Yiddish

The word Yiddish to designate a separate language began to be systematically used only in the 19th century, although it was used as one of the self-names since the 17th century. Earlier documents of the 15th-16th centuries have also been preserved, in which the Germanic speech of the Jews is indicated by this word, but their interpretation is controversial ^[6] . Before, the Jews called their language loshn ashkenese ( לשון אשכנז , “the language of Germany”) or taich ( טייно , originally: “German”), thus not separating it from the language of the German-Christian ^[7] .

In the 19th century, under the influence of Jewish enlightenment , the initially pejorative designation of Yiddish as Jewish jargon spread; the writers who write on it were called slang writers. In 1868-1869, Shie-Mordhe Lifshitz published the "Russian-New Hebrew Dictionary". The reverse dictionary of the same author, published in 1876, is referred to simply as “Jewish-Russian”. Ludwig Zamenhof in 1879 compiled an essay on “modern Jewish” grammar in Russian.

In the USSR, in the official literature, the phrase “Jewish language” denoted exactly Yiddish; Hebrew was called "Hebrew," not recognizing the status of the living spoken language of Israel .

In Russian, the word "Yiddish" is acceptable to use as a declined (only singular ) form and a non- declined noun ^[8] .

Historically, Yiddish belongs to the Upper Frank dialects of the Upper German cluster of the West Germanic languages ​​of the Germanic group .

In 1991, Paul Veksler , a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, put forward a hypothesis that attributed him to the group of Slavic rather than Germanic languages . In academic circles, the theory of Wexler is treated as a curiosity, reflecting rather the political views of the author ^[9] .

Range and abundance

Determining the current number of Yiddish speakers is very difficult. Most Ashkenazi Jews during the 20th century switched to the language of the countries where they live. Nevertheless, from the censuses of some countries an estimate of the number of Yiddish speakers can be obtained.

• Israel - 215 thousand people according to Ethnologue estimates for 1986 (6% of the number of Jews in Israel) ^[10] .
• USA - 178 945 people speak Yiddish at home (approximately 2.8% of all US Jews ^{[ when? ]} , with 3.1% Hebrew speakers).
• Canada - 17,255 Yiddish was called the native language of the 2006 census (5% of people of Jewish origin).
• Moldova - 17 thousand people. Yiddish was called the mother tongue (1989), that is, 26% of the total number of Jews.
• Ukraine - 3213 people Yiddish was called the mother tongue of the 2001 census (3.1% of the Jews).
• Belarus - 1979 people they say at home in Yiddish according to the 1999 census (7.1% of the number of Jews).
• Russia - according to the 2010 census, 1,683 people speak the Yiddish language. (approximately 1% of all Jews in the Russian Federation) ^[11] . According to the former Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation M. E. Shvydkoi , Yiddish culture in Russia is a thing of the past and its revival is unlikely ^[12] .
• Romania - 951 people called Yiddish their native language (16.4% of the number of Jews).
• Latvia - 825 people called Yiddish their native language (7.9% of the number of Jews).
• Lithuania - 570 people called Yiddish their native language (14.2% of the number of Jews).
• Estonia - 124 people called Yiddish their native language (5.8% of the number of Jews).
• Hungary - according to the results of the 2001 census, 1691 Jews ^[13] accounted for 276 people (16.3%) who spoke Jewish at home or with friends ^[14] , and 3131 people. owning Jewish as a second ^[15] . (Yiddish and Hebrew are not separated in the census data, so the exact number of Yiddish speakers is unknown.)

A significant number of Yiddish speakers also live in the UK , Belgium , France , to a lesser extent in Australia , Argentina and Uruguay .

Based on the above data, the total number of Yiddish speakers in the world can be estimated at 500 thousand people. Similar data are given in some other sources: 550-600 thousand. At the same time, there are much higher estimates: 1,762,320 ^[10] (in the previous, 15th edition, an even higher number of Yiddish speakers was indicated - 3,142,560 people) and even 2 million (at the end of the 1970s; KEE ^[16] ), however, it is not explained what methodology these estimates are based on.

