Estonian Yiddish and Its Contacts with Coterritorial Languages
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When Political Institutions Use Sociolinguistic Concepts
IJSL 2020; 263: 13–18 David Karlander* When political institutions use sociolinguistic concepts https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2020-2076 Abstract: In this essay, David Karlander examines what happens when concepts developed by scholars of language circulate and become embedded in policies and law. In exploring how the distinction between a “language” and a “dialect” became encoded in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML), Karlander examines the consequences when applied to the status and state support of minority languages in Sweden. What counts as a language, he demonstrates, is not simply an “academic” matter. When sociolinguistics enters the public arena, it has the potential to affect the political and social standing of real communities. Keywords: European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML), language policy, Meänkieli, Övdalsk (Elfdalian, Övdalian), politics of linguistics How do committee-type bodies contribute to the formation, circulation, and societal impact of sociolinguistics? How have such institutions inserted socio- linguistic concepts into institutional or political practice? How has sociolinguistics reacted to the reuse of its conceptual goods? These are some of the important questions that Monica Heller poses in her September 2018 Items essay on the SSRC’s Committee on Sociolinguistics. In what follows, I delve further into them. Like Heller, I turn my attention to the borderlands between policymaking, advocacy, and academic research. However, rather than exploring how commit- tee-type institutions attempt to influence or regulate the research priorities of academics, I will focus on processes through which sociolinguistic notions are put to practice by nonacademic institutions. As an example, I discuss some dimensions of the implementation of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML), a European treaty on “the protection of the historical regional or minority languages of Europe” under the auspices of the Council of Europe (CoE). -
An Ethnographic Study of the Second Generation German
AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF THE SECOND GENERATION GERMAN AMERICANS LEAVING THEIR MARK ON U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION A dissertation submitted by Nicole Ruscheinski Herion to Benedictine University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in Higher Education and Organizational Change Benedictine University April 2016 Copyright by Nicole Ruscheinski Herion, 2016 All rights reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I began contemplating what I would write for my dissertation, I wanted to write something that would contribute to the field of higher education and make a lasting footprint on my cultural background. The words “never forget where you came from” kept ringing in my ears. I must thank Dr. Antonina Lukenchuk for helping me define and focus a concept that flourished and came to life over the past three years. I want to thank God for showing his grace and mercy during times of confusion, trouble, and misunderstanding throughout a long and laborious dissertation process. God is good and he truly allowed for this dream to become a reality. It will go down as one of the biggest accomplishments in my life. The hours that it takes to fine tune and go through a project like this are unimaginable to some; however, Dr. Sunil Chand, Dr. Kathy Sexton-Radek, and Dr. Antonina Lukenchuk were the best of mentors to me and spent countless hours helping me so I could produce a product I would be proud of. I will never forget the time and energy you devoted to getting me to this place. During the second year of this program, both my Omi and Tata passed away. -
Methods for Estonian Large Vocabulary Speech Recognition
THESIS ON INFORMATICS AND SYSTEM ENGINEERING C Methods for Estonian Large Vocabulary Speech Recognition TANEL ALUMAE¨ Faculty of Information Technology Department of Informatics TALLINN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Dissertation was accepted for the commencement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering on November 1, 2006. Supervisors: Prof. Emer. Leo Vohandu,˜ Faculty of Information Technology Einar Meister, Ph.D., Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology Opponents: Mikko Kurimo, Dr. Tech., Helsinki University of Technology Heiki-Jaan Kaalep, Ph.D., University of Tartu Commencement: December 5, 2006 Declaration: Hereby I declare that this doctoral thesis, my original investigation and achievement, submitted for the doctoral degree at Tallinn University of Technology has not been submitted for any degree or examination. / Tanel Alumae¨ / Copyright Tanel Alumae,¨ 2006 ISSN 1406-4731 ISBN 9985-59-661-7 ii Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 The speech recognition problem . 