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Klezmer

Klezmer

Klezmer (Yiddish כלזמיר, etymologically from Hebrew k'li zemer כלי זמר, "vessel of song") is a musical tradition which parallels Hasidic and Ashkenazic Judaism. Around the 15th century, a tradition of secular (non-liturgical) Jewish music was developed by musicians called klezmorim. They drew on devotional traditions extending back into Biblical times, and their musical legacy of klezmer continues to evolve today. The repertoire is largely dance songs for weddings and other celebrations. Originally, klezmer (plural klezmorim) referred to the instruments played, then was extended to refer to the performers, and ultimately to the genre of music. Due to the Ashkenazi lineage of this music, the lyrics, terminology and song titles are typically in Yiddish.

Style

Klezmer is easily identifiable by its characteristic expressive melodies, reminiscent of the human voice, complete with laughing and weeping. This is not a coincidence; the style is meant to imitate khazone and paraliturgical singing. Several techniques are used to accomplish this. There are krekhts, 'sobs', and dreydlekh which are a form of trill.

History

The Bible has several descriptions of orchestras and Levites making music. But after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70, many Rabbis discouraged musical instruments. But the importance of merrymaking at weddings was not diminished, and musicians came forth to fill that niche, klezmorim. The first klezmer known by name was Yakobius ben Yakobius, a 150s player of the aulus in Samaria. The earliest written record of the klezmorim is in the 15th century. It should be noted that it is unlikely that they played music recognizable as Klezmer today since the style and structure of Klezmer as we know it today is thought to have come largely from XIX century Bessarabia, where the bulk of today's traditional repertoire was written. Klezmorim based their secular instrumental music upon the devotional vocal music of the synagogue, in particular cantorial music. Even so, klezmorim — along with other entertainers — were typically looked down on by Rabbis because of their secular traveling lifestyle. Klezmorim often travelled and played with Roma musicians ("lăutari"), since they occupied similar social positions. They had a great influence on each other musically and linguistically (the extensive Klezmer argot in Yiddish includes some Roma borrowings). Klezmorim were respected for their musical abilities and diverse repertoire but they were by no means restricted to playing Klezmer. Christian churches would sometimes ask for their services, and some Italian classical violin virtuosos received their instruction. Local aristocracy held the best klezmer in high regard and often used their services. Like other professional musicians, klezmorim were often limited by authorities. Ukrainian restrictions lasting into the 19th century banned them from playing loud instruments. Hence musicians took up the violin, cymbalom, and other string instruments. Later, around 1855 under the reign of Alexander II of Russia, Ukraine permitted loud instruments. The clarinet started to replace the violin as the instrument of choice. Also, a shift towards brass and percussion happened when klezmorim were conscripted into military bands. As Jews left Eastern Europe and the shtetls, klezmer has spread throughout the globe, especially to the United States. Initially, not much of the Klezmer tradition was maintained by U.S. Jews, there were only a few Yiddish folk singers. In the 1920s the clarinetists Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein caused a brief, influential revival. But as U.S. Jews began to adopt mainstream culture, the popularity of Klezmer slowly declined, and Jewish celebrations were increasingly accompanied by non-Jewish music. However, many 20th century Jewish composers of classical music who secured mainstream success, such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and George Gershwin, were clearly influenced by the klezmeric idiom of their youth. A memorable instance of klezmeric inspiration can be heard in the clarinet glissando that opens Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (1924). Non-Jewish composers also turned to klezmer for a prolific source of fascinating thematic material. Dmitri Shostakovich admired klezmer music for embracing both the ecstasy and the despair of human life. He adapted several klezmer melodies in his chamber masterpieces, the Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57 (1940) and the Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, op. 67 (1944). In the 1970s there was a Klezmer revival in the United States and Europe, led by Giora Feidman, Zev Feldman, Andy Statman, The Klezmorim, and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. They drew their repertoire from recordings and surviving musicians of U.S. Klezmer. In 1985 Henry Sapoznik founded KlezKamp to teach Klezmer and other Yiddish music. Shortly thereafter in the 1980s, the was a second revival as interest grew in more traditionally-inspired performances with string instruments, largely in non-Jews of the United States and Germany. Musicians began to track down older European Klezmer, by listening to recordings, finding transcriptions, and making field recordings of the few klezmorim left in Eastern Europe. Key performers in this style are Alicia Svigals and Budowitz. Interest in klezmer has developed in avant-garde jazz musicians like John Zorn and Don Byron, who sometimes blend klezmer with jazz.

Repertoire

Historically, young klezmorim learned songs from their family and their elders in bands. However, there were several breaks in history where this transmission broke down, such as the Holocaust. Undoubtedly a lot was lost, especially wedding repertoire, since Jewish weddings would last several days, but technology of the time could only record a few minutes at a time. Fortunately, there remain a few older klezmorim that are able to recall some of this repertoire. Also, some transcriptions were done in the 19th century. In the 20th century, klezmer is typically learned from fake books and transcriptions of old recordings.

Song types

Most klezmer pieces are intended to be danced to, from fast to slow tempo:
- The freylekhs (also bulgar, bulgarish - literally "Bulgarian", volekhl/vulekhl - literally "Wallachian", or "Romanian") is a (3+3+2 = 8)/8 circle dance, usually in the Ahava Rabboh melodic mode. Typically piano, accordion, or bass plays a duple oom-pah beat. These are by far the most popular klezmer dances. The name "bulgar" (Yiddish "bulgarish", Moldavian "bulgarească") probably refers to the Bulgarian minority in southern Bessarabia, although their association with this particular dance has long been forgotten.
- The sher is a set dance in 2/4. It is one of the most common klezmer dances.
- The khosidl, or khusidl, named after the Hasidic Jews who danced it, is a more dignified embellished dance in 2/4 or 4/4. The dance steps can be performed in a circle or in a line.
- The hora or zhok is a Moldavian-style dance in a hobbling 3/8 time with beats on 1 and 3, and is even more embellished. It is unrelated to the Israeli hora.
- The kolomeike is a fast and catchy dance in 2/4 time, which originated in Ukraine, and is prominent in the folk music of that country.
- The terkish is a 4/4 dance like the habanera. Terk in America is one famous arrangement by Naftule Brandwein, who used this form extensively.
- The skotshne ("hopping") could be an instrumental display piece, but also a dance piece, like a more elaborate freylekhs.
- The Nign, which means "melody" in both Yiddish and Hebrew, a mid-paced song in 2/4.
- Waltzes were very popular, whether classical, Russian, or Polish. A padespan was a sort of Russian/Spanish waltz known to klezmers.
- The mazurka and polka, Polish and Czech dances, respectively, were often played for both Jews and Gentiles.
- Cakewalks were African-American folk dances popular around the start of the 20th century, even among Eastern European Jews.
- The czardas is a Hungarian dance popular among the Jews of Hungary, Slovakia, and the Carpathians. It started off slowly and gradually increased in tempo.
- The sirba, a Moldavian dance in 2/4. It featured hopping steps and short bursts of running, accompanied by triplets in the melody.
- The tango, the well-known dance that originated in Argentina. These were extremely popular around the world in the 1930s, and many Eastern European tangos were originally written by Jews. Additionally, there are types not designed for dance:
- A doina is a improvisational lament usually performed solo, and is extremely important in weddings. Its basis is the Moldavian shepherd's lament, so it has an expressive vocal quality, like the singing of the khazn. Although it has no form, it is not just random sounds in a Jewish mode--the musician works with very particular references to Jewish prayer and East European laments. Typically it is performed on violin (Yiddish "fidl"), cymbalom (Yiddish "tsimbl") or clarinet, though has been done on everything from banjoes to xylophones. Often it is the first of a 3-part set, followed by a hora, then either a freylekhs or khusidl.
- A taksim is a freeform prelude that introduces the motifs of the following piece, which is usually a freylekhs; it was largely supplanted by the doina by the beginning of the XX century.
- A fantazi or fantasy is a freeform song, traditionally played at Jewish weddings to the guests as they dined. It resembles the fantasia of "light" classical music.

