rgermany, i am a really inquisitive history student and an avid witcher 3 player. Scholars debate roots of yiddish, migration of jews the. It has been in decline since the nazi genocide of the 20th century. Sorts through the evidence of the knowledge of east slavic among early yiddishspeaking east european jews to claim that there was a kind of coexistence between jews and their slavic neighbors, an account that differs from later models of either extreme isolationism or no less extreme assimilation attested to. Terms in yiddish that originate from slavic languages this category should, ideally, contain only other categories. As a result a division between the eastern yiddish of the jews in slavic lands, and the western yiddish of the jews remaining in france and germany, began to develop. To help fill the gap, the author deals in depth with several etymologically problematic words in various germanic, jewish, romance, and slavic languages, all of which have hitherto either been misetymologized or not etymologized at all. The great yiddish scholar max weinreich described it as a fusion language that combines elements from germanic, slavic, semitic, and other languages. One linguist has recently argued that yiddish began as a slavic language that. Erika timm, a professor at university of trier in germany believes that yiddish is one of the jewish languages, in the sense given by solomon.
Under slavic influence yiddish developed the category of aspect a phenomenon generally unknown to germanic languages. West slavic languages are written in the latin alphabet, and have had more western european influence due to their speakers being historically roman catholic, whereas the east slavic languages are written in the cyrillic alphabet and. The influence of yiddish was linked to the central role in jewish history of the. Under the influence of slavic languages, yiddish has grown far away from its german language beginnings. The influence of the tradition of jewish nicknames given to men after womens first names is a more plausible explanation.
Obviously, the russian classics are worth our attention as well, and book riot has made a couple such listsincluding a recommendations list of 5 short russian classics. As discussed in the previous post, the emergence of the embedded verbsecond in the 1600s in eastern yiddish has been regarded by some as a result of the influence of slavic. Which language has a bigger slavic influence, romanian or. Yiddish is a high germanderived language historically spoken by the ashkenazi jews. Similarly, two books, diber tov, a hebrewyiddishitalian dictionary intended for ashkenazim in italy and printed in krakow in 1590, and safah berurah, a conversation book and travel guide in hebrew, yiddish, italian, and latin, printed in prague in 1660, evidence interest in different languages, but not in any slavic language. Hebrew modern hebrew was created when yiddish speaker relexified their language to biblical and mishnaic hebrew yiddish is a slavic language, derived from sorbian and thus, modern hebrew is a slavic languagethese claims raise a number of interesting.
Hebrew and aramaic together contributed to the learned tradition of yiddish due to the five books of moshe, the daily prayers, and technical discourse in the yeshivah. In contrast, syntactic innovations triggered by contact with slavic languages are rarely investigated. Drawing on yiddish, hebrew, and slavic studies, the series emphasizes questions of the culture and. Eventually, yiddishspeaking jews from central and eastern europe would comprise 75 percent of the worlds jewish population. International journal of the sociology of language.
Dna suggests yiddish began on the silk road ancient origins. Scholars probe the history of yiddish and the origins and migrations of eastern european jewry. It also has a big slavic influence because later on in its evolution, it was spoken in eastern europe. Now, the geographic population structure gps, which converts dna data into its ancestral coordinates, has helped scientists determine that the dna of yiddish speakers could have originated from four ancient villages in northeastern turkey. Fundamental all languages yiddish terms by etymology terms derived from other languages indoeuropean languages baltoslavic languages slavic languages.