1 1.2 Language specific aspects of speech recognition . 3 1.3 Related work . 5 1.4 Scope of the thesis . 6 1.5 Outline of the thesis . 7 1.6 Acknowledgements . 7 2 Basic concepts of speech recognition 9 2.1 Probabilistic decoding problem . 10 2.2 Feature extraction . 10 2.2.1 Signal acquisition . 11 2.2.2 Short-term analysis . 11 2.3 Acoustic modelling . 14 2.3.1 Hidden Markov models . 15 2.3.2 Selection of basic units . 20 2.3.3 Clustered context-dependent acoustic units . 20 2.4 Language Modelling . 22 2.4.1 N-gram language models . 23 2.4.2 Language model evaluation . 29 3 Properties of the Estonian language 33 3.1 Phonology . -
Variation in Form and Function in Jewish English Intonation
Variation in Form and Function in Jewish English Intonation Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Rachel Steindel Burdin ∼6 6 Graduate Program in Linguistics The Ohio State University 2016 Dissertation Committee: Professor Brian D. Joseph, Advisor Professor Cynthia G. Clopper Professor Donald Winford c Rachel Steindel Burdin, 2016 Abstract Intonation has long been noted as a salient feature of American Jewish English speech (Weinreich, 1956); however, there has not been much systematic study of how, exactly Jewish English intonation is distinct, and to what extent Yiddish has played a role in this distinctness. This dissertation examines the impact of Yiddish on Jewish English intonation in the Jewish community of Dayton, Ohio, and how features of Yiddish intonation are used in Jewish English. 20 participants were interviewed for a production study. The participants were balanced for gender, age, religion (Jewish or not), and language background (whether or not they spoke Yiddish in addition to English). In addition, recordings were made of a local Yiddish club. The production study revealed differences in both the form and function in Jewish English, and that Yiddish was the likely source for that difference. The Yiddish-speaking participants were found to both have distinctive productions of rise-falls, including higher peaks, and a wider pitch range, in their Yiddish, as well as in their English produced during the Yiddish club meetings. The younger Jewish English participants also showed a wider pitch range in some situations during the interviews. -
The Semitic Component in Yiddish and Its Ideological Role in Yiddish Philology
philological encounters � (�0�7) 368-387 brill.com/phen The Semitic Component in Yiddish and its Ideological Role in Yiddish Philology Tal Hever-Chybowski Paris Yiddish Center—Medem Library [email protected] Abstract The article discusses the ideological role played by the Semitic component in Yiddish in four major texts of Yiddish philology from the first half of the 20th century: Ysroel Haim Taviov’s “The Hebrew Elements of the Jargon” (1904); Ber Borochov’s “The Tasks of Yiddish Philology” (1913); Nokhem Shtif’s “The Social Differentiation of Yiddish: Hebrew Elements in the Language” (1929); and Max Weinreich’s “What Would Yiddish Have Been without Hebrew?” (1931). The article explores the ways in which these texts attribute various religious, national, psychological and class values to the Semitic com- ponent in Yiddish, while debating its ontological status and making prescriptive sug- gestions regarding its future. It argues that all four philologists set the Semitic component of Yiddish in service of their own ideological visions of Jewish linguistic, national and ethnic identity (Yiddishism, Hebraism, Soviet Socialism, etc.), thus blur- ring the boundaries between descriptive linguistics and ideologically engaged philology. Keywords Yiddish – loshn-koydesh – semitic philology – Hebraism – Yiddishism – dehebraization Yiddish, although written in the Hebrew alphabet, is predominantly Germanic in its linguistic structure and vocabulary.* It also possesses substantial Slavic * The comments of Yitskhok Niborski, Natalia Krynicka and of the anonymous reviewer have greatly improved this article, and I am deeply indebted to them for their help. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/�45�9�97-��Downloaded34003� from Brill.com09/23/2021 11:50:14AM via free access The Semitic Component In Yiddish 369 and Semitic elements, and shows some traces of the Romance languages. -
LEP Heritage Language Codes
