Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.232 January 24, 1996 1) Life and death of language (Arnie Herschorn) 2) Life and death of language (Bob Rothstein) 3) Life and death of language (Bob Hoberman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 12:29:53 -0500 From: henryc@perceptix.com Subject: Is Yiddish dying? I wish to respond to the comments made by Zachary Baker and Ellen Prince concerning my submission in Vol. 5.224 Thank you for your criticisms, most of which I accept (in my heart but not in public). However... Zachary Baker: "Dead means that there are zero native speakers..." This is a possible position. There are good theoretical reasons for a serious linguist to accept it. However, I am not a serious linguist. The generalization "Man is a featherless biped" remains true even if you come up with a man who has no legs and who has glued chicken feathers to himself. But it's artificial. Numbers make a big difference how you view the situation. Similarly with languages. When you cite the example of the last member of an American Indian tribe, prior to his passing, that tends to confirm the reaction that his language is already dead, rather than refute it. If you have normal human feelings (maybe serious linguists don't), it brings a tear to your eye. Even more so pockets of Yiddish resistance. The main army, nebich, got slaughtered. Ellen Prince: 1.You know full well (but are too polite to say) that I have no authority for my more dogmatic pronouncements. 2. Why make such pronouncements? Take a look at Leybl Botvinik's posting in Vol. 5.222, Helft Yidish vern gezunt. Leybl prescribes wonderful cures for the sick patient. But even an amateur novi can foresee that the patient will never take the prescription. 3. So why say that the patient is already dead? See the Chumash Beis Yehudah's commentary to Rashi's commentary on Exodus 25 v. 2 "And they shall take for me an offering..." The Torah advised that the Jews should set aside gold and silver for the Sanctuary well before Moses and Aaron asked for it. so that the Jews would not regret parting with it when the time came to hand it over. Having set the gold and silver aside for that purpose, the Jews would no longer think of it as theirs and so would part with it more cheerfully (as God wanted). Similarly with Yiddish. Adjust now to the fact that Yiddish no longer lives and avoid the bitter disappointment later. 4. Hebrew was a partially living language, even in Golus, because there as a point to using it apart from the wish to keep it alive, viz. to pray to God and other holy purposes. There is not a similar powerful reason for Jews to keep Yiddish alive that way, even partially. The few babies in Palestine who made Hebrew a living language were the precursors of the next wave. The few babies today who might be said to keep Yiddish alive are, again nebekh, the last traces of the old wave. Everything depends on the arrow of time. Time's arrow was with Hebrew, a rising tide, while it is against Yiddish, a falling tide. Arnie Herschorn Toronto 2)---------------------------------------------------- From rar@slavic.umass.eduWed Jan 24 11:11:04 1996 Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 23:40:41 -0500 (EST) From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Subject: Living and dead languages For another perspective on the ongoing discussion about the state of Yiddish, one might remember the observation of the great Polish linguist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929). In a 1908 article he wrote that "when we talk about whether languages are 'alive' or 'dead,' this shows that we do not understand the essence of language. Any language is 'dead' for those who do not know it." Incidentally, in a lecture he gave in 1888 in Dorpat (later Iur'iev, now Tartu, Estonia), he criticized those who disdain Yiddish as a "jargon," pointing out that "such jargons have sometimes grown into highly respected and powerful languages. It is enough to mention the English language." Bob Rothstein 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 12:23:54 -0500 (EST) From: rdhoberman@ccmail.sunysb.edu Subject: Death and revival of Hebrew In the context of our discussion of the health and future of Yiddish, some comments on the history of Hebrew might help. I'm not asserting that anything is identical in the two cases, only that looking at the history of Hebrew might help clarify some of the issues. Beginning with the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in the 700s BCE, more and more Israelites in the north began to speak Aramaic in daily life instead of Hebrew. Of course they used Hebrew in religion and literature. This decline was a long gradual process, part of the spread of Aramaic among all the peoples of the Near East at the time, replacing such languages as Phoenician, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Hittite. In the southern kingdom, Judea, children continued to learn Hebrew as their first language, as it was spoken all around them. After the Jewish revolts against the Romans in the second century CE, however, the Romans massacred huge numbers of Judean Jews, and many of the rest fled to the north and out of the country, and switched to Aramaic. It's likely that some survivors in Judea and some families who had moved elsewhere continue to speak Hebrew for another generation or a few; the family of Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi is probably one, according to stories in the Talmud. But eventually, sometime after the year 200 CE, no children anywhere were speaking Hebrew as their first language, and those who learned it did so in the context of schooling. At this point Hebrew was a dead language by definition, since no children were speaking it as their native vernacular language. ("Dead," but not "buried," like Akkadian, for instance, because for nearly two millennia no one knew how to read or write Akkadian, or even knew of its existence. Nowadays, when hundreds of scholars can read the huge quantities of Akkadian texts which have been dug up and, if they try real hard, write and maybe even speak a little, Akkadian is still dead, though exhumed.) Active of Hebrew continued to decline, until only scholars could write it with much success. The situation of Hebrew changed in the nineteenth century. Commpletely aside from the new literary use of Hebrew in Europe, there was a pragmatic change: the increasing number of Jews in Palestine, who spoke Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish, etc., began in the middle of the nineteenth century to speak Hebrew with those who didn't have the same native language. This pragmatic use of Hebrew preceded the ideological revival of Hebrew speech, advocated by Eliezer Ben Yehuda and his associates, by a couple of generations, and undoubtedly made that ideological revival possible. Ben Yehuda got the idea of reviving Hebrew when he met Palestinian Jews in Paris who could actually speak it. So Hebrew was revived because there was a need for it, people who wanted to talk with each other and had no other language in common. Bob Hoberman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.232