Sociolinguistic information

Although among the majority of Ashkenazi Jews in Israel, Yiddish gave way to Hebrew , and in the diasporas to the languages ​​of the surrounding population, representatives of some traditional religious communities ( Haredim and especially Hasidim ) communicate among themselves mainly in Yiddish.

Dialects

Yiddish consists of a large number of dialects, which are usually divided into western and eastern dialects.

Western Yiddish, closely associated with German and Dutch dialects of the surrounding population, is almost dead today.

The eastern dialect, formed outside the German-speaking environment, is divided into three main dialects:

• northeastern ( Lithuanian dialect : Baltic States, Belarus, Podlaskie Voivodeship of Poland, Smolensk and Bryansk Regions of Russia, eastern Ukraine),
• southeastern ( Ukrainian dialect : Volhynia and Right-Bank Ukraine, Moldova, the eastern regions of Romania, primarily Moldova and Bukovina, the southern part of the Brest region of Belarus and the Lublin Voivodeship of Poland)
• central (or south-western, Polish dialect : central and western Poland, Transylvania, Galicia and Transcarpathia, eastern Hungary and Slovakia).

There are both transitional and mixed dialects.

Towards the beginning of the 20th century, the so-called klal spra formed a standardized language phonetically close to the northeastern dialect of Vilna , but grammatically close to the southern dialects. As a spoken language, this standard gained some distribution through the Yiddish school system and was normalized by the Institute for Jewish Studies and a number of institutes in the USSR, but today it is mainly limited to academic circles. The grammar and graphics of the written language of Yiddish literature correspond to an almost completely inter-dialect standard ^{[18] [19]} .

In North America, the common dialect based on the “Hungarian” Yiddish (within the central dialect of the eastern dialect), common earlier in Transylvania, crystallized among the most numerous Hasidic yards.

Theatrical Yiddish, in accordance with the tradition, originating from A. Goldfaden , corresponds to the average Ukrainian dialect (sometimes referred to in this context as Volynsky ).

Yiddish's regional variations reveal great differences in the vowel system, ranging from the opposition between short open i and long closed i to models with full parallel rows of short and long vowels. Dialects also include ü and diphthongs ending in -w and -u. In some dialects, the phoneme h is absent, in some the smaller number of palatal is distinguished, and in western Yiddish there is no difference in voicing. Articulation of r varies in different areas from r apical to (mainly) r uvular.

Yiddish uses Hebrew square writing . The direction of the letter, as in Hebrew , is from right to left: קופּטשינע - Kupchino . Unlike Hebrew, the letter is fully voiced : vowels are denoted by letters, similar to Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letters; in Hebraism (including words of both Hebrew and Aramaic origin), the traditional consonant spelling is preserved.

At present, the standard spelling of IVO is considered standard ^[20] , as well as the more conservative system codified in Klal Takonez fun Yiddish Oisleig (General Yiddish Spelling Rules) ^[21] (shown in the table below). Religious publishers, in turn, prefer the spelling of the Yiddish press of the beginning of the XX century - the so-called. "Dychmerskoy", that is, borrowing some characteristic features of the spelling of the German language ^[22] .

Some consonant sounds are transmitted by digraphs or trigraphs : דז [dz], דזש [j], זש [x], טש [h], שטש [u].

Bases / base, coffee / hof, pay / fair, shin / sin and tov / ow pairs are considered as separate letters in dictionaries and textbooks. In the dictionaries for each of them, as a rule, their own section is assigned (except for ways and owls, which are not used at the beginning of the word). Variants of letters denoting vowels, including digraphs, are considered as independent letters in textbooks and manuals, but not in dictionaries ^{[19] [25] [26] [27]} .

In the 1920s in the Soviet Union, and then in publishing houses of a number of other communist and pro-Soviet countries, the historical and etymological principle of writing hebraisms was replaced by the phonetic one. Moreover, the special tracing of the final consonants ך, ם, ן, ף, ץ was discarded in favor of the usual consonants כ, מ, נ, פ, צ. In 1961, the USSR returned to writing final letters (which, however, did not take root in all publishing houses) ^{[28] [29]} . In this system, the phonetic spelling of hebraisms and some prepositions was preserved until 1994, in the journal Di Yiddish Gas .

