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Estonian Yiddish and Its Contacts with Coterritorial Languages

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Estonian Yiddish and Its Contacts with Coterritorial Languages DISSERT ATIONES LINGUISTICAE UNIVERSITATIS TARTUENSIS 1 ESTONIAN YIDDISH AND ITS CONTACTS WITH COTERRITORIAL LANGUAGES ANNA VERSCHIK TARTU 2000 DISSERTATIONES LINGUISTICAE UNIVERSITATIS TARTUENSIS DISSERTATIONES LINGUISTICAE UNIVERSITATIS TARTUENSIS 1 ESTONIAN YIDDISH AND ITS CONTACTS WITH COTERRITORIAL LANGUAGES Eesti jidiš ja selle kontaktid Eestis kõneldavate keeltega ANNA VERSCHIK TARTU UNIVERSITY PRESS Department of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Faculty of Philosophy, University o f Tartu, Tartu, Estonia Dissertation is accepted for the commencement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in general linguistics) on December 22, 1999 by the Doctoral Committee of the Department of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Tartu Supervisor: Prof. Tapani Harviainen (University of Helsinki) Opponents: Professor Neil Jacobs, Ohio State University, USA Dr. Kristiina Ross, assistant director for research, Institute of the Estonian Language, Tallinn Commencement: March 14, 2000 © Anna Verschik, 2000 Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastuse trükikoda Tiigi 78, Tartu 50410 Tellimus nr. 53 ...Yes, Ashkenazi Jews can live without Yiddish but I fail to see what the benefits thereof might be. (May God preserve us from having to live without all the things we could live without). J. Fishman (1985a: 216) [In Estland] gibt es heutzutage unter den Germanisten keinen Forscher, der sich ernst für das Jiddische interesiere, so daß die lokale jiddische Mundart vielleicht verschwinden wird, ohne daß man sie für die Wissen­ schaftfixiert hätte. P. Ariste (1970: 250) TABLE OF CONTENTS The titles of the articles ..................................................................................... 8 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 9 Sissejuhatus ......................................................................................................... 15 Publications ......................................................................................................... 21 Conclusions ......................................................................................................... 177 Kokkuvõte ............................................................................................................ 182 List of informants ............................................................................................... 184 Textsam ples........................................................................................................ 185 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................ 194 7 THE TITLES OF THE ARTICLES I The Yiddish Dialect in Estonia (a description) — Fenno-Ugristica 22. Indo-European-Uralic-Siberian Linguistic and Cultural Contacts. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 1999, 265-291. II On the Lexicon of Estonian Yiddish. — In press for Studia Orientalia 85, 1999. III Mõnda baltisaksa ja jidiši kontaktidest (On Baltic German — Yiddish contacts). — In press for Keel ja Kirjandus (in Estonian). IV Some aspects of Yiddish — Estonian language contacts. — In press for Fenno-Ugristica 23 (publication of the department of Uralistics, University of Tartu). V Mitmekeelsus kui juudi kogukonna elu norm (Multilingualism as a norm in a Jewish community’s life). — Keel ja Kirjandus, 1995, nr 6, 403-406 (in Estonian). VI Some Aspects of the Multilingualism of Estonian Jews. — Hennoste, T. (ed.), Estonian Sociolingusitics. International Journal of the Sociology’ of Language 139, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999, 49-67. VII The Yiddish Language in Estonia: Past and Present. — Journal of Baltic Studies 1999,30(2), 117-128. VIII Estonian Jews: Integration and Language Choice. — paper presented at the conference Ethnic Policy on the Road to Civil Society (Riga, 15 — 16.10.1998). Proceedings of the conference are to be published in 2000. See also http://www.vm.ee/eng/index.html (under the heading Integration). IX Jidiše kulturoitonomie in Estland (1926-1940). (Yiddish cultural autonomy in Estonia, 1926-1940) — Di Pen, 1998, 35 (Spring-Summer), 81-88 (in Yiddish). X Vegn einem in Estland gedruktn jidiš-špraxikn tekst (About one Yiddish- language text printed in Estonia). — in press for Oksforder Tsaitšrift (publication of Oxford University) (in Yiddish). INTRODUCTION 1. General characterization of the topic The dialect of Yiddish spoken in Estonia (Estonian Yiddish) has received almost no scholarly attention; one can say that it has been ignored for too long because the number of the speakers is constantly decreasing. Being situated on the edge of Yiddish-speaking world and far from