Song structure

Most klezmer songs are in several sections, each in a different key. Frequently sections alternate between major and minor keys. Instrumental songs often follow the type of chord progressions found in "oriental" music such as Greek music, whereas vocal Yiddish songs are often much simpler, and follow a style and chord progressions similar to Russian folk song. A common ending for songs is an upwards chromatic run or glissando, followed by a slow staccato 8-5-1.

Orchestration

Klezmer is generally instrumental, although at weddings klezmorim traditionally accompany the wedding entertainer. A typical orchestra would include a first violin, a contra-violin, a tsimbl (cimbalom or hammered dulcimer), a bass or cello, and sometimes a flute. The melody is generally assigned to the lead violin, while the remainder providing harmony, rhythm and some counterpoint (the latter usually coming from the second violin). Klezmer percussion tends to be minimal, no more than a woodblock or snare drum. (The snare drum is the more "authentic" of the two. The use of a wood block by modern klezmorim is the result of an attempt to imitate recordings from the early 20th Century, in which snare drums, whose volume tended to overwhelm the primitive recording equipment of the time, were replaced with quieter instruments.) Some modern performers in this style include Alicia Svigals, The Burning Bush, and Budowitz. Some Klezmer revival bands look to loud-instrument klezmer, jazz, and Dixieland for inspiration. Their band is similar to a typical jazz band, with some differences. They use a clarinet for the melody, and make great use of the trombone for slides and other flourishes. When a cymbalom sound is called for, a piano is played with sustain. Performers in this style include The Klezmatics, Klezmer Conservatory Band and The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band. Other klezmer bands look back to different eras or regions, and attempt to recreate specific styles of klezmer--for example, the band Muzsikas has released albums in the 19th-century Rumanian klezmer style, with only violins, tsimbls and other stringed instruments, giving even the happier passages a more haunting feel.

Time

In its original form, Klezmer was live music designed to facilitate dancing. Hence, the tempo would be altered as dancers tired — or better dancers joined in. Trying to maintain a steady tempo was counterproductive. Vocal songs would also come to a near-halt as the bandleader sang a particularly sad part, perhaps picking up slowly and eventually bursting into happy song once more. (This is a feature of many Rom and Russian folk songs as well.) Nonetheless, klezmorim were often mocked for their drifting tempos by fellow musicians. Like other musicians of their time, and many modern Jazz performers, early klezmorim did not rigidly follow the beat. Often they would slightly lead or trail it, giving a lilting sound.

Melodic modes

Klezmer is usually played in shteygerim, prayer modes of the synagogue. They are closely related to but distinct from Balkan modes. Since klezmorim often had to perform for long events, it was difficult to keep the instruments in tune, especially the many-stringed cymbalom. This was not a great obstruction, since melody — not harmony — is the focus of klezmer. In fact, slight dissonances in harmony help give klezmer its character.

Ahava Rabboh

Ahava Rabbah means "Abounding Love" in Hebrew, and refers to a prayer from the daily morning prayer service (shacharit). It is built on the fifth degree of the harmonic minor scale, with a descending tetrachord to the tonic being the most characteristic final cadence. It is also called the "Freygish", a Yiddish term derived from the German "Phrygisch", or Phrygian mode. It is considered the mode of supplication. Usually it is found in Khassidic music. It is similar to the Arabic Hijaz maqam.

Mi Sheberach

Mi Sheberach means "He who blessed" in Hebrew, from the Mi Shebarach prayer, recited after the honor of being called to the Torah reading. It is also called the Ukrainian, Altered Ukrainian, Doina, or Altered Dorian. It has a raised fourth, and is used for the doina, an improvised lament.

Adonoy Moloch

Adonoy Moloch means "the Lord reigns" in Hebrew. It is common in traditional synagogue services (they are the beginning words of many of the Psalms). It is similar to the Western Mixolydian mode and the Arabic Siga Maqam.

Mogen Ovos

Mogen Ovos means "our forebears' shield" in Hebrew. Is an older mode from the synagogue, derived from the Friday night prayers. It is similar to the Western natural minor scale and the Arabic Bayat Maqamat and Bayat-Nava.

Yishtabach

Yishtabach means "it shall become superb" in Hebrew (from the daily morning services). It has a frequent lowering of the 2nd and 5th. It is related to Mogen Ovos, above.