Yiddish words for influence include, and find more yiddish words at. As something that i have observed was that in countries where there is some sort of divide between north and south or east and west, you see in these countries the culture is influenced by different poles, usually some sort of indigenous culture taken over by the dominant culture that defines the culture of. Apr 23, 2016 for decades, linguists have questioned the origin of yiddish, the millenniumold language of ashkenazic jews. Schenker lists the various theories for the slavic homeland, along with the possibility that peoples reported earlier by ancient historians may be identified with the slavs. Michael wex writes, as increasing numbers of yiddish speakers moved from the slavicspeaking east to western europe and the americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison slavic vocabulary that the most prominent yiddish writers of the timethe founders of modern yiddish literature, who were still living in slavicspeaking countriesrevised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and unnecessary slavisms. Russianloanwords wikibooks, open books for an open world. With yiddish, the language of the ashkenazic jews of central and eastern europe, the. Due to permanent contacts with the slavic christian population, eastern yiddish underwent numerous changes in all of its systems due to the strong influence of polish, ukrainian, and belarusian. The saying hole in the head 1951, such as needing it like a comes from yiddish ich darf es vi a loch in kop. A slavoturkic people in search of a jewish identity, a sequel of sorts to his 1990 book in which he argues that modern hebrew too is a slavic language, relexified to biblical hebrew. Yiddish is the language of european jews and has been spoken since the middle ages in western, central, and eastern europe.
The most obvious differences between the west and east slavic branches are in orthography of standard languages. He proposes that the bavarian influence entered the language after yiddish. Lithuanian yiddish, polish yiddish, and ukrainian yiddish. They are thought to descend from a protolanguage called proto slavic, spoken during the early middle ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier protobalto slavic language, linking the slavic languages to the baltic. How much polish is there in yiddish and how much yiddish. Around 14% of romanian language is of slavic origin and the esimates i have found for yiddish stand between 510% of vocabulary being slavic in origin, so i guess that the influence is higher in romanian. They are thought to descend from a protolanguage called protoslavic, spoken during the early middle ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier protobaltoslavic language, linking the slavic languages to the baltic. The impact of nonslavic languages in central and eastern europe. Language contact and the development of modern hebrew is a first rigorous attempt by scholars of hebrew to evaluate the syntactic impact of the various languages with which modern hebrew was in contact during its formative years. When the jews were forced to move from western to eastern europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they carried yiddish with them, enriching it with slavic influences. When people make lists about slavic literature, very often almost always theyre about the russian classics.
Yiddish is a language rich in culture, colour, humanity, and history. Under the influence of slavic languages, yiddish has grown far away from its. Today, according to the ethnologue, only about 5,000 people speak western yiddish, while eastern yiddish is spoken by about 1. Even in western europe, most jews spoke yiddish until the 18th century. Entries can be categorized here, too, when the proper subcategory is unclear. But theres a whole wealth of slavic literature out thereworks from belarus, bosnia, bulgaria, croatia. High german by the slavicspeaking descendants of khazar jews in the kiev.
The dawn of slavic opens with the historical setting. A hybrid of hebrew and medieval german, yiddish takes about threequarters of its vocabulary from german, but borrows words liberally from hebrew and many other languages from the many lands where ashkenazic jews have lived. The slavic languages, also known as the slavonic languages, are indoeuropean languages primarily spoken by the slavic peoples or their descendants. It is a germanicbased vernacular fused with elements taken from hebrew and aramaic, as well as from slavic languages and traces of romance languages. On the other side are those who think that eastern yiddish, with its slavic influence and bohemian vowel structure, is so different from western yiddish that it must have arisen independently. Men and monsters by elena may, anna karenina by leo tolstoy, the bear and the nightingale by katherine arden, crime and punishme. The expression basically deems something as useless or thoroughly unwanted. The origin of yiddish was long thought to be an openandshut case for jewish historians. Often thought of as a fusion of german and hebrew with some slavic thrown. The slavic influence on yiddish, samuel observes at one point, extends beyond the linguistic. Thats why many of the slavic words, constructions, etc in yiddish can be identified ultimately as polish, in contrast to other possible slavic sources. Aug 26, 2014 as western yiddish was dying out from the 1700s on, slavic influenced eastern yiddish became the dominant variety among ashkenazi jews and the basis for modern standard yiddish. Manaster ramer at wayne state has uncovered evidence that some of yiddishs slavic words like nebbish, referring to a pathetic individual were part of the original language that grew into modern yiddish. Oct 29, 1996 scholars probe the history of yiddish and the origins and migrations of eastern european jewry.
