Hebrew Language - Yiddish
Yiddish (Yid. ייִדיש, yidiš) is a
Germanic language spoken by about three million people throughout the
world, predominantly Ashkenazic Jews. The name Yiddish itself is Yiddish
for "Jewish" (compare German jüdisch) and is likely an abbreviated
rendition of yidish-taytsh (ייִדיש־טײַטש), or "Jewish German". In its
earliest historical phase (13th-14th centuries), Yiddish is referred to
by linguists as Judeo-German; occasionally this term is used for later
forms of the language as well.
History
The Jewish presence in the lands of present-day Germany goes back at
least to the time of the Roman Empire. By the 10th century, a
distinctive Jewish culture had developed in Central Europe known as
Ashkenazi, or Germanic Jewry. (Ashkenaz was the medieval Hebrew name for
Germany, derived from a reference in Genesis 10.3.) The Medieval Jewish
cultural areas did not coincide with the Christian principalities; thus
Ashkenaz included Northern France, and bounded on the Sephardic area:
the Sephardi, or Spanish Jews, who also inhabited southern France.
Later, the Ashkenazi territory would spread into Eastern Europe as well.
The every-day language of the European Jews in the later Middle Ages was
identical with the vernacular of the Christian community, which was
German for most of the Ashkenazi territory. They also used Hebrew of
course, and no doubt peppered the vernacular with Hebrew lexemes. From
the 13th century they began to write Middle High German in Hebrew
characters. This move into vernacular literacy is seen by linguists as
the beginning of the development of Yiddish, though in this early phase
the language is usually referred to as Judeo-German, as it is merely
German with a Jewish colouring, a jargon, hardly distinct enough to be
called a dialect. Occasionally it is also referred to as Proto-Yiddish.
The oldest surviving literary document in Judeo-German is a rhyming
couplet in a Hebrew prayer book datable to 1272/73. Transcribed, it
reads:
gut tak im betage
se waer dis machasor in bess hakenesseß trage!
("May he be granted a good day / who carries this Mahzor into the
synagogue")
Already this brief rhyme indicates the status of the language: this is
more or less standard Middle High German, but the words machsor ('prayerbook
for the High Holy Days') and bet ha-kenesset ('synagogue') are Hebrew.
In the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in
Judeo-German, and also macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to
be written. These were collected by the late 15th century Menahem ben
Naphtali Oldendorf. In the same period, a tradition seems to have
emerged of Jewish singers singing for the Jewish community their own
versions of German secular literature. The earliest Judeo-German epic
poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant which survives in the famous
Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was
discovered in the genisa of a Cairo synagogue in 1896, and also contains
a collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the
Haggadah
Apart from the obvious use of Hebrew words for specifically Jewish
artifacts, it is very difficult to decide how far this 15th century
Judeo-German differs from the standard Late Middle High German of the
period. A lot depends on how the phonetic values of the Hebrew
characters are interpreted, especially with regard to the vowels. There
seems, however, to be a consensus that by this period, Judeo-German
would have sounded distinctive to the average German, even when no
Hebrew lexemes were used. In university faculties, the literature of
this period is studied both in departments of Yiddish studies and in
departments of Medieval German.
The 16th century witnessed an upswing in writings in what may now be
referred to as Old Yiddish. The development of the printing press
contributed significantly to the improved rate of survival of these
writings. The most popular work of the 16th century was the 650-stanza
Bovo-Bukh, composed by Elia Levita (1469-1549) in 1507–1508, which has
gone through at least forty print editions, beginning in 1541. [Liptzin,
1972, 4-5] Levita, the earliest named Yiddish author, also wrote Paris
un Vienne. Another Judeo-German retelling of a courtly novel which
presumably also dates from the 15th century, though the manuscripts are
from the 16th, is Widuwilt, also known as Kinig Artus Hof, an adaptation
of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Gravenberg.
Another significant Old Yiddish writer is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei
whose paraphrase on the Book of Job dates from 1557.