Important musicians

- Michael Alpert
- Naftule Brandwein
- David Julian Gray
- Jacob Hoffman
- Alex Koffman
- David Krakauer
- Lev Liberman
- Lori Lippitz
- Frank London
- Joseph Moskowitz (See "Cymbalum")
- Sam Musiker
- Hankus Netsky
- Henry Sapoznik
- Abe Schwartz
- Andy Statman
- Deborah Strauss
- Alicia Svigals
- Dave Tarras
- Jeff Warshauer
- Joel Rubin
- Gene Ramsbottom

Important ensembles

- Abe Schwartz' Orchestra
- Belf's Rumanian Orchestra
- Budowitz
- Brave Old World
- The Klezmorim
- The Burning Bush
- The Klezmer Beat Orchestra
- Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band
- The Klezmatics
- The Klezmer Conservatory Band
- The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band
- Naftule Brandwein's Orchestra
- Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble
- Tum Balalaika Klezmer Ensemble see also List of Klezmer Bands

External links

- [http://www.rogovoy.com/ The Rogovoy Report] Seth Rogovoy, author of THE ESSENTIAL KLEZMER: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music (Algonquin Books, 2000)
- [http://www.klezmershack.com/ klezmershack.com]
- [http://www.klezmer-music.com/ klezmer-music.com] Klezmer Music, what is klezmer?
- [http://www.matisyahu.co.uk Matisyahu.co.uk] Hasidic Reggae Superstar: Matisyahu

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

From Judeo-German to Old Yiddish

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, 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 by 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 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 publications survived (among them are the literary magazine Sovetish Heymland (1961-1991) and the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern).

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. The Forward, one of seven Yiddish New York daily newspapers, and other Yiddish newspapers served as a forum for Jews of all European backgrounds. [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," continued 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. (Over 88% of the population of Kiryas Joel is reported to speak Yiddish at home.[http://www.mla.org/census_data_results&state_id=36&place_id=39853]) 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, Slavic, 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. See also the Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework to distinguish languages from dialects. However, the consensus among linguists is that Yiddish and German are distinct Germanic languages, as:
- The two languages are geographically and culturally distinct; [http://www.jewish-languages.org/yiddish.html]
- 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). Of course, politics as well as linguistics has affected the long-widespread perception of Yiddish as a dialect rather than a language. Max Weinreich famously quoted a remark by an auditor in one of his lectures on this matter: "A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot": "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." (See Language-dialect aphorism.)

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, Bessarabian, Romanian) Yiddish. The Eastern Yiddish dialects and Modern Yiddish contain a great many words derived from Slavic languages. Like Judæo-Arabic and pre-20th 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.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Yiddish are given in the following table: is not a phoneme but an allophone of which appears before and . The lateral is generally velarized in contrast to the palatalized . The rhotic may be realized either as an alveolar trill or as a uvular trill . As in the Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian, Polish, and Ukrainian), but unlike German, voiceless stops are unaspirated, and voiced stops are fully voiced. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation, so that, for example, 'says' is pronounced and 'foreword' is pronounced . However, unlike both German and its nearest Slavic neighbors, final devoicing does not occur in Yiddish.

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Yiddish are given in the following tables: In addition, the sonorant consonants and can function as syllable nuclei:
- 'donkey'
- 'evening' and appear as syllable nuclei as well, but only as allophones of , after bilabial consonants and dorsal consonants, respectively. The syllabic sonorants and are always unstressed. can be analyzed as the unstressed allophone of .

Orthography

Although it uses the same alphabet as the Hebrew language, Yiddish uses some digraphs as well as letters modified with diacritics, all of which are considered separate letters in Yiddish orthography. Yiddish is entirely different from Hebrew, with a different phonology and grammar. When two forms of a letter are shown, the second one (on the left) is called lange and is the form that is used at the ends of words. Unlike Hebrew, where typically only consonants are shown, vowels are represented fully in Yiddish, using the letters alef, vov, yud, and ayin (see below). The Yiddish alphabet is: Yiddish also employs several digraphs: A feature of Yiddish spelling is that words of Hebrew origin are written exactly as in Hebrew. (In Soviet publications, however, all words were written according to Yiddish rules.) Throughout this article, the YIVO transcriptions will be used alongside the Yiddish alphabet.

Typography

Yiddish is normally printed using a Hebrew square typeface. Prior to the early 19th century, however, it was more common to use an Ashkenazi semicursive typeface, colloquially named Vayber-taytsh, and also referred to as Masheyt (both terms having several variant forms). This is related to, but not the same as the Sephardi semicursive typeface known as Rashi. That term is sometimes used as a generic designation for what are also termed Rabbinic typefaces, but distinctions are made among at least five separate semicursive Hebrew scripts. [http://sites.huji.ac.il/slais/ciglatzer2.htm], [http://bc.ub.leidenuniv.nl/bc/tentoonstelling/Judaica/object2.htm] (Adding to the confusion, the term Masheyt is also used both as an umbrella designation for them all, and as a specific synonym for Rashi.) The Sephardi variant bears the same relationship to Ladino as the Ashkenazi variant does to Yiddish, but remains in present-day use. The two are commonly termed Rashi and Masheyt, respectively, with no similarly abbreviated designations applied to the other semicursive forms. Regardless of any overlap in the descriptive terminologies applied to Yiddish typography, the commonplace earlier distinction between Hebrew and Yiddish typefaces in the presentation of Yiddish text was a significant attribute, not just of typographic practice, but of the language itself. This has been lost without counterpart in present-day usage and may deserve renewed attention. Handwritten Yiddish is fully cursive (using a script that was also adopted for contemporary Hebrew) and Ashkenazi cursive typefaces are encountered both in print and as fonts for computerized text processing. Since Rashi is used in the presentation of certain Hebrew texts, fonts are available for it, also serving the purposes of the Ladino community. In principle, an Ashkenazi semicursive font could be made available for similar use in Yiddish, enabling the revival of a traditional aspect of the conceptualization and presentation of texts in that language.

Morphology

See Yiddish morphology.

Yiddish words and phrases used by English speakers

:See related articles: ::Yiddish words and phrases used by English speakers ::List of English words of Yiddish origin Yiddish-derived idioms used in English, particularly in the United States:
- "Oy Vey" (vey means "pain"; cf. German Oh weh; cognate of English woe)
- "Chutzpah"
- "Enough already"
- "OK by me"
- "I need this like a hole in the head"
- "Tuchis" (rump)
- "zie gezunt" (be healthy! used as a response to a sneeze)
- "schnorrer" (literally, "beggar"; freeloader, esp. at weddings)
- "schmuck" (prize idiot, lit. jewel -> family jewels)
- "babkes" (emphatically nothing)
- "klutz" (clumsy person)
- "gonif" (fraudster or thief)

Books

- Cohen, David (Rabbi), Yiddish: A Holy Language, Mesorah Publications, New York, 2004 (in Hebrew).
- Fishman, Joshua A. (ed.), Never Say Die: A Thousand Years of Yiddish in Jewish Life and Letters, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, 1981, ISBN 90-279-7978-2 (in Yiddish and English).
- Jacobs, Neil G., Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, ISBN 0-521-77215-X.
- Katz, Dovid, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books, New York, 2004, ISBN 0-465-03728-3.
- Kriwaczek, Paul, Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2005, ISBN 0-297-82941-6.
- Lansky, Aaron, Outwitting History: How a Young Man Rescued a Million Books and Saved a Vanishing Civilisation, Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, 2004, ISBN 1-565-12429-4.
- Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6.
- 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 0-914-51226-9 (in Yiddish and English).
- Weinstein, Miriam, Yiddish: A Nation of Words, Ballentine Books, New York, 2001, ISBN 0-345-44730-1.
- 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.