classical centers of Jewish traditional learning and modern Yiddishist culture, Estonia has been unjustly ignored by scholars (Mendelsohn 1983: 253). There exists some research on the history of Estonian Jewry (Amitan-Wilensky 1971, Lane 1995, Mendelsohn 1983, Nodel 1974, Parming 1979) but almost no study of dialects and languages spoken in the community. The small size of the community, its marginality in the Jewish and Yiddish-speaking world could have been the reason why such investigations have never been carried out by Jewish historians and Yiddish linguists. In Estonia itself, there is no tradition of Yiddish scholarship and only P. Ariste, a renowned polyglot, paid some attention to Yiddish (Ariste 1937, 1970, 1981), although he did not conduct any systematic research on the topic. Estonian Yiddish belongs to North-Eastern Yiddish (NEY) dialects. Since Yiddish used to be a language spoken on the vast European territory, it is clear, that Estonian Yiddish should be viewed in a broader context of Yiddish dialects, or more precisely, in NEY context. Within NEY, Yiddish dialects spoken in the Baltic region, or Baltic Yiddish (Jacobs, ms.) are of special importance for our study. It will be demonstrated that, having developed on the basis of Courland Yiddish, an archaic dialect among NEY dialects, Estonian Yiddish has pre­ served some features vanished from other NEY dialects and characteristic of Courland Yiddish. On the other hand, Yiddish in Estonia was one of the languages spoken by Estonian Jews. Jews in Estonia have always been a tiny, almost invisible and homogenous minority residing in cities and towns. It is clear that Yiddish monolingualism was / is impossible in such a situation. Therefore, one should consider Yiddish also in the linguistic context of Estonia: both from sociolin- guistic point of view (language choice, language hierarchy, changes in language hierarchy et c., language policy) and from the point of view of language contacts theory (contact with coterritorial languages, borrowing, code-switching etc.). Here we deal with a unique combination of languages: Yiddish, Estonian, Baltic German, Standard German, Russian. It was clearly indicated by Fishman (1991a: 308-309) that sociocultural his­ tory of almost any Jewish community is linked to multilingualism. Quite fre­ quently the notion of multilingualism appears already in the title: for instance, T. Harviainen’s (1991) paper on Finnish Jews is called Jiddishiä ja venäjää, ruotsia ja suomea — juutalased Suomessa (Yiddish and Russian, Swedish and 3 9 Finnish — Jews in Finland). There exist several macrosociolinguistic studies on various Jewish communities (Fishman 1965, Isaacs 1998, Spolsky and Cooper 1991 to name just few); however, more case-studies are needed, especially those of spoken Yiddish (Peltz 1998). In this connection we should mention a research project on Yiddish in Finland undertaken by S. Muir (Yiddish in Helsinki) and J. Hartikainen (Yiddish of former residents of Vyborg). The current research is thus a case-study which could be important both for Yiddish linguistics and for Estonian linguistics. First of all, it will be demon­ strated that multilingualism of Estonian Jews was different from that of tradi­ tional Jewish communities. Second, due to the Soviet national and language policy any objective non-biased study of minorities and minority languages was almost impossible and a serious research of Estonia’s minorities is only begin­ ning (Hennoste 1999). Sociocultural history of Estonian Jews is quite unique in Eastern Europe (Mendelsohn 1983: 253-254, Parming 1979, Lane 1995). Unfortunately a com­ prehensive, up-to-date history of Estonian Jews has not been written yet. Jews appeared in Estonian history relatively late, in the 19th c. They arrived mostly from Courland and also from Lithuania. It should be emphasized that Estonia was outside of the Pale of Settlement and, thus, according to the laws of Rus­ sian Empire, closed for Jews. It was a rather urbanized, acculturated and secu­ larized minority which differed both from the Western type (“Germans or Frenchmen of Mosaic persuasion”) and from the Eastern štetl-type of traditional Jews. The Jewish minority of Estonia combined features of Western Jewry (liv­ ing in cities, social integration into coterritorial society, belonging to the mid­ dle-class, good command of non-Jewish languages, weakness of traditional rabbinical authority) and of Eastern Jewry (self-identification as Jews, use of Yiddish). The period 1918-1940 in Estonian history (from the birth of the independent Republic of Estonia till the first Soviet occupation) can be described as a period of Jewish national revival: cultural autonomy gave unprecedented opportunities for minorities’ life (Matsulevitš 1993). It is interesting that Jews in Estonia considered themselves rather as an
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