While Hebrew always remained the official language of Jewish prayer, the
Hasidim mixed considerable Yiddish into their Hebrew, and were also
responsible for a significant secondary religious literature written in
Yiddish. For example, the tales about the Baal Shem Tov were written
largely in Yiddish. In addition, even beyond the Hasidim, Ashkenazic
Jewish women traditionally were not literate in Hebrew; women were the
main audience of works like the Bovo-Bukh, but there was also a large
body of Yiddish-language religious works written for (and often by)
women, such as the Tseno-Ureno, the memoirs of Glückel of Hameln, and
the tkhines. [Liptzin, 1972, 4-17]
The modern Haskalah
Use of the Western Yiddish dialect began to decline in the 18th century,
as The Enlightenment and the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) led German
Jews to view Yiddish as a "corrupt German". Between assimilation to
German and the beginnings of the revival of Hebrew, Western Yiddish was
largely squeezed out, surviving mainly as a language of "intimate family
circles or of closely knit trade groups such as the cattle-dealers of
the Eifel Mountains. [Liptzin, 1972, 2]
Farther east, where Jews were not surrounded by German speakers, the
Eastern Yiddish dialect continued to thrive. The late 19th century and
early 20th century are widely considered the Golden Age of secular
Yiddish literature; this period also coincides with the revival of
Hebrew as a spoken language, and the revival of Hebrew literature. Some
Modern Hebrew words began to find their way into Yiddish, as well.
The three great founders of modern secular Yiddish literature were
Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholom Aleichem, and I.L. Peretz. Solomon
Rabinowitz, better known as Sholom Aleichem (1859–1916), is known as one
of the greatest Yiddish authors and humorists, the Yiddish equivalent of
Mark Twain. A collection of his stories about Tevye the Milkman was
later the basis of the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof.
The 20th century
At the start of the 20th century, Yiddish was emerging as a major
Eastern European language. A rich literature was being published,
Yiddish theater and Yiddish film were booming, and it had even achieved
status as one of the official languages of the Belarusian SSR.
Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland)
after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language
education, standardized pronunciation and spelling, and to the 1925
founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, later YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research. [Liptzin, 1972, 3] Yiddish emerged as the national
language of a large Jewish community in Eastern Europe that rejected
Zionism and sought to obtain Jewish cultural autonomy in Europe. It also
contended with Modern Hebrew as a literary language among Zionists.
On the eve of World War II, there were 10 million Yiddish speakers,
overwhelmingly of the Eastern dialects. [Liptzin, 1972, 2] However, the
Holocaust led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as
the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used
Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. Although
millions of Yiddish speakers survived the war (including nearly all
Yiddish speakers in the Americas), further assimilation in countries
such as the United States and the status of Modern Hebrew as the
official language of Israel led to a decline in the use of Eastern
Yiddish similar to the earlier decline in Western Yiddish.
Ethnologue estimates that in 1991 there were 3 million speakers of
Eastern Yiddish, but Western Yiddish, which had only "several tens of
thousands" of speakers on the eve of the Holocaust, is now "nearly
extinct".
Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, much effort was invested in promoting the use of
Yiddish during 1920s. Yiddish was then regarded as the language of
"Jewish proletariat"; at the same time, Hebrew was considered a
"bourgeois" language and its use was generally discouraged. Starting in
the 1930s, growing anti-Semitic tendencies in Soviet politics drove
Yiddish from most spheres; few Yiddish-language publications survived
(among them are the literary magazine Sovetish Heymland and the
newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern). Most Soviet Jews themselves were keen
to integrate into the larger Soviet society, and favoured Russian over
Yiddish.
United States
In the United States, the Yiddish language bound together Jews from many
countries, whose national origin was often as important as their Jewish
identity. Within some families, marrying across national origin lines
was seen as equivalent to marrying out of the faith. Yiddish language
newspapers, such as The Forward served as a forum for Jews of all
European backgrounds. In 1925, it was one of seven Yiddish-language New
York daily newspapers. [Melamed, 1925] American Yiddish music, derived
from Klezmer, was another binding mechanism. Michel Gelbart, a very
prolific composer, probably best known for "I Have A Little Dreydl,"
wrote music that was very Jewish and very American. Thriving Yiddish
theatre in New York City and (to a lesser extent) elsewhere kept the
language vital. Many "Yiddishisms," like "Italianisms" and "Spanishisms,"
continue to enter spoken New York English, often used by Jews and
non-Jews alike without consciousness of the language of origin of the
phrases. In the United States, most Yiddish speakers tended not to pass
on the language to their children who assimilated and spoke English.
Largely because of the influence of Jewish entertainment figures in the
United States, many Yiddish words have entered the American English
lexicon. In 1968, the modern American writer Leo Rosten (1908–1997)
published The Joys of Yiddish (ISBN 0743406516), an introduction to
words of Yiddish origin used in the English of the United States. See
also "Yinglish."
In 1978, the European-born secular Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer,
a resident of the United States, received the Nobel Prize in literature.