References

- Melamed, S.M., "The Yiddish Stage", New York Times, Sep 27, 1925 (X2)
- Weinreich, Max, "Der yivo un di problemen fun undzer tsayt" ("'Yivo' and the problems of our time"), Yivo-bleter 25.1.13. (1945), facsimile excerpt at [http://www.bisso.com/ujg_archives/pix/armyNavyFull.jpg].

External links

- [http://www.jewish-languages.org/yiddish.html Jewish Language Research Website: Yiddish]
- [http://www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com/ On-line Yiddish dictionary]
- [http://yiddishbookcenter.org/ National Yiddish Book Center]
- [http://yiddishsummer.org/ NYBC's Summer Language Internship]
- [http://www.ibiblio.org/yiddish/ Shtetl]
- [http://www.yv.org/ The Yiddish Voice]
- [http://www.jewishbookcenter.com/ The Jewish Book Center of The Workmen's Circle]
- [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cria/Current-projects/Yiddish/yiddish.html/The Spoken Yiddish Language Project (Columbia University)]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=YDD Eastern Yiddish in Ethnologue]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=YIH Western Yiddish in Ethnologue]
- [http://yiddish.forward.com/ Forverts -- The Yiddish Forward]
- [http://www.circle.org/ The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring]
- [http://stub.semantics.de/jd/templates/template.xml?Sprache=eng&js=yes&Skript=Home Collection of Yiddish prints from the 16th to the 20th century]
- [http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/augustana.html#ii Bibliotheca Iiddica] Small encyclopedia on Yiddish. Home page is in Latin, most of the rest is in transliterated Yiddish.
- [http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/Stories.html Di Velt fun Yidish: Audio Stories]
- [http://www.cs.engr.uky.edu/~raphael/yiddish/makeyiddish.html Yiddish Typewriter] - A free online service to convert Yiddish texts from YIVO transliteration into the Hebrew script
- [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=586&letter=J Judaeo-German] - Jewish Encyclopedia
- Category:Guttural R Category:High Germanic languages category:Languages of Russia category:Languages of Sweden Category:Minority languages als:Jiddisch ko:이디시어 ja:イディッシュ語 simple:Yiddish

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than 6 million people, mainly in Israel, the West Bank, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. The core of the Tanakh (sometimes referred to as the Hebrew Bible), the Torah (which Christianity and Judaism traditionally hold to have been first recorded in the time of Moses 3,300 years ago), is written in (Biblical) Classical Hebrew. Jews have always called it לשון הקודש Lashon ha-Qodesh ("The Sacred Language") as the scriptures written in this language were considered sacred. Most scholars agree that after the first destruction of Jerusalem by the Nebuchadnezzar II and the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the kind of Hebrew prevalent in the Tanakh was replaced in daily use by Mishnaic Hebrew and a local version of Aramaic. After the depletion of the Jewish population of parts of Roman occupied Judea, it is believed that Hebrew gradually ceased to be a spoken language roughly around 200 CE, but has stayed as the major written language throughout the centuries. Not only religious, but texts for a large variety of purposes: letters and contracts, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry, protocols of courts—all resorted to Hebrew, which thus adapted itself to various new fields and terminologies by borrowings and new inventions. Hebrew was revitalized as a spoken language during the late 19th and early 20th century as Modern Hebrew, replacing a score of languages spoken by the Jews at that time, such as Arabic, Judezmo (also called Ladino), Yiddish, Russian, and other languages of the Jewish diaspora as the spoken language of the majority of the Jewish people living in Israel. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921, and the primary official language of the State of Israel, (Arabic maintained its official language status). The Hebrew name for the language is עברית, or Ivrit (IPA: )

History

While the term "Hebrew" as a nationality is customarily used to refer to the ancient Israelites, the classical Hebrew language was extremely similar to the Canaanite languages spoken by their neighbors, such as Phoenician; indeed, Moabite and Hebrew are often considered to be two dialects of the same language. Hebrew strongly resembles Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central Arabic, sharing many linguistic features with them.

Early history

Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language. This language family is generally thought by linguists to have originated somewhere in northeastern Africa, and began to diverge around the 8th millennium BCE, although there is much debate about the exact date and place. (The theory is espoused by most archeologists and linguists, but at odds with traditional reading of the Torah.) One branch of this family, Semitic, eventually reached the Middle East; it gradually differentiated into a variety of related languages. By the end of the 3rd millennium BCE the ancestral languages of Aramaic, Ugaritic, and other various Canaanite languages were spoken in the Levant alongside the influential dialects of Ebla and Akkad. As the Hebrew founders from northern Haran filtered south into and came under the influence of the Levant, like many sojourners into Canaan including the Philistines, they adopted Canaanite dialects. The first written evidence of distinctive Hebrew, the Gezer calendar, dates back to the 10th century BCE, the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon. It presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after the city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks and Etruscans later became the Roman script. The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where more modern spelling requires it (see below). Roman script, dates to the 7th century BCE.]] Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example Protosinaitic. It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian writing, though the phonetic values are instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is called Canaanite, and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from Egyptian. One ancient document is the famous Moabite Stone written in the Moabite dialect; the Siloam Inscription, found near Jerusalem, is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Old Hebrew include the ostraka found near Lachish which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE. The most famous work originally written in Hebrew is the Tanakh, though the time at which it was written is a matter of dispute (see dating the Bible for details). The earliest extant copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, written between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE. The formal language of the latter Babylonian Empire was Aramaic (its name is either derived from "Aram Naharayim", Upper Mesopotamia, or from "Aram," the ancient name for Syria). The Persian Empire, which had captured Babylonia a few decades later under Cyrus, adopted Aramaic as the official language. Aramaic is also a North-West Semitic language, quite similar to Hebrew. Aramaic has contributed many words and expressions to Hebrew, mainly as the language of commentary in the Talmud and other religious works. In addition to numerous words and expressions, Hebrew also borrowed the Aramaic writing system. Although the original Aramaic letter forms were derived from the same Phoenician alphabet that was used in ancient Israel, they had changed significantly, both in the hands of the Mesopotamians and of the Jews, assuming the forms familiar to us today around the first century CE. Writings of that era (most notably, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran) are written in a script very similar to the "square" one still used today.