A B C D E 1 LEP Heritage Language Codes 2 LanguageName LanguageCode ISO1 ISO2 ISO3 3 (post 1500) 0000 4 Abkhazian 0010 ab abk abk 5 Achinese 0020 ace ace 6 Acoli 0030 ach ach 7 Adangme 0040 ada ada 8 Adygei 0050 ady ady 9 Adyghe 0060 ady ady 10 Afar 0070 aa aar aar 11 Afrikaans 0090 af afr afr 12 Afro-Asiatic (Other) 0100 afa 13 Ainu (Japan) 6010 ain ain 14 Akan 0110 ak aka aka 15 Albanian 0130 sq alb/sqi sqi 16 Alemannic 6300 gsw gsw 17 Aleut 0140 ale ale 18 Algonquian languages 0150 alg 19 Alsatian 6310 gsw gsw 20 Altaic (Other) 0160 tut 21 Amharic 0170 am amh amh 22 Angika 6020 anp anp 23 Apache languages 0180 apa 24 Arabic 0190 ar ara ara 25 Aragonese 0200 an arg arg 26 Arapaho 0220 arp arp 27 Araucanian 0230 arn arn 28 Arawak 0240 arw arw 29 Armenian 0250 hy arm/hye hye 30 Aromanian 6410 31 Arumanian 6160 32 Assamese 0270 as asm asm 33 Asturian 0280 ast ast 34 Asturleonese 6170 35 Athapascan languages 0290 ath 36 Australian languages 0300 aus 37 Austronesian (Other) 0310 map 38 Avaric 0320 av ava ava 39 Awadhi 0340 awa awa 40 Aymara 0350 ay aym aym 41 Azerbaijani 0360 az aze aze 42 Bable 0370 ast ast 43 Balinese 0380 ban ban 44 Baltic (Other) 0390 bat 45 Baluchi 0400 bal bal 46 Bambara 0410 bm bam bam 47 Bamileke languages 0420 bai A B C D E 1 LEP Heritage Language Codes 2 LanguageName LanguageCode ISO1 ISO2 ISO3 48 Banda 0430 bad 49 Bantu (Other) 0440 bnt 50 Basa 0450 bas bas 51 Bashkir 0460 ba bak bak 52 Basque 0470 eu baq/eus eus 53 Batak (Indonesia) 0480 btk 54 Bedawiyet 6180 bej bej 55 Beja 0490 bej bej 56 Belarusian 0500 be -
A Language That Forgot Itself Tomasz Kamusella*
Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe Vol 13, No 4, 2014, 129-138 Copyright © ECMI 2014 This article is located at: http://www.ecmi.de/fileadmin/downloads/publications/JEMIE/2014/Kamusella.pdf A Language that Forgot Itself Tomasz Kamusella* University of St Andrews In this essay, as a background, I reflect on how the German language was liquidated in post-1945 Poland’s region of Upper Silesia where nowadays the country’s German minority is concentrated. But the main focus is on the irony that neither this language, nor a genuine German minority education system has been revived during the last quarter of a century that has elapsed since the fall of communism in 1989, despite promises to the contrary. The mystery persists. In the entry devoted to Poland in the respectable reference on the languages of the world, the Ethnologue, the number of native speakers of German living in the country is conservatively estimated at half a million.1 Until well into the 1990s German sources spoke of one million or a million and a half Germans in Poland. It is noted that the region where they live in compact areas of settlement is the countryside of Upper Silesia. But in the region the local Germans overwhelmingly communicate in the Silesian language. Silesia Superioris, Oberschlesien, Haute-Silésie, Horní Slezsko, Górny Śląsk, Felső-Szilézia—it is known by so many names, as many homelands in Central Europe were before the powers-that-be minced and fitted this part of the continent into the unbecomingly tight and too-small pantyhose of national polities, each so pure, homogenous through and through, so painfully monolingual. -
ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS and EARLY HISTORY 1. the First Book
Published in: Prace Komisji Spraw Europejskich PAU. Tom II, pp. 39–56. Ed. Andrzej Pelczar. Krak´ow:Polska Akademia Umieje˛tno´sci, 2008, 79 pp. pau2008 CHRISTER KISELMAN ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY Abstract. We trace the development of Esperanto prior to the publi- cation of the first book on the language in 1887 and try to explain its origins in a multicultural setting. Influences on Esperanto from several other languages are discussed. The paper is an elaborated version of parts of the author’s lec- ture in Krak´owat the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, Polska Akademia Umieje˛tno´sci, on December 6, 2006. 1. The first book on Esperanto and its author The first book on Esperanto (Dr speranto 1887a) was published in Warsaw in the summer of 1887, more precisely on July 14 according to the Julian calendar then in use (July 26 according to the Gregorian calendar). It was a booklet of 42 pages plus a folding sheet with a list of some 900 morphemes. It was written in Russian. Soon afterwards, a Polish version was published, as well as a French and a German version, all in the same year (Dr. Esperanto 1887b, 1887c, 1887d). The English version of the book appeared two years later, in 1889, as did the Swedish version. The author of the book was only 27 years old at the time. His complete name, as it is known now, was Lazaro Ludoviko Zamenhof, registered by the Russian authorities as Lazar~ Markoviq Zamengof (Lazar0 Markoviˇc Zamengof00). His given name was Elieyzer in Ashkenazic Hebrew, Leyzer in Yiddish, and Lazar~ (Lazar0) in Russian. -
XXVII Fonetiikan Päivät Phonetics Symposium 2012
