Yiddish dialects are subsets of the major regional branches of the Yiddish Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. It is written in the Hebrew alphabet language: Western Yiddish[1] and Eastern Yiddish.[2] Eastern Yiddish, the branch almost exclusively encountered in the contemporary speech community, includes three major dialects: Northeastern (NEY or Litvish, spoken in the Baltic States The Baltic states (Estonian: Balti riigid, Latvian: Baltijas valstis, Lithuanian: Baltijos valstybės, Russian: Прибалтика lit. "At the Baltic Sea"), Baltic nations or Baltic countries are three countries in Northern Europe, all members of the European Union: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Between 1918 and 1920 in the region, Belarus Belarus, (pronounced /bɛləˈruːs/ bel-ə-ROOS; Belarusian: Беларусь, Russian: Беларусь or Белоруссия, Belorussia see Etymology), officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and, and adjacent areas), Central or Poylish (spoken in Poland Poland /ˈpəʊlənd/ (Polish: Polska), officially the Republic of Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska), is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of, Galicia, areas of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and described as the Dual Monarchy or the k.u.k. Monarchy, was a monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe. The union was a result of the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867, under which the Austrian , including Transylvania, and other areas of Central Europe Central Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West, splitting Central Europe in half), and Southeastern or Ukrainish (spoken in most of the Ukraine Ukraine (pronounced /juːˈkreɪn/ ew-KRAYN; Ukrainian: Україна, transliterated: Ukrayina, [ukrɑˈjinɑ]), with its area of 600,000 sq km, is the second largest country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and and Romania).
Western Yiddish included three dialects: Northwestern (spoken in Northern Germany and the Netherlands), Midwestern (spoken in central Germany), and Southwestern (spoken in southern Germany, France, and neighboring regions extending into Northern Italy). These have a number of clearly distinguished regional varieties, such as Judeo-Alsatian The Jewish community of Alsace is one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe. It was first attested in 1165 by Benjamin of Tudela, who wrote about a "large number of learned men" in "Astransbourg", and it is assumed that it dates back until around the year 1000 AD. Although Jewish life in Alsace was often disrupted by, plus many local subvarieties.
General references to the "Yiddish language" without qualification are normally taken to apply to Eastern Yiddish, unless the subject under consideration is Yiddish literature prior to the 19th century, in which case the focus is more likely to be on Western Yiddish.
Some authors use the term "Southeastern Yiddish" as a collective designation for both Poylish and Ukrainish while still applying the term Northeastern Yiddish to Litvish. The single most populous dialect is Poylish, which together with Ukrainish is used by as many as three quarters of all Yiddish speakers.
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Development of "neutral" form
As with many other languages with strong literary traditions, there was a more or less constant tendency toward the development of a neutral written form acceptable to the speakers of all dialects. In the early twentieth century, for both cultural and political reasons, particular energy was focused on developing a modern Standard Yiddish. This contained elements from all three Eastern dialects but its phonetic attributes were predominantly based on Northeastern pronunciation. A separate article describes the resulting modern Standard Yiddish phonology There is significant phonological variation among the various dialects of the Yiddish language. The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts. Its genesis is described in the article on Yiddish dialects, without detailing the phonetic variation among the three contributing dialects or the further distinctions among the myriad local varieties that they subsume.
A useful early review of the differences between the three main Eastern dialects is provided by the Yiddish lexicographer Alexander Harkavy in a Treatise on Yiddish Reading, Orthography, and Dialectal Variations first published in 1898 together with his Yiddish-English Dictionary (Harkavy 1898). A scanned facsimile is available online. The relevant material is presented there under the heading Dialects.
Standardization controversy
YIVO on 16th Street in Manhattan, New York CityHarkavy, as other of the early standardizers, regards Litvish as the "leading branch". That assertion has, however, been questioned by many authors and remains the subject of keen controversy to the present day. YIVO, the Jewish Scientific Institute,[3] is often seen as the initiating agent in giving phonetic preference to Litvish, but Harkavy's work predates YIVO's and he was not exclusively describing personal preference. A broad-based study provided in the Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (discussed in detail below under the heading Documentation) provides a clearer picture of the more recent YIVO perspective.
