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 destroyed in the Holocaust, called the Khurbn in Yiddish.
The Northeastern dialects of Eastern Yiddish were dominant in 20th-century Yiddish culture and academia. By the 21st century, the Southern dialects of Yiddish that are preserved in many conservative Hasidic communities have remained to become the most commonly spoken form of Yiddish.
Varieties
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 that was called Ashkenaz by Jews. 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 that case the focus is more likely to be on Western Yiddish.
Western Yiddish While most Jews in the Rhineland who escaped persecution in the 14th century fled to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, some continued to survive in the countryside of Switzerland, southern Germany and Alsace. They maintained Jewish customs and spoke Western Yiddish.
Western Yiddish included three dialects: Northwestern (spoken in Northern Germany and the Netherlands), Midwestern (spoken in central Germany and Luxembourg), Southwestern (spoken in northern Switzerland, southern Germany and Alsace, extending into Northern Italy). These have a number of clearly distinguished regional varieties, such as Judeo-Alsatian, plus many local subvarieties.
The Judeo-Alsatian traditionally spoken by the Jews of Alsace is called Yédisch-Daïtsch,Yédisch-Daïtsch, le dialecte judéo-alsacien originally a mixture of German, Hebrew and Aramaic 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 linguistic elements were aggregated as well. From the 18th century onwards, some Polish 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. the movements toward Jewish emancipation] 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 acculturating, and the Haskalah opposed the use of Yiddish. Preference for German grew among Jews. 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
Eastern Yiddish Eastern Yiddish is split into Northern and Southern dialects. Northern / Yiddish ( or "Lithuanian" Yiddish) was spoken in modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, and portions of northeastern Poland, northern and eastern Ukraine, and western Russia. Hiberno-Yiddish, spoken by Jews in Ireland, is based on this dialect. The Southern dialects are again subdivided: Yiddish (, or "Polish" Yiddish) was spoken in Poland, western Galicia (), and much of Hungary. Yiddish ( or "Ukrainian" Yiddish) was spoken in Volhynia (), Podolia (), and Bessarabia (, in Romania).Some authors use the term "Southeastern Yiddish" as a collective designation for both and while still applying the term Northeastern Yiddish to .
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. = 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, especially those who belong to the perushim community, also preserve Litvish Yiddish.
Udmurt Yiddish In addition to Russian, Jews who settled in Udmurtia would develop dialects incorporating Udmurt and Tatar vocabulary ( or "Udmurt" Yiddish). The Udmurt dialect has been traditionally split into two groupings. dialects, which were centered around Izhevsk, Sarapul, and Votkinsk. dialects, which were centered around Kambarka, Alnashi, Agryz and Naberezhnye Chelny."Алтынцев, А.В., Понятие любви у ашкеназов Удмуртии и Татарстана", Наука Удмуртии. 2013. № 4 (66), с. 131. https://snioo.ru/images/stories/nu-print/nu4662013.pdf
Transitional Yiddish dialects Some linguists have proposed the existence of transitional dialects of Yiddish that developed in areas between Western and Eastern dialects."Burko, A., The New Yiddish Dialectology: A Review of Alexander Beider's The Origins of Yiddish Dialects" https://ingeveb.org/articles/new-yiddish-dialectology Transitional Yiddish is spoken in two different regions, a Western part and an Eastern part. The Western part (Bohemia, Moravia, west Slovakia, and west Hungary) are characterized by a Yiddish dialect which was lexically east European but phonologically west European. The Eastern part (the Hungarian lowlands, Transylvania, and Carpathian Rus) is a fusion of the west-Transcarpathian dialect with dialects brought by chasidic immigrants from Galicia. Transition Yiddish countries are sometimes considered jointly Eastern Yiddish countries.
Differences between dialects The primary differences between the contemporary dialects are in the quality of stressed vowels, though there are also differences in morphology, lexicon, and grammar.
Northern dialects are more conservative in vowel quality, while southern dialects have preserved vowel quantity distinctions.
Comparison Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in the Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by M. Weinreich (1960) to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels.
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 Netherlandic Polish Lithuanian Front Back Front Back Front Back Close 31 52 31/51 12/13 31/32 51/52 32 32/52 colspan=2 Close-mid 51 colspan=2 colspan=2 25 12 25 54 colspan=2 colspan=2 22/24/42/44 Open-mid 21 41 21 41 21/25 12/13/41 22/34 42/54 42/44 54 Open 11/13 11 11 24/44 34 colspan=2 colspan=2 22/24 34
+ Examples PY Netherlandic Polish Lithuanian 11 (A1) alt alt alt 42 (O2) brɔut brɔjt brejt 13 (A3) vas vus vɔs 24 (E4) ān ajn ejn 54 (U4) hɔuz hōz~houz hɔjz
+ Dialect vowel differences Vowel (Hebrew script) Northern Yiddish (Litvish) Southern Yiddish (Poylish, Galitzish) Comparison (Heb. script = NY = SY) o u , o = dos, zogn = dus, zugn u i / = kugel = kigel ai ah = zayn = zahn ey ay = kleyn, tzvey = klayn, tzvay oy , o = breyt = broyt e ey , e = 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.
Standardization efforts
As with many other languages with strong literary traditions, there was a more or less constant tendency toward the development of a neutral written form acceptable to the speakers of all dialects. In the early 20th century, for both cultural and political reasons, particular energy was focused on developing a modern Standard Yiddish. This contained elements from all three Eastern dialects but its phonetic attributes were predominantly based on Northeastern pronunciation. This resulted in modern Standard Yiddish phonology, without detailing the phonetic variation among the three contributing dialects or the further distinctions among the myriad local varieties that they subsume.
A useful early review of the differences between the three main Eastern dialects is provided by the Yiddish lexicographer Alexander Harkavy in a Treatise on Yiddish Reading, Orthography, and Dialectal Variations first published in 1898 together with his Yiddish-English Dictionary (Harkavy 1898).
Standardization controversy
Harkavy, like others of the early standardizers, regards Litvish as the "leading branch". That assertion has, however, been questioned by many authors and remains the subject of keen controversy. YIVO, the Jewish Scientific Institute, is often seen as the initiating agent in giving phonetic preference to Litvish, but Harkavy's work predates YIVO's and he was not exclusively describing personal preference. A broad-based study provided in the Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (discussed in detail below under the heading Documentation) provides a clearer picture of the more recent YIVO perspective.
The heart of the debate is the priority given to the dialect with the smallest number of speakers. One of the alternative proposals put forward in the early discussion of standardizing spoken Yiddish was to base it on the pronunciation of the Southeastern dialect, which was the most widely used form in the Yiddish 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.
Documentation