Later history

The Jews living in the Persian Empire adopted Aramaic, and Hebrew quickly fell into disuse. It was preserved, however, as the literary language of Bible study. Aramaic became the vernacular language of the renewed Judaea for the following 700 years. Famous works written in Aramaic include the Targum, the Talmud and several of Flavius Josephus' books (several of the latter were not preserved, however, in the original.) Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jews gradually began to disperse from Judaea into foreign countries (this dispersion was hastened when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem (and turned it into a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina) in 135 CE after putting down Bar Kokhba's revolt.) For many hundreds of years Aramaic remained the spoken language of Mesopotamian Jews, and Lishana Deni, one of several Judæo-Aramaic languages, is a modern descendant that is still spoken by a few thousand Jews (and many non-Jews) from the area known as Kurdistan; however, it gradually gave way to Arabic, as it had given way to other local languages in the countries to which the Jews had gone. Hebrew was not used as a mother tongue for roughly 1800 years. However the Jews have always devoted much effort to maintaining high standards of literacy among themselves, the main purpose being to let any Jew read the Hebrew Bible and the accompanying religious works in the original (see rabbinic literature, Codes of Jewish law, The Jewish Bookshelf). It is interesting to note that the languages that the Jews adopted from their adopted nations, namely Ladino and Yiddish were not directly connected to Hebrew (the former being based on Spanish and Arabic borrowings, latter being a remote dialect of Middle High German), however, both were written from right to left using the Hebrew script. Hebrew was also used as a language of communication among Jews from different countries, particularly for the purpose of international trade. The most important contribution to preserving traditional Hebrew pronunciation in this period was that of scholars called Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who from about the seventh to the tenth centuries CE devised detailed markings to indicate vowels, stress, and cantillation (recitation methods). The original Hebrew texts used only consonants, and later some consonants were used to indicate long vowels. By the time of the Masoretes this text was considered too sacred to be altered, so all their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters.

Revival

cantillation The revival of Hebrew as a mother tongue was initiated by the efforts of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) (אליעזר בן־יהודה). He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 emigrated to Eretz Israel, then a province of the Ottoman Empire. Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora "shtetl" lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making the literary and liturgical language into everyday spoken language. However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe by more modern grammar and style, in the writings of people like Achad Ha-Am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization activity into a gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904-1905 "Second aliyah" that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the new and better organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When the British Mandate of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion. While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous, many soon understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of pre-state Israel who at the turn of the 20th century were arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. Later it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that exists today. The results of his and the Committee's work were published in a dictionary (The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew). Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British pre-State Israel.

Modern Hebrew

Ben-Yehuda based Modern Hebrew on Biblical Hebrew. Often new words were coined by applying unused word-patterns to existing roots (Biblical k-t-v, "write," gave rise to modern Hebrew hikhtiv, "dictated," and hitkatev, "corresponded.") When this did not suffice and the Committee set out to invent a new word for a certain concept, it searched through the Biblical word-indexes and foreign dictionaries, particularly Arabic. While Ben-Yehuda preferred Semitic roots to European ones, the abundance of European Hebrew speakers led to the introduction of numerous foreign words. Other changes which had taken place as Hebrew came back to life were the systematization of the grammar - the Biblical syntax was sometimes limited and ambiguous -- and the adoption of standard Western punctuation. Modern Hebrew shows influences from Russian (for example, the Russian suffix -acia is used in nouns where English has the suffix -ation); German (particularly in combination words like "tapuakh-adama," meaning potato (German Erdapfel , earth-apple) or "iton" (German Zeitung, news-ity, news-paper). English has been a very strong influence, both from British influence during the period of the Mandate and American influence in the present day. Finally, Arabic, being the language of numerous Mizrahic and Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Arab countries as well as of the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, has also had an important influence on Hebrew, especially in slang (for example, "sababa", meaning "excellent", or "ya'alla", meaning "come on".) Due to its many influences and its youth, Modern Hebrew has many characteristics which are distinctly not Semitic. At the phonetic level, it has abandoned the pharyngeal and emphatic consonants (in most pronunciations). It also uses the occasional foreign morpheme, in words such as רכבל ("rakevel") (meaning "cable car", formed by adding a lamed to the word for "vehicle") and רמזור ("ramzor") (meaning "traffic light", formed by adding a vav and a resh to the root for "hinting" and "allusion"). Even so, the Hebrew preserved part of the prominent characteristics of the Semitic languages. One of the main questions which occupying the researchers of the Modern Hebrew is how much the Modern Hebrew is a Semitic language. Another non-Semitic property of Modern Hebrew is the pronunciation of certain letters. For instance, the letter Heth (ח) now sounds like Khaf (כ), the letter 'Ayin (ע) now sounds like (sometimes) Alef (א), Qof (ק) sounds like Kaf (כּ), and Thav (ת) sounds like Teth (ט). Modern Hebrew is printed with a script known as "square". It is the same script, ultimately derived from Aramaic, that was used for copying of Bible books in Hebrew for two thousand years. This script also has a cursive version, which is used for handwriting. Hebrew has been the language of numerous poets, which include Rachel, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Shaul Tchernihovsky, Lea Goldberg, Avraham Shlonsky and Natan Alterman. Hebrew was also the language of hundreds of authors, one of whom is the Nobel Prize laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

Hebrew language in the USSR

, Yevsektsiya The Soviet authorities considered Hebrew a "reactionary language" since it was associated with both Judaism and Zionism, and it was officially banned by the Narkompros (Commissariat of Education) as early as 1919. Hebrew books and periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the libraries. Despite numerous protests in the West, teachers and students who attempted to study Hebrew language were pilloried and sentenced for "counter revolutionary" and later for "anti-Soviet" activities.

