Du shtetl à la ville : à la recherche d’un yiddish (presque) perdu
Yiddish was spoken in pre-war Poland by just under 3 million people and thrived as a literary, theatrical, cinematic and political language in addition to being the daily vernacular of the majority of Polish Jewry. Today, a few native speakers of the Polish dialect of Yiddish remain in Poland but ar...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fra |
| Published: |
L’Harmattan
2016-09-01
|
| Series: | Droit et Cultures |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/droitcultures/3969 |
| Summary: | Yiddish was spoken in pre-war Poland by just under 3 million people and thrived as a literary, theatrical, cinematic and political language in addition to being the daily vernacular of the majority of Polish Jewry. Today, a few native speakers of the Polish dialect of Yiddish remain in Poland but are more likely to be found in centres of Jewish culture around the world, such as London or New York. The status of Yiddish as an endangered language worldwide is well establishedi and thorough attempts to document its characteristics have already been carried out (e.g. Jacobs 2005). However, the Polish dialect of Yiddish, despite its pre-war numerical superiority, faces even greater endangerment in the face of a drive to revitalize the language based on the notion of ‘standard’ language. Illogically, the Northern form of Yiddish (Latvian and Lithuanian Yiddish) was used for the basis of standard Yiddish by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York (despite having fewer speakers) and this is the form used in textbooks and summer schools around the world to teach the language. As a result, descendants of holocaust survivors who wish to connect with their Polish inheritance via the Yiddish language are exposed to non-Polish Yiddish phonological and lexical features, which can alienate them in their attempts to reconnect to the language. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0247-9788 2109-9421 |