Israel
In Israel Yiddish was displaced by Modern Hebrew. In part this reflected
the conflict between religious and secular forces. Many in the larger,
secular group wanted a new national language to foster a cohesive
identity, while traditionally religious Jews desired that Hebrew be
respected as a holy language reserved for prayer and religious study.
However, this conflict also reflected the opposing views among secular
Jews worldwide, one side seeing Hebrew (and Zionism) and the other
Yiddish (and Internationalism) as the means of defining emerging Jewish
nationalism.
Many of the older immigrants to Israel from the former USSR (usually
those above 50 years of age) speak or understand some degree of Yiddish.
In religious circles, it is the Ashkenazi Haredi Jews, particularly the
Hasidic Jews and the Mitnagdim of the Lithuanian yeshiva world who
continue to teach, speak and use Yiddish, making it a language used
intensely by hundreds of thousands of Haredi Jews today. The largest of
these centers are in Bene Beraq and Jerusalem.
Haredi Orthodox Jews
The major exception to the decline of spoken Yiddish can be found in the
Haredi Jewish communities all over the world. In the United States,
within some of New York State's close-knit religious communities Yiddish
is spoken as a home and schooling language, especially in Brooklyn's
Borough Park and Williamsburg and outside of the city in Monsey, Kiryas
Joel, and New Square. Yiddish is also widely spoken in some smaller
Haredi communities in other cities such as London and Montreal. Among
most Haredim all over the world, Hebrew is generally reserved for prayer
and religious studies, while Yiddish is reserved as a home and business
language.
Haredi educational use of Yiddish
Hundreds of thousands of young children have been, and are still, taught
to translate the texts of the Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy into Yiddish. This process is called taytsching or
"translating" (Yid. טיַיטשן taytshn). Most Ashkenazi yeshivas' highest
level lectures in Talmud and Halakha are delivered in Yiddish by the
Rosh yeshivas as well as ethical talks of mussar. Hasidic rebbes
generally use only Yiddish to converse with their followers and to
deliver their various Torah talks, classes, and lectures. The linguistic
style and vocabulary of Yiddish have influenced the manner in which many
Orthodox Jews who attend yeshivas speak English; this usage is
distinctive enough that it has been dubbed "Yeshivish".
Status of Yiddish as a Germanic Language
The status of Yiddish as a Germanic language is occasionally challenged
from two opposing perspectives. On the one hand, there are those who
suggest that Yiddish is unrelated to German—that it is instead a
Semitic, Slavonic, or Romance language, or even that it is a derivative
of Basque; for example, the linguist Paul Wexler uniquely claims that
Yiddish was originally a Slavic language whose vocabulary was replaced
with German words. These views, although propounded frequently and
enthusiastically, can be readily refuted by a study of historical
records and linguistic structures.
At the other extreme there are those who suggest that Yiddish is merely
a dialect of German, not different enough to be classed as a separate
language. Yiddish and German share a large portion of their respective
vocabularies, and a number of similar grammatical structures. Some
German speakers are reportedly able to understand spoken Yiddish,
considering it similar to German spoken by Slavs. These observations
lead some observers to describe Yiddish as a German dialect rather than
an independent language.
However, most linguists consider Yiddish and German to be distinct
Germanic languages, pointing out that:
* The two languages are geographically and culturally distinct; [1]
* Both languages have written standards, and even use different
alphabets;
* Some of the grammar of Yiddish differs substantially from that of
German, having been influenced by contact with other (e.g. Slavic)
languages;
* 20 to 30 percent of Yiddish vocabulary is not shared with German,
including a number of basic words;
* The two languages are generally not mutually comprehensible (this is
especially true for German speakers trying to understand Yiddish).
The distinction between a "language" and a "dialect" is poorly defined.
On one hand, languages like Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, usually
considered to be separate and distinct languages, are for proficient
speakers completely mutually intelligible and may be considered one
language from a linguistical point of view. On the other hand, many
dialects of German, for instance, are not mutually intelligible. Max
Weinreich writing in the Yivo-Bleter in 1945, remarked that א שפראך איז
א דיאלעקט מיט אן ארמיי און א פלאט ("A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey
un a flot": "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy").
The view that Yiddish is a dialect may be a matter of opinion, but the
consensus is that Yiddish is more than simply a dialect. The Eastern and
Western dialects of Yiddish are themselves sufficiently distinct that
some linguists have suggested they should both be considered separate
languages.