Dialects

According to Ethnologue, dialects of Hebrew include Standard Hebrew (General Israeli, Europeanized Hebrew), Oriental Hebrew (Arabized Hebrew, Yemenite Hebrew). In practice, there is also Ashkenazi Hebrew, still widely used in Ashkenazi Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad. It was influenced by the Yiddish language. Sephardi Hebrew language is the basis of Standard Hebrew and not all that different from it, although traditionally it has had a greater range of phonemes. It was influenced by the Ladino language. Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew is actually a collection of dialects (including Yemenite) spoken liturgically by Jews in various parts of the Arab and Islamic world. It was influenced by the Arabic language. Nearly every immigrant to Israel is encouraged to adopt Standard Hebrew as their daily language. Phonologically, this "dialect" may most accurately be described as an amalgam of pronunciations preserving Sephardic vowel sounds and Ashkenazic consonant sounds—its recurring feature being simplification of differences among a wide array of pronunciations. This simplifying tendency also accounts for the collapse of the Ashkenazic /t/ and /s/ pronunciations of unaspirated and aspirated ת into the single phoneme /t/. Most Sephardic dialects differentiated between these two pronunciations as /t/ and /θ/. Within Israel, the pronunciation of "Standard Hebrew", however, more often reflects the national or ethnic origin of the individual speaker, rather than the specific recommendations of the Academy. For this reason, over half the population pronounces ר as , (a uvular trill, as in Yiddish and some varieties of German) or as (a uvular fricative, as in French or many varieties of German), rather than as /r/, an apical trill, as in Spanish. The pronunciation of this phoneme is often used as a determinant among Israelis when ascertaining the national origin of perceived foreigners.

Languages strongly influenced by Hebrew

See main article Jewish languages Yiddish, Ladino, Karaim, and Judaeo-Arabic were all highly influenced by Hebrew. Although none are completely derived from Hebrew, they all make extensive use of Hebrew loanwords. In a less direct manner, the revival of Hebrew is often cited by proponents of International auxiliary languages as the best proof that languages long dead, with small communities, or modified or created artificially can become living languages used by a large number of people.

Sounds

Hebrew has two kinds of stress: on the last syllable (milra‘) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mil‘el). The former is more frequent. Specific rules connect the location of the stress with the length of the vowels in the last syllable; however due to the fact that Modern Hebrew does not distinguish between long and short vowels, these rules are often ignored in everyday speech. Interestingly enough, the rules that specify the vowel length are different for verbs and nouns, which influences the stress; thus the mil‘el-stressed ókhel (="food") and milra‘-stressed okhèl (="eats", masculine) are written in the same way. Little ambiguity exists, however, due to nouns and verbs having incompatible roles in normal sentences. This is, however, also true in English, in, for example, the English word "conduct," in its nominal and verbal forms.

Vowels

vowel length The Hebrew word for vowels is tnu‘ot. The marks for these vowels are called Niqqud. Modern Israeli Hebrew has 5 vowel phonemes:
- /a/ (as in "car") - The vowels qamatz and patakh
- /e/ (as in "set") - The vowels seggol and tzereh
- /i/ (as in "beak")- The vowel khiriq
- /o/ (as in "horn")- The vowel kholam
- /u/ (as in "room")- The vowels shuruq and qubbutz In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted (hataf). However, there is no audible distinction between the three in modern Israeli Hebrew. Hebrew phonetics include a special feature called shva. According to "Ha-Yesod, the Fundamentals of Hebrew" by Luba Uveeler and Norman M. Broznick, this feature is pronounced "Shva" and is spelled Shin Vav He. There are two kinds of shva: resting (nax) and moving (na' ). The resting shva is pronounced as a brief stop of speech. The moving shva sounds much like the English a in about. Hebrew also has dagesh, a strengthening. There are two kinds of strengthenings: light (qal, known also as dagesh lene) and heavy (hazaq or dagesh forte). There are two sub-categories of the heavy dagesh: structural heavy (hazaq tavniti) and complementing heavy (hazaq mashlim). The light affects the phonemes /b/ /k/ /p/ in the beginning of a word, or after a resting schwa. Structural heavy emphases belong to certain vowel patterns (mishkalim and binyanim; see the section on grammar below), and correspond originally to doubled consonants. Complementing strengthening is added when vowel assimilation takes place. As mentioned before, the emphasis influences which of a pair of (former) allophones is pronounced. Interestingly enough, historical evidence indicates that /g/, /d/ and /t/ used to have strengthened versions of their own, however they had disappeared from virtually all the spoken dialects of Hebrew. All other consonants except gutturals may receive the heavy emphasis, as well. One-letter words are always attached to the following word. Such words include: the definite article h (="the"); prepositions b (="in"), m (="from"), l (="to"); conjunctions sh (="that"), k (="as", "like"), v (="and"). The vowel that follows the letter thus attached depends in general on the beginning of the next word and the presence of a definite article which may be swallowed by the one-letter word. The rules for the prepositions are complicated and vary with the formality of speech. In most cases they are followed by a moving schwa, and for that reason they are pronounced as be, me and le. In more formal speech, if a preposition is put before a word which begins with a moving schwa, then the preposition takes the vowel /i/ (and the initial consonant is weakened), but in colloquial speech these changes do not occur. For example, colloquial be-kfar (="in a village") becomes bi-khfar. If l or b are followed by the definite article ha, their vowel changes to /a/. Thus
- be-ha-matos becomes ba-matos (="in the plane"). However it does not happen to m, therefore me-ha-matos is a valid form, which means "from the plane". :
- indicates that the given example is not grammatically correct

Consonants

The Hebrew word for consonants is ‘itsurim (עיצורים). ע was once pronounced as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Modern Ashkenazi (Northern and Eastern European Jews) reading tradition ignores this; however, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern and North African Jews) and Israeli Arabs accent these phonemes in a traditional semitic fashion which resembles Arabic `ain ع. Georgian Jews pronounce it as a glottalized g. Western European Sephardim and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it as "ng" in "sing" — a pronunciation which can also be found in the Italki tradition and, historically, in south-west Germany. Postalveolar sounds (with the exception of ) are not native to Hebrew, and only found in borrowings. The pairs (/b/, /v/), (/k/, /x/), (/p/, /f/), written respectively by the letters bet (ב), kaf (כ) and pe (פ) have historically been allophonic. In Modern Hebrew, however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers involving formerly distinct sounds (/v/ merging with /w/, /k/ merging with /q/, /x/ merging with ), loss of consonant gemination (which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign borrowings.

