Family genealogy
Yiddish
I borrow this presentation from Yitzhok NIBORSKI in an article published in the Encyclopædia Universalis.
Many people of my generation are nostalgic for this language, which was murdered by the Nazis and which their parents, who were fluent speakers, did not pass on to them.
A history spanning more than a thousand years...
"Yiddish is the main language used during the last millennium by Ashkenazi Jews, that is, the Jewish groups established in Germany and France since the time of Charlemagne, in Bohemia, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and other parts of Eastern Europe from the 13th century, or in Holland and Northern Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It is also the language of the new Ashkenazi communities around the world since the migrations of Jews from Eastern Europe led them, in particular, to Western Europe, North and South America, and then to Israel, from the second half of the 19th century onwards."
A Jewish Language
"Of all the Jewish languages, Yiddish has experienced the widest geographical expansion; no other has been spoken by such a large number of people, in absolute or relative terms: eleven million (or two-thirds of all the Jews in the world) on the eve of the Second World War. It is also the only Jewish language, apart from Hebrew, that has reached such a degree of development, since it allows for the expression of all the content of the traditional lifestyle and thought, but also for conveying the political, scientific or literary discourse of modern times."
Over the last half-century, several factors have contributed to weakening the position of Yiddish. The genocide perpetrated by the Nazis during the Second World War wiped out more than half of the Yiddish-speaking population and disrupted the conditions of transmission for the survivors. Linguistic assimilation, largely voluntary but also encouraged, even forced in some countries, alienated the Jewish generations born after the war.
How it was formed: Merger and differentiation
"Traditional Jewish life, focused on the application of religious precepts, constitutes a specific, complete and coherent cultural system, which could not function by using a borrowed language as is.
Since Hebrew lost its character as a spoken language even before the Christian era, other Jewish languages, born from its partial fusion with those of neighboring populations, replaced it in this function.
The first was Judeo-Aramaic, which later joined Hebrew as the language reserved for studies, liturgy, and writing in general.
Subsequently, the origin of any Jewish language can be schematically described as the result of the fusion of three kinds of materials:
1- elements of Hebrew-Aramaic that are still alive;
2- elements of the language (or languages) of the surrounding populations;
3- vestiges of an earlier Jewish language, brought from other countries through migrations.
In the case of Yiddish, which appeared around the 11th century in the Jewish communities of the Rhineland, component 2 was represented first by various German dialects in the Middle Ages and, later, with the eastward shift of the center of gravity of the Ashkenazim, by Slavic languages, notably Polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian.
During the 19th century, Yiddish also assimilated much of the so-called international vocabulary, mainly composed of Neo-Greek or Neo-Latin words commonly used in political, technological or scientific terminology.
The merging of these components is a long and complex process, which involves selection operations on the heritage of the source languages and changes concerning all aspects of Yiddish, whether phonetic, semantic, morphological or syntactic.
Thus, not all words from the source languages were necessarily familiar to the Jewish group where Yiddish was developing. Even within the known vocabulary, some words were useless and others rejected because of, for example, their strong Christian connotations. (...)
Because Yiddish retained the three grammatical genders of German for nouns, many words originating from Hebrew, where there are only two genders, were forced to adopt the neuter gender. (…)
Contrary to popular belief, Yiddish is therefore not the result of adding together a number of linguistic components, but the product of their fusion, unpredictable from the sole knowledge of the source languages.
This makes it uncertain to calculate the share that corresponds to each of them.
With this reservation stated, we can speak of approximately 70 to 80 percent of elements of German origin, 15 to 25 percent of Hebrew origin, and 5 to 10 percent of Slavic origin.
Role in relation to Hebrew
"Another misconception is that Yiddish and other post-Talmudic Jewish languages were used in traditional Jewish society only for the needs of daily life, while the religious sphere was reserved for Hebrew-Aramaic.
Without disputing Hebrew's status as a sacred language, Yiddish has its place in the field of studies and liturgy.
While biblical or Talmudic reading is certainly practiced in the text, oral commentaries, discussions, scholarly presentations and sometimes even certain prayers, especially among women, are done in Yiddish.
At the same time, Hebrew is also used to write civil and commercial documents, private correspondence, etc.
The only valid distinction is therefore that which separates Hebrew, an exclusively written language, from Yiddish, a spoken and written language.
The Hebrew-Aramaic component of Yiddish does not have exclusive use of the religious sphere. It is predominant, but not hegemonic.
Furthermore, words of Hebrew origin are not absent from other registers of the language, including vulgar and scatological language."
Son Évolution historique
"À l'instar des autres langues juives, le yiddish s'écrit avec les caractères de l'alphabet hébreu.
La plupart des mots d'origine hébro-araméenne gardent leur écriture traditionnelle ; pour tous les autres, la correspondance entre lettres et sons est presque parfaite.
La norme actuelle, élaborée en 1936, laisse subsister quelques variantes.
L'absence ou la rareté de textes yiddish des premières époques (le premier témoignage écrit date de 1272) constitue une difficulté majeure pour l'étude de l'histoire de la langue.
L'idée qu'on s'en fait, pour les trois premiers siècles, repose largement sur des témoignages indirects, des inférences et déductions accomplies à partir de ce qu'on connaît des langues sources, ou encore sur des reconstructions faites à partir du yiddish parlé moderne.
Le schéma historique généralement accepté partage l'évolution de la langue en quatre périodes :
- jusqu'en 1250, on parle de « proto-yiddish » pour désigner l'époque antérieure à la prise de contact avec les langues slaves. Les mécanismes de fusion commencent à jouer.
- Dans la période du yiddish ancien (1250-1500) ont lieu, en Bohême et en Pologne, les premières rencontres avec les langues slaves. Une littérature naît (poésie, traductions de la Bible), dans laquelle on observe une relative uniformité linguistique.
- À l'époque du yiddish moyen (1500-1700) a lieu la différenciation entre le vieux tronc occidental de la langue et les nouveaux dialectes dans l'aire slave. C'est le déclin du yiddish à l'ouest qui caractérise le début de la période moderne.
- Vers 1700, Les Juifs d'Allemagne, attirés par l'idéologie rationaliste et assimilationniste, adoptent volontiers la langue du pays.
Plus à l'est, à la même époque, l'importance du yiddish s'accroît.
Dans l'usage écrit, une nouvelle norme, mieux adaptée à l'évolution de la langue, se généralise vers 1820.
L'épanouissement de la littérature et de la presse contribuera puissamment, au XIXe siècle, à enrichir le vocabulaire et les possibilités d'expression, mouvement accentué par le développement d'une idéologie dite "yiddishiste" qui inspirera, avant la Première Guerre Mondiale, une production linguistique normative et un système scolaire.
Dans le yiddish, encore parlé actuellement, coexistent plusieurs dialectes liés à l'origine géographique des locuteurs.
Le groupe des dialectes du Nord (Lituanie, Biélorussie) diffère de celui du Sud (Pologne, Volynie, Ukraine, etc.) essentiellement par le système vocalique.
Pour l'enseignement, on a généralement adopté une norme de prononciation fondée sur le yiddish du Nord, tandis que le théâtre employait le dialecte de Volynie