The oldest surviving text of 1272 contains specific Jewish vocabulary characteristic of the modern language ^[30] . It is assumed that the German dialects of Jews differed to some extent from the dialects of German Christians already in the 10th-12th centuries, but the lack of preserved written sources, in addition to individual glosses , does not allow for reliable reconstruction of the early “proto-Yiddish”. In the 15th century, Yiddish became isolated in a separate dialect space from German ^[31] .

Since the Middle Ages, Yiddish has been the spoken language of European Jews. Thanks to Hasidism and Haskale , religious-educational and fiction literature in Yiddish appears, developing in parallel with Hebrew literature. Yiddish reached its heyday at the beginning of the 20th century.

By the time of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, Yiddish was already perceived as an independent language and was recognized as the language of general education and office work in the Soviet republics: the Ukrainian SSR , and as one of the four official languages ​​of the BSSR , along with Belarusian , Russian and Polish ^{[32] [ 33] [34]} . For some time, the slogan “Workers of all countries, unite!” Was inscribed on the coat of arms of the BSSR in Yiddish, along with Belarusian , Russian and Polish languages. It was also one of the official languages ​​of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1917.

The Second World War (including mainly the Holocaust ), the assimilation of Jews in the West and the USSR, including the closure of Jewish schools, and the desire to introduce Hebrew in Israel at a fast pace - all these factors led to the almost universal disappearance of Yiddish cultural life , and the rapid reduction of its everyday use as well ^[35] .

Phonetics and Phonology

Yiddish has an expiratory stress, and although the place of stress in a word is not always completely predictable, there are several characteristic distributions of verbal stress. The system of short vowels of a triangular type with three degrees of solution and two positions of articulation:

The most characteristic diphthongs are combinations of ei, ai and oi. In Yiddish, as in the southern dialects of German, the reflection of the Middle German diphthong ei and the long vowel î:

Consonant System:

mn n '

bd d 'g

pt t 'k

vz z 'zcr

fs s' š č xhy

l l '

Note : the apostrophe indicates palatal consonants.

Unlike many Upper German dialects, the ranks of the explosive and fricative are distinguished not by tension, but by sonorousness. Yiddish dialects are also characterized by types of sandhi that are not found among German dialects (assimilation of voicing, occurrence of voiced consonants in the outcome of syllables), adopted from Slavic languages. Slavic influence also affected the appearance in Yiddish of contrast of palatal consonants. In addition, due to the influx of words of Hebrew-Aramaic and Slavic origin, numerous initial combinations of consonants unusual for the German language penetrated into Yiddish (for example, bd-, px-, tx-) ^{[36] [37] [38] [39]} .

Morphology

The Yiddish grammar system basically follows the German language model, but with a significant number of changes in eastern dialects. Modern colloquial dialects are characterized by a significant simplification of the system of cases and / or childbirth in comparison with the more conservative standard language ^{[40] [41]} .

Article

A definite article is put before a noun and is consistent with it by gender, number and case.

The indefinite article has only the singular form, does not change and is uniform for all genera: אַ (a), before the vowel or diphthong - אַן (en).

Article forms are also used as indicative pronouns (this, this, this).

Noun

It is characterized by categories of gender, number, case and certainty / uncertainty.

The gender category appears in consistent with the noun words - articles, adjectives and / or pronouns. In some cases, fluctuations in the genus are detected.

Adjective Name

The German distinction between weak and strong declension of adjectives disappeared (except for the middle gender singular), but a new distinction appeared between mutable predicative adjectives.

Pronoun

Numeral

1. - ein (s) - איין
2. - tsvei - צוויי
3. - drive - דרייַ
4. - firms - פיר
5. - finf - פינף
6. - zeks - זעקס
7. - zibm ^{[approx. 2]} - זיבן
8. - aht - אַכט
9. - nain - נייַן
10. - cen - צען

Verb

In the verb, all tenses and moods, except the present tense of the indicative mood, began to form analytically. A consistent alienation of the perfect and imperfect species is developing; a number of new verb forms have appeared expressing specific and collateral shades.