Historical sound changes

Standard (non-Oriental) Israeli Hebrew (SIH) has undergone a number of splits and mergers in its development from Biblical Hebrew .
- BH /b/ had two allophones, [b] and [v]; the [v] allophone has merged with /w/ into SIH /v/
- BH /k/ had two allophones, [k] and [x]; the [k] allophone has merged with /q/ into SIH /k/, while the [x] allophone has merged with into SIH /x/
- BH /t/ and have merged into SIH /t/
- BH and have merged into SIH
- BH /p/ had two allophones, [p] and [f]; the incorporation of loanwords into Modern Hebrew has probably resulted in a split, so that /p/ and /f/ are separate phonemes

Grammar

See main article Hebrew grammar Hebrew grammar is mostly analytical, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than grammatical cases. However inflection does play an important role in the formation of the verbs, nouns and the genitive construct, which is called "smikhut". Words in smikhut are often combined with hyphens.
Writing system
Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet. Modern scripts are based on the "square" letter form. A similar system is used in handwriting, but the letters tend to be more circular in their character, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed equivalents. Biblical Hebrew text contains nothing but consonants and spaces, and most modern Hebrew texts contain only consonants, spaces and western-style punctuation. A pointing system (nikud, from the root word meaning "points" or "dots") developed around the 5th Century C.E. is used to indicate vowels and syllabic stresses in some religious books, and is almost always found in modern poetry, children's literature, and texts for beginning students of Hebrew. The system is also used sparingly to avoid certain ambiguities of meaning — such as when context is insufficient to distinguish between two identically spelled words — and in the transliteration of foreign names. All Hebrew consonant phonemes are represented by a single letter. Although a single letter might represent two phonemes — the letter "bet," for example, represents both /b/ and /v/ — the two sounds are always related "hard" (plosive) and "soft" (fricative) forms, their pronunciaton being very often determined by context. In fully pointed texts, the hard form normally has a dot, known as a dagesh, in its center. The letters hei, vav and yud can represent consonantal sounds (/h/, /v/ and /j/, respectively) or serve as a markers for vowels. In the latter case, these letters are called "emot qria" ("matres lectionis" in Latin, "mothers of reading" in English). The letter hei at the end of a word usually indicates a final /a/, which in turn is usually indicative of feminine gender. Vav may represent /o/ or /u/, and yod may represent /i/. There is no consonantal marker for /e/. In some modern Israeli texts, the letter alef is used to indicate long /a/ sounds in foreign names, particularly those of Arabic origin. Terminal syllabic emphasis is most common. Fully pointed texts will note variations with a vertical line placed underneath the first consonant of the emphasized syllable, to the left of the vowel mark if there is one.
Romanization
See also Romanization of Hebrew The Hebrew language is normally written in the Hebrew alphabet. Due to publishing difficulties, and the unfamiliarity of many readers with the alphabet, there are many ways of transcribing Hebrew into Roman letters. The most accurate method is the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used (in a simplified ASCII form) in the section concerned with Phonology, to describe the sounds of the Hebrew language. However, the IPA is not well known, and is often considered cumbersome for transcribing pronunciations for a general audience. Therefore this article uses a different system to express Hebrew pronunciation, and at least some orthographic peculiarities. The system comes down to the following:
- The letter tzadi (צ) is transcribed by "c" so that it could be distinguished from other combinations of /t/ and /s/, although "ts" or "tz" is usually acceptable.
- The letter ‘ayin (ע) is transcribed ', the same as alef. In word-final position, this phoneme is always preceded by the vowel /a/.
- The letter shin (ש) is transcribed by "sh", and the letter sin as "s".
- Both the letter tav (ת) and the letter tet (ט) are transcribed by "t".
- The letter he (ה) at the end of a word, in those cases where it marks feminine gender, is transcribed by "ah" (it is read /a/).
- The letter chet (ח) is usually transcribed by "ch" as there is no "ch" sound in hebrew. "kh" is usually acceptable but not as common. "h" is occasionally used but often avoided as "h" is also used for he (ה).
- The letter qof (ק) is transcribed by "q" (it is pronounced /k/ by many speakers).
- Single-letter prepositions and the definite article are separated with a dash (-) from their subject.
- Stresses and schwas are not marked.
- The vowels are always written.
- The letter yod is usually transcribed by "y".
See also

- Common phrases in Hebrew
- Cantillation
- Hebrew alphabet
- Niqqud (vowel points)
- Samaritan Hebrew
- The study of Hebrew
- Hebrew literature
Notes
# [http://www.jewishmag.com/43mag/ben-yehuda/ben-yehuda.htm Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Resurgence of the Hebrew Language] by Libby Kantorwitz # [http://www.zionistarchives.org.il/ZA/SiteE/pShowView.aspx?GM=Y&ID=48&Teur=Protest%20against%20the%20suppression%20of%20Hebrew%20in%20the%20Soviet%20Union%20%201930-1931 Protest against the suppression of Hebrew in the Soviet Union 1930-1931] signed by Albert Einstein, among others # Robert Hetzron. (1987). Hebrew. In The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, 686–704. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520521-9.
External links

- [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=heb Ethnologue report for Hebrew]
- [http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/english.html Academy of Hebrew Language], the Institute which prescribes standards for modern Hebrew grammar, orthography, transliteration, and punctuation based upon the study of Hebrew's historical development.
- History of the Hebrew Language
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/history_of_hebrew.htm History of the Hebrew Language Steinberg]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/rabin_he.htm Short History of the Hebrew Language Rabin]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/israeli_hebrew_tene.htm Israeli Hebrew Tene]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/israel_lang_policy_rosen.htm Israel Language Policy and Linguistics Rosén]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/hebrew_words_history.htm Words and their History Kutscher]
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/hebrew_slang_sappan.htm Hebrew Slang and Foreign Loan Words Sappan ]
- Grammars
- [http://foundationstone.com.au/HtmlSupport/FrameSupport/onlineHebrewTutorialFrame.html Online Hebrew Tutorial] (foundationstone)
- [http://perso.wanadoo.fr/babel-site/ Hebrew is easy] (babel-site)
- [http://www.adath-shalom.ca/gk_cont.htm Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar]
- Dictionaries
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon1/index.htm Root-based] (Maskilon)
- [http://milon.morfix.co.il/ Word-search] English-Hebrew and Hebrew-English (Morfix)
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon3/index.htm Hebrew-English] (Maskilon)
- [http://www.faithofgod.net/davar/ Hebrew-English] (DAVAR freeware, english)
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Hebrew-english/ Hebrew-English] (Webster's Rosetta Edition)
- [http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon4/index.htm English-Hebrew] (Maskilon)
- General
- [http://www.yiwoodmere.org/library/cybrary/hebrew.html Learning Hebrew - Links], Young Israel
- [http://www.yomanim.com Hebrew Writings and Diaries]
- [http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/katmandu/hebrew/atoc.html Hebrew Abbreviations], Princeton University Library
- [http://www.mikledet.com Mikledet.com]: Send Hebrew emails without having a Hebrew keyboard.
- [http://www.amhaaretz.org/translit/ Hebrew translit]: type in Hebrew using an English keyboard
- Category:Jewish languages Category:Judaism Category:Guttural R Category:Semitic languages Category:Canaanite languages Category:Languages of Israel ko:히브리어 ja:ヘブライ語 simple:Hebrew language th:ภาษาฮีบรู