The heart of the debate is the priority given to the dialect with the smallest number of speakers. One of the alternative proposals put forward in the early discussion of standardizing spoken Yiddish was to base it on the pronunciation of the Southeastern dialect, which was the most widely used form in the Yiddish theater (c.f. Bühnendeutsch, the stage pronunciation, as a common designation for Standard German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Globally, German is spoken by approximately 120 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers.)
There is nothing unusual about heated debate over language planning Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of a language or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots organizations and even individuals. The goals of language and reform. Such normative initiatives are, however, frequently based on legislative authority – something which, with the exception of regulation in the Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (help·info), tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, IPA [sɐˈjʊs sɐˈvʲeʦkʲɪx səʦɪ, has never applied to Yiddish. It might therefore be expected that the controversy about the development of Standard Yiddish would be particularly intense.
The acrimony surrounding the extensive role played by YIVO is vividly illustrated by in remarks made by Solomon Birnbaum (Birnbaum 1979):
"There is no standard pronunciation in Yiddish. However, the members and friends of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, New York, have strong views on the subject. They are convinced that Y should not differ in this respect from the great Western languages, and so they are willing to introduce a standard one. In their publications they speak as if it were already in existence, but this is wishful thinking – acceptance of their system being restricted to their circle. The original proponents of this 'standard' were speakers of the Northern dialect and so, without further ado and without discussing the matter or giving any reasons, they decided that their own pronunciation was the 'standard'. However, the man in the street knows nothing about it. If he happens to be a Southerner he does not exchange his rich phonemic system for the meagre one of the Northern dialect. He does not even know that this is 'supposed to be' the 'standard'. And if he is a Northerner, he goes on speaking as before, without realizing that he would need to change only one of his vowels in order to qualify as a speaker of the 'standard'. It is ironic that the partisans of the 'standard' – all convinced democrats – should ask the majority of Yiddish-speakers to switch over from their own pronunciation to that of a minority, comprising only a quarter of all Yiddish speakers."
Recent criticism of modern Standard Yiddish is expressed by Michael Wex in several passages in Wex 2005. Regardless of any nuance that can be applied to the consideration of these arguments, it may be noted that modern Standard Yiddish is used by very few mother-tongue speakers and is not evoked by the vast bulk of Yiddish literature. It has, however, become a norm in present-day instruction of Yiddish as a foreign language and is therefore firmly established in any discourse about the development of that language.
Documentation
Between 1992 and 2000, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research published a three-volume Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, commonly referred to as the LCAAJ. This provides a detailed description of the phonetic elements of what is presented as an Eastern-Western dialect continuum A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the continuum are no longer mutually intelligible. The, and mapping their geographic distribution. A more recent extensive phonetic description, also of both Eastern and Western Yiddish, is given by Neil G. Jacobs in Jacobs 2005.
Notes
- ^ See Western Yiddish
- ^ See Eastern Yiddish.
- ^ http://www.yivo.org/
References
- Birnbaum, Solomon A., Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1979, ISBN 0-8020-5382-3.
- Estraikh, Gennady, Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1999, ISBN 0-19-818479-4.
- Fishman, Joshua A. Joshua Aaron Fishman, is an American linguist who specializes in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity (ed.), Never Say Die: A Thousand Years of Yiddish in Jewish Life and Letters, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, 1981, ISBN 90-279-7978-2.
- Harkavy, Alexander, Harkavy's English-Jewish and Jewish-English Dictionary, Hebrew Publishing Company, New York, 1898. Expanded 6th ed., 1910, scanned facsimile.
- Herzog, Marvin, et al. ed., YIVO, The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, 3 vols., Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 1992-2000, ISBN 3-484-73013-7.
- Jacobs, Neil G., Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, ISBN 0-521-77215-X.
- Katz, Dovid, Grammar of the Yiddish Language, Duckworth, London, 1987, ISBN 0-7156-2161-0.
- Weinreich, Uriel, College Yiddish: an Introduction to the Yiddish language and to Jewish Life and Culture, 6th revised ed., YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-914512-26-9.
- Wex, Michael, Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2005, ISBN 0-312-30741-1.
Record Fiend
ue, 11 May 2010 02:58:00 GM
In many ways, this magnificent CD picks up where Klezmer Music - Early . Yiddish. Instrumental Music - The First Recordings: 1908-1927 left off, at least in regard to the Ashkenazi Jewish musicians who had relocated from . eastern. Europe to ...