The present participle has also acquired new functions. In many cases, forms of conjugation underwent innovation; new classes of peripheral conjugation arose.

Preposition

• fun ( פון ) - of, of
• ba ( ביי ) - y
• tsu ( צו ) - to
• in ( אין ) - in
• headlight ( פאַר ) - for / before
• af ( אויף ) - on
• untər ( אונטער ) - under

Syntax

New syntax for word order has appeared in the syntax. The word order in the main and subordinate clauses has become the same. The distance between nouns and their definitions, as well as between parts of verb phrases, has been reduced.

For a simple sentence, the verb “from” (איז) is used, similar to the German ist (is). For example:

כינע איז אַ לאַנד אין מזרח אַזיע - Hinə from a land in mizrəh asiyə (China is a country in East Asia)

קאָקאָס פּאַלמע איז אַ טראָפּישע פלאַנץ - Coconut palmə from a tropisə flange (coconut palm - tropical plant)

איך בין אַ זינגער - Their bin a zingər (I am a singer)

דו ביסט אַ זינגער - Do bist a zingər (you are a singer)

זי איז אַ שיין מיידעלע - Zee from a shane maidalə (she is a beautiful girl).

Vocabulary

The vocabulary is 70% of Germanic origin, with extensive layers of vocabulary of Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as Slavic origin.

Examples of Germanic words: Odlər (אָדלער, eagle ), Aizn (אייזן, iron ), build (בילד, image ), bly (בליי, lead ), blut (בלוט, blood ).

Colors

Hebrew vocabulary is also present: bohər (בחור, guy), dorəm (דרום, south), yam (ים, sea), mayrə ^[42] (מערב, west), midbər (מדבר, desert), mizrəh (מזרח, east) milhomə (מלחמה, war), mishpohə (משפּחה, family), tsofn (צפון, north), hazər (חזיר, pig), shabəs (שבת, Saturday)

Yiddish also absorbed Slavicism: verbə (ווערבע), vidr (ווידרע), dachə (דאַטשע), nags (קליאַטשע), murəshkə (מוראַשקע), əəрə (אָזערע), owə (סאəוו) kettle (טשייניק)

Odessa dialect

Yiddish, along with the Ukrainian language, had a great influence on the formation of the Odessa dialect .

Slang Source

Many Hebraisms ( Ksiva , Hochma , etc.) entered the Russian language through Yiddish - this is evidenced, in particular, by their Ashkenazi pronunciation ^[43] .

Belarusian and Ukrainian languages

At the beginning of the 20th century, 2 million Jews lived among Belarusians. Such a number of them could not but influence the language of Belarusians, especially since they always had direct contacts with each other ^[44] . A number of Yiddish words penetrated the Belarusian ^{[45] [46]} (especially the words relating to trade and crafts, since these areas were mainly in the hands of the Jews ^[44] ) and Ukrainian. For example, in Belarusian there are the words Avoi (oops, ooh), balagol (cab driver), bahur (butuz; lover), babakhi (entrails; rags), garmіdar (mess, noise), kaptsan (ragged), razdara (talker), fanaberiya ( puffiness ), chalamus (end), haўrus (union, company), heўra (gang, shop), shahrai (rogue), gandlyar (merchant), gandlevs (trading). In Ukrainian from the same Yiddish root - the word gender (neglect, literally "unscrupulous businessman", "huckster"), handelk (slang, "eatery").

• Jewish languages
• “ In Search of Yiddish ”