Ashkenazi

Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (אַשְׁכֲּנָזִי אַשְׁכֲּנָזִים Standard Hebrew, Aškanazi, Aškanazim, Tiberian Hebrew, ʾAškănāzî, ʾAškănāzîm, pronounced sing. [] pl. [], not with [] as in Tzar), are Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland. Many later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in Germany, Poland, Austria, Eastern Europe and elsewhere between the 10th and 19th centuries. From medieval times until the mid-20th century, the lingua franca among Ashkenazi Jews was Yiddish or Slavic languages such as the (now extinct) Knaanic, and they developed a distinct culture and liturgy influenced by interaction with surrounding nations. Although in the 11th century they comprised only 3% of the world's Jewish population, today Ashkenazi Jews account for approximately 80% of world Jewry. [http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles3/sephardic.htm] Most Jewish communities with extended histories in Europe are Ashkenazim, with the exception of those associated with the Mediterranean region. A significant portion of the Jews who migrated from Europe to other continents in the past two centuries are Eastern Ashkenazim, particularly in the United States.

Origin of Ashkenazim

From Roman Empire to Dark Ages

After the forced Jewish exile from Judea in 70 CE and the complete Roman takeover of Judea following the Bar Kochba rebellion of 133-135 CE, most Jewish populations could be found dispersed throughout the Mediterranean Basin, with the largest populations in the Levant, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Greece, Southern Italy, Southern Gaul (France), Spain, and North Africa. Full Roman citizenship was denied to Jews until 212 CE, when Emperor Caracalla granted all free peoples this privilege. However as a penalty for the first Jewish Revolt, Jews were still required to pay a poll tax until the reign of Emperor Julian in 363 CE. Throughout the first three centuries of the Common Era, Jews were free to form networks of cultural and religious ties and entered into various local occupations, the most prevalent occupation being trade (due to easy mobility in the dispersed Jewish communities). The Germanic invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century by such tribes as the Ostrogoths, Huns, and Vandals caused massive economic and social instability within the Empire, contributing to its decline. At that time, Jews were known to have lived in Cologne and what is now France, between 300 and 600, but they were expelled by King Dagobert of the Franks in 629. The Jews in these former Roman territories now faced new challenges as harsher anti-Jewish Church rulings were being enforced. New opportunities in trade and commerce in Northern Europe (once so-called "barbarian" lands) and Christian persecution were two likely factors that influenced the migration of Jewish traders from Southern Europe to towns along the Rhine River during the early Dark Ages. When these first Ashkenazi communities came under the rule of Charlemagne (c.800) he gave the Jews in his lands freedoms similar to those once enjoyed under the Roman Empire, and these favorable conditions stimulated even more Jewish migration. This period also saw Jewish merchants taking on the occupation of money-lending when Church legislation banned Christians from the practice of "usury", defined as lending money in exchange for interest, making the Jewish presence a necessary part of the economy.

Possible DNA Clues

DNA research on Ashkenazi origins may shed some light on the mechanism of Jewish migration from the Southern Mediterranean to the Northern European regions. One study indicates that the Y chromosome of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are of Middle Eastern origin, similar to Lebanese and Syrian DNA types. Since the Y chromosome is only passed from father to son, it may be used to trace Jewish male origins. Another study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA can only be passed from mother to child) allows the tracking of maternal origins. According to this study the mtDNA generally match that of local European populations and not Middle Eastern populations. These studies would indicate that male Jewish traders moved from Middle Eastern and Southern European communities into Northern European communities and intermarried local females in those regions.

Ashkenazi Migrations throughout the High and Late Middle Ages

Historical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th Century. (Cochran et. al., p.11) By the early 900s, Jewish populations were well-established in Northern Europe, and later followed the Norman Conquest into England in 1066, also settling in the Rhineland. With the onset of the Crusades, and the expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts of Germany (1400s), Jewish migration pushed eastward into Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. Over this period of several hundred years, some have suggested, Jewish economic activity was focused on trade, business management, and financial services, due to Christian European prohibitions restricting certain activities by Jews, and preventing certain financial activities (such as "usurious" loans) between Christians. (Ben-Sasson, H. (1976) A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.) By the 1400s, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Ashkenazim.html]. It would remain that way until the Holocaust.

Usage of the name

In reference to the Jewish peoples of Northern Europe and particularly the Rhineland, the word Ashkenazi is often found in medieval rabbinic literature. References to Ashkenaz in Yosippon and Hasdai's letter to the king of the Khazars would date the term as far back as the tenth century, as would also Saadia Gaon's commentary on Daniel 7:8. The word "Ashkenaz" first appears in the genealogy in the Tanakh (Genesis 10) as a son of Gomer and grandson of Japheth. It is thought that the name originally applied to the Scythians (Ishkuz), who were called Ashkuza in Assyrian inscriptions, and lake Ascanius and the region Ascania in Anatolia derive their names from this group. The "Ashkuza" have also been linked to the Oghuz branch of Turks including nearly all Turkic peoples today from Turkey to Turkmenistan. Ashkenaz in later Hebrew tradition became identified with the peoples of Germany, and in particular to the area along the Rhine where the Alamanni tribe once lived (compare the French and Spanish words Allemagne and Alemania, respectively, for Germany). The autonym was usually Yidn, however.

Medieval references

In the first half of the eleventh century, Hai Gaon refers to questions that had been addressed to him from "Ashkenaz", by which he undoubtedly means Germany. Rashi in the latter half of the eleventh century refers to both the language of Ashkenaz (Commentary on Deuteronomy 3:9; idem on Talmud tractate Sukkah 17a) and the country of Ashkenaz (Talmud, Hullin 93a). During the twelfth century the word appears quite frequently. In the Mahzor Vitry, the kingdom of Ashkenaz is referred to chiefly in regard to the ritual of the synagogue there, but occasionally also with regard to certain other observances (ib. p. 129). In the literature of the thirteenth century references to the land and the language of Ashkenaz often occur. See especially Solomon ben Aderet's Responsa (vol. i., No. 395); the Responsa of Asher ben Jehiel (pp. 4, 6); his Halakot (Berakot i. 12, ed. Wilna, p. 10); the work of his son Jacob ben Asher, Tur Orach Chayim (chapter 59); the Responsa of Isaac ben Sheshet (numbers 193, 268, 270). In the Midrash compilation Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Berechiah mentions "