Judeoslavic frontispieces of late 18th1 9thcentury books and the authentication of. Yiddish blossomed in printed books from the 16th century onward, but weinreich. Twentyfour different innovative syntactic constructions of modern hebrew are analysed, and shown to originate in previous stages of hebrew, which, since the. Origins of yiddish are anything but understood the forward. The theory that yiddish is a slavic language was originally proposed by paul wexler in his 1993 book the ashkenazic jews. While slavic languages have had a monumental influence on. The khazarian hypothesis and the nature of yiddish. The origins of yiddisha response to philologos, part fir. While slavic languages have had a monumental influence on yiddish more on which below, its vocabulary and even grammar are solidly germanic. Sep 05, 2014 the influence of other component languages, particularly slavic, on the grammar of yiddish remains an underresearched topic and a fruitful avenue for future study. By the sixteenth century, yiddish became a written language in addition to a spoken one, with greater slavic influence as jews became a stronger presence in poland.
The reconstruction of preashkenazic jewish settlements in the slavic lands in the light of linguistic sources 29. New approaches to russian and east european jewish culture. Since the reacquisition of a lost colloquial function has never been documented, modern hebrew has become an object of fascination among linguists and laymen alike. The yiddish influence on american english also extends to many sayings and expressions, often literal translation. This tradition was well established in eastern europe already before. It was under slavic influence, above all, that aspects of the grammatical system were restructured and that normal genetic relation of yiddish to german was weakened. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized alphabet based on the hebrew script. Hebrew sources in the yiddish sermons of ultraorthodox women home language usage and the impact of modern hebrew on israeli hasidic yiddish nouns and noun plurals. Men and monsters by elena may, the bear and the nightingale by katherine arden, uprooted by naomi novik, wicked saints. The origins of yiddisha response to philologos, part dray. Drawing on yiddish, hebrew, and slavic studies, the series emphasizes questions of the culture and intellectual history of the jews in russia and eastern europe. Some yiddish inscriptions on shopfronts in the polish town of lviv have survived the. Yiddish was at one time the international language of ashkenazic jews the jews of central and eastern europe and their descendants. American english of yiddish origin the language and.
How much polish is there in yiddish and how much yiddish is. Yiddish is a germanic language closely related to high german, but of ashkenazi jewish origina judeoeuropean patois heavily infused with hebrew and aramaic as well as subtle influences from slavic and romance languages. Judeoslavic frontispieces of late 18th and 19thcentury books and the authentication of sterotyped judeoslavic speech 30. Yiddish is a germanic language that many jews around the world have spoken continuously since the middle ages. Yiddish book rescuer wins genius grant mass moments. The influence of other component languages, particularly slavic, on the grammar of yiddish remains an underresearched topic and a fruitful avenue for future study. Apr 16, 2018 around 14% of romanian language is of slavic origin and the esimates i have found for yiddish stand between 510% of vocabulary being slavic in origin, so i guess that the influence is higher in romanian. Slavic influence on the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of yiddish is welldocumented weinreich 1980, inter alia. For decades, linguists have questioned the origin of yiddish, the millenniumold language of ashkenazic jews. It is only fitting, therefore, that the periodization of the history of yiddish reflect this realization. Hebrew is regarded as a former living language which ceased to be a native language 1800 years ago, only to be given a spoken function anew in the late 19th century. The melancholy of the steppes echoes in chassidic melodies, and there is a kinship between the mystical religious yearnings of certain russian and jewish types. Yiddish developed out of the middle high german dialects of southwest germany baden, rhinelandpalatinate.
Paul kriwaczek begins this illuminating and immensely pleasurable chronicle of yiddish civilization during the roman empire, when jewish culture first spread to europe. Slavic languages academic dictionaries and encyclopedias. This is certainly true, but most linguists would agree that at its core yiddish is a west germanic language, and thus a close cousin of english, and an even closer relative of german. In this book the author claims modern hebrew is not a direct. The eastern european yiddish vocabulary is predominantly german, but below the surface is a slavic influence. Oct 30, 2018 when people make lists about slavic literature, very often almost always theyre about the russian classics. Its history can be divided into old yiddish literature c. The linguistic style and vocabulary of yiddish have influenced the manner in. Dictionaries usually give only brief treatment to etymologies and even etymological dictionaries often do not lavish on them the attention which many deserve.
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