Yiddish and other languages
Yiddish eventually split into Western (German) Yiddish and Eastern
Yiddish. The latter in turn split into North-Eastern (Litvish) Yiddish,
Central/Mid-Eastern (Polish/Galician) Yiddish, and South-Eastern
(Ukrainian,Romanian) Yiddish. The Eastern Yiddish dialects and Modern
Yiddish contain a great many words derived from Slavic languages.
Like Judæo-Arabic and pre-19th century Ladino (Judæo-Spanish), Yiddish
is written using an adaptation of the Hebrew alphabet. However, Yiddish
itself is not linguistically related to Hebrew, even though it absorbed
thousands of Hebrew and Aramaic terms taken from the Tanakh, Mishna,
Talmud, and Jewish tradition.
Curiously, Yiddish uses Latin derivatives for many of its words relating
to religious rituals, apparently borrowing the terminology from Old
French as spoken in Alsace. The presumed path of entry into Yiddish is
that the famous rabbi Rashi (1040-1105), and his descendants and
disciples the Tosafists, used hundreds of Old French words in their
rabbinical writings. Study of Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch and
the Talmud was widespread among medieval Jews; Rashi has also been used
by modern scholars as a reliable source for thousands of Old French
words. As an example, 'say grace after meals' is, in Yiddish, bentshn
(בענטשן), which is cognate with the same term that gave English the word
benediction; and Western-Europe dialects of Yiddish use the word orn,
derived from Latin orare, to mean 'pray'; and some scholars believe that
davnen (דאַװנען), the Eastern European Yiddish word for pray, has a
Romance language origin. Other Yiddish words with Romance backgrounds
include leyenen (לײענען) 'to read' and tsholnt (טשאָלנט) 'a Sabbath
stew' (spelled cholent in English). Many of the Old French words
incorporated into Yiddish happen also to have been similarly used by the
Catholic Church.
In the native Germanic vocabulary of Yiddish, the differences between
standard German and Yiddish pronunciations are mainly in the vowels and
diphthongs. One example is that standard German long a, as in Vater
'father', corresponds to o in Yiddish (foter); standard German long e
and long o are diphthongized in Yiddish to oy and ey. Like many German
dialects, Yiddish lacks the standard German front rounded umlaut vowels
ö and ü; they are replaced in Yiddish by e and i respectively.
Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in standard German
and Yiddish. Where standard German has merged the Middle High German
diphthong ei and long vowel î to ei (pronounced [ai]), Yiddish has
maintained the distinction between them as ey and ay respectively.
Standard German au (as in kaufen 'buy') corresponds to Yiddish oy (as in
koyfn); lastly, the German eu (pronounced [oi], as in deutsch 'German')
corresponds to ay in Yiddish (as in daytsh).
Consonantal differences between standard German and Yiddish include the
smoothing of the standard German affricate pf to plain f in Yiddish, and
the fact that Yiddish (but not standard German) allows word-final voiced
obstruents.
Verbs
Like most Germanic languages, Yiddish employs V2 word order: the second
constituent of any clause must be the finite verb, regardless of whether
the first constituent is the subject, an adverb, or some other
topicalized element. However, Yiddish is unusual among Germanic
languages in that it employs V2 syntax in both main clauses and
subordinate clauses: apart from Icelandic, other Germanic languages only
employ V2 syntax in main clauses.
Past Participle
The past participle is used extensively in Yiddish. The majority of
verbs (weak verbs) form the past participle with the addition of -גע and
ט- to the stem, e. g. געקױפֿט gekoyft 'bought.' However, there are also
a group of verbs, called strong verbs, which form the past participle
with -גע and נ-, accompanied by a vowel change, e. g. געהאָלפֿן geholfn
'helped' from the stem -האָלפֿ helf- 'help.' The vowel change is
unpredictable and simply must be learned.
There is no way to tell from the infinitive whether a verb is strong or
weak.
Tenses
As in the High German dialects, the inflected past tense (preterite) has
fallen out of use, having been replaced with the periphrasitic perfect
tense, formed with the appropriate form of האָבן 'hobn' or זײַן 'zayn'
and the past participle. Certain verbs will take האָבן 'hobn', while
others will take זײַן 'zayn'. There is no way to tell which verbs take
which auxiliary. Verbs taking hobn are more common, however; as a rule
of thumb, those taking zayn are often verbs of motion.
Yiddish words and phrases used by English speakers
See related articles:
Yiddish-derived idioms used in English, particularly in the United
States:
* "Oy Vey"
* "Chutzpah"
* "Enough already"
* "OK by me"
* "I need this like a hole in the head"
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish
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