Product Code Database
Yiddish dialects are varieties of the Yiddish language and are divided according to the region in Europe where each developed its distinctiveness. Linguistically, Yiddish is divided in distinct Eastern and Western dialects. While the Western dialects mostly died out in the 19th-century due to Jewish language assimilation into mainstream culture, the Eastern dialects were very vital until most of Eastern European Jewry was wiped out by the Holocaust, called the Khurbn in Yiddish.
The Northeastern dialects of Eastern Yiddish were dominant in 20th-century Yiddish culture and academia, but in the 21st-century, the Southern dialects of Yiddish that are preserved by many Hasidic Judaism communities have become the most commonly spoken form of Yiddish.
]] Yiddish dialects are generally grouped into either Western Yiddish and Eastern Yiddish.See Western YiddishSee Eastern Yiddish. Western Yiddish developed from the 9th century in Western-Central Europe, in the region which was called Ashkenaz by Jews, while Eastern Yiddish developed its distinctive features in Eastern Europe after the movement of large numbers of Jews from western to central and eastern Europe.
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.
Western Yiddish included three dialects:
The Judeo-Alsatian dialect traditionally spoken by the Jews of Alsace is called Yédisch-Daïtsch, Yédisch-Daïtsch, le dialecte judéo-alsacien originally a mixture of German language, Hebrew language and Aramaic language idioms and virtually indistinguishable from mainstream Yiddish. From the 12th century onwards, due among other things to the influence of the nearby Rashi school, French language linguistic elements aggregated as well, and from the 18th century onwards, some Polish language elements due to immigrants blended into Yédisch-Daïtsch too. Structure du parler judéo-alsacien
According to C. J. Hutterer (1969), "In western and central Europe the WY dialects must have died out within a short time during the period of reforms i.e. following the Enlightenment."Quoted in: Jochnowitz, George (2010). " Western Yiddish in Orange County, New York State". jochnowitz.net. Retrieved 14 September 2017. Jochnowitz is a professor emeritus of linguistics at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. "This article appeared in Les Cahiers du CREDYO. No. 5 (2010), published by the Centre de Recherche, d'Etudes et de Documentation du Yidich Occidental." In the 18th century, Yiddish was declining in German-speaking regions, as Jews were Acculturation, the Haskalah opposed the use of Yiddish, and preference for German grew. By the end of the 18th century, Western Yiddish was mostly out of use, though some speakers were discovered in these regions as late as the mid-20th century. Yiddish Dialects
Ukrainian Yiddish was the basis for standard theatre Yiddish, while Lithuanian Yiddish was the basis of standard literary and academic Yiddish.The two varieties differ slightly. Many words with in the standard have in Lithuanian Yiddish, e.g. וואוין = Standard , Lithuanian . See
About three-quarters of contemporary Yiddish speakers speak Southern Yiddish varieties, the majority speaking Polish Yiddish. Most Hasidic communities use southern dialects, with the exception of Chabad which uses ; many Haredim in Jerusalem also preserve Litvish Yiddish.
/ref>
/ref> Transitional Yiddish is spoken in two different regions, a Western part and an Eastern part.
Northern dialects are more conservative in vowel quality, while southern dialects have preserved vowel quantity distinctions.
Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish quality (1-=*a, 2-=*e, 3-=*i, 4-=*o, 5-=*u), and the second refers to quantity or diphthongization (-1=short, -2=long, -3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, -4=diphthong, -5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25).
Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German; Katz (1978) argues that they should be collapsed with the -2 series, leaving only 13 in the -3 series.
| + Genetic sources of Yiddish dialect vowels | {class="wikitable" | + Netherlandic ! ! Front vowel ! Back vowel |
| + Polish ! ! Front vowel ! Back vowel |
| + Lithuanian ! ! Front vowel ! Back vowel |
| + Examples ! PY !! Netherlandic !! Polish !! Lithuanian |
| o | u | = dos, zogn = dus, zugn | |
| u | i | = kugel = kigel | |
| ai | ah | = zayn = zahn | |
| ey | ay | = kleyn, tzvey = klayn, tzvay | |
| ey | oy | = breyt = broyt | |
| e | ey | = shtetl = shteytl (Note: Unstressed does not change) |
Some dialects have final consonant devoicing.
Merger of into was common in Litvish Yiddish in previous generations. Known as Sabesdiker losn, it has been stigmatized and deliberately avoided by recent generations of Litvaks.
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).
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 theatre (cf. Bühnendeutsch, the stage pronunciation, as a common designation for Standard German).
There is nothing unusual about heated debate over language planning and reform. Such normative initiatives are, however, frequently based on legislative authority – something which, with the exception of regulation in the Soviet Union, 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 Birnbaum:
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.
|
|