Literature

• Sandler S. A. Yiddish: A Textbook for Russian Speakers. - M .: RSUH, 2001 .-- 528 p. - 4000 copies - ISBN 5-7281-0522-X .
• Falkovich E. M. On the Yiddish language // Russian-Jewish (Yiddish) dictionary: Ok. 40,000 words / Comp. R. Ya. Lerner, E. B. Leutsker, M. N. Maidansky, M. A. Shapiro. 2nd ed., Stereotype .. - M .: Russian language, 1989. - S. 666-714. - ISBN 5-200-00427-6 .
• Birnbaum SA Yiddish: a Survey and a Grammar. - Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979.- 400 p.
• Jacobs NG Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. - ISBN ISBN 0-521-77215-X .
• Kahn L. Colloquial Yiddish. - New York: Routledge, 2011 .-- 320 p.
• Katz D. Grammar of the Yiddish Language. - London: Duckworth, 1987 .-- 290 p. - ISBN 0-7156-2162-9 .
• Weinreich M. History of the Yiddish Language. - USA. - Yale University Press, 2008 .-- ISBN 9780300108873 .
• Weinreich U. College Yiddish: An Introduction to the Yiddish language and to Jewish Life and Culture. 5th rev. ed .. - New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1971. - 399 p. - ISBN 0-914512-26-9 .
• Weinreich U. Modern English-Yiddish, Yiddish-English Dictionary. - New York: Schocken Books, 1977 .-- 789 p.
• Niborski Y. , Noiberg Sh. Dictionnaire de mots yiddish d'origine hébraïque et araméenne (en yiddish). Paris, Bibliothèque Medem, 1e édition, 1997; 2e édition 1999; 3e édition revue et augmentée, Paris 2012.
• Niborski Y. , Vaisbrot B. Dictionnaire yiddish-français. Paris, Bibliothèque Medem, 2002; 2e édition 2011.
• Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (ed. By S. Beinfeld and H. Bochner, based upon Niborski Y., Vaisbrot B., Dictionnaire yiddish-français, Bibliothèque Medem). Indiana University Press, 2013.
• Yofe Y. , Yudel M. Groyser verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh . V. 1-4, New York.
• Zucker sh. Yiddish. An Introduction to the Language, Literature, and Culture, Vol 1. - New York: The Workmen's Circle / Arbeter Ring, 1994 .-- 286 p.
• הירשע־דוד קאַץ. תקני תקנות, פראַגן פון יידישער סטיליסטיק = Katz H.-D. Amendment: Issues in the style of Yiddish (Yiddish) . - אָקספאָרד: אָקספאָרדער יידיש, 1993. - 349 p. - ISBN 9781897744000 .

Yiddish Literature

• Yiddish Literature Essay - An article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
• Category: Yiddish Writers
• Category: Yiddish Poets

• Jewish-German dialect // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Marina Agranovskaya Yiddish, brother of German
• Marina Agranovskaya This sweet language is for mom loshn
• Yiddish - the main source of Hebrew slang

Online Resources

• A brief Yiddish-Russian dictionary by Alexander Soldatov at Jewniwerse
• Yiddish-Russian Dictionary , Ed. D. Tishchenko on the Kiev Jewish website
• Yiddish-Russian dictionary of Boris Weinblat on the site We are here!
• Lessons from Yiddish Arie London and Yoyle Matveyev at Jewniwerse
• Live Yiddish by Shlomo Groman
• English-Yiddish-English dictionary online
• Electronic version of the Garkavi dictionary
• A Brief Introduction to Yiddish
• Yiddish Grammar (German)
• Yiddish-English-Yiddish (download)
• Yiddish - Russian-English-German short dictionary
• Glossary - Yiddish words and phrases translated into English. lang
• Spell Checking in Various Yiddish Standards
• Virtual yiddish keyboard

Other links

• A critical comparison of existing Yiddish-Russian dictionaries
• Derbaremdiker M. L. What do Yiddish proverbs say
• Haifa University Journal “Di Welt Fun Yiddish” (Yiddish World)
• Yiddish Bible (Tanah)
• Classical Yiddish Fiction
• Jewish storybooks ed. Irving Howe, Eliezer Greenberg and Frida Foreman
• Red mit Yiddish World Yiddish Links
• Yiddish and German
• Di Velt fun Yidish: Audio Stories
• Yiddish language - article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
• Too Left, Too Right, Too Dead Yiddish by Michael Dorfman
• Autograph collection of Jewish writers in Yiddish
• The first international festival of Yiddish music and culture.
• Exhibition "Yiddish in the modern world" in the NLR
• In search of yiddish
• Yiddish-speaking Israel, April 2010 Jewish Observer
• Die Welt: Yiddish is experiencing a renaissance today
• Memorial Yiddish . Song of Alexander Gorodnitsky
• Z. Weizman. Yiddish is over? ..