XXVII Fonetiikan päivät Phonetics Symposium 2012 Tallinn, Estonia February 17-18, 2012 XXVII Fonetiikan päivät – Phonetics Symposium 2012 Tallinn, Estonia, February 17-18, 2012 Phonetics Symposium 2012 (XXVII Fonetiikan päivät) continues the tradition of meetings of Finnish phoneticians started in 1971 in Turku. These meetings, held in turn at different universities in Finland, have been frequently attended by Estonian phoneticians as well. In 1998 the meeting was held in Pärnu, Estonia, and in 2012 it will take place in Estonia for the second time. Phonetics Symposium 2012 (XXVII Fonetiikan päivät) will provide a forum for scientists and students in phonetics and speech technology to present and discuss recent research and development in spoken language communication. In the recent years we have lost three world-renowned scholars in the phonetic sciences – Ilse Lehiste, Matti Karjalainen and Arvo Eek. The symposium shall commemorate and honor their scientific contributions to Estonian and Finnish phonetics and speech technology. The symposium is hosted by the Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology (IoC) and organized in co-operation with the Estonian Centre of Excellence in Computer Science, EXCS (funded mainly by the European Regional Development Fund). XXVII Fonetiikan päivät – Phonetics Symposium 2012 Tallinn, Estonia, February 17-18, 2012 SCIENTIFIC PROGRAM: DAY 1 9:45 Opening SESSION 1: Chair Karl Pajusalu Professori Matti Karjalainen, suomalaisen 10:00 Unto K. Laine puheteknologian edelläkävijä 10:30 Diana -
The German Identity Op Mennonite Brethren Immigrants in Canada, 1930-1960
THE GERMAN IDENTITY OP MENNONITE BRETHREN IMMIGRANTS IN CANADA, 1930-1960 by BENJAMIN WALL REDEKOP B.A., Fresno Pacific College, 1985 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF HISTORY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September 1990 ©BENJAMIN WALL REDEKOP, 1990 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of l4i£4p/' The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date DE-6 (2/88) ii ABSTRACT Little scholarly research has been done on the function of Germanism among Mennonites who immigrated to Canada from Russia in the 1920's, and what has been done often relies on an oversimplified "desire for separation" to explain the phenomenon. At the same time, it has been argued that the enthusiasm for Nazi Germany among Mennonite immigrants in Canada is to be understood as part of a larger "Volks-German awakening". In fact, the Mennonite experience of brutal treatment during the Bolshevik Revolution, the economic conditions of the Great Depression, and assinflationist pressures from Canadian society put them in a naturally receptive position for the cultural, political and ethnic ideas associated with the "new Germany". -
Ilse Lehiste (1922-2010) the Significance of Empirical Evidence in Linguistics* (2012)
Ilse Lehiste (1922-2010) The significance of empirical evidence in linguistics* (2012) Zita McRobbie-Utasi Simon Fraser University [email protected] It is with immense sadness that members of the worldwide linguistics community acknowledge the passing away of Ilse Lehiste, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University. Her wide-ranging scholarly legacy has greatly influenced the way linguists view the science of phonetics and its role in speech communication. Her pioneering research in employing and advancing experimental phonetic methods, together with groundbreaking theoretical works on the acoustic properties of speech sounds relevant to language, is to be considered a major contribution to the discipline of linguistics. 1. Introduction Ilse Lehiste was born in Tallinn, Estonia. She received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Hamburg, Germany, in 1949; subsequently she moved to the United States, where she earned her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Michigan in 1959. Dr. Lehiste was a recipient of honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Essex, Great Britain (1977); the University of Lund, Sweden (1982); the University of Tartu, Estonia (1989) and the Doctor of Human Letters honorary degree from the Ohio State University (1999). Prior to her appointment at the Ohio State University in 1963, she taught at the Kansas Wesleyan University (1950-1951), at the Detroit Institute of Technology (1951- 1956) and was a research associate at the University of Michigan’s prestigious Communication Sciences Laboratory (1958-1963). Dr. Lehiste was Chair of the Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University (1965-1971) and (1985-1987), as * I wish to acknowledge posthumously Ilse Lehiste’s comments on an earlier version of this paper. -
Language Attrition and Death: Livonian in Its Terminal Phase
1 Christopher Moseley LANGUAGE ATTRITION AND DEATH: LIVONIAN IN ITS TERMINAL PHASE Thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London March 1993 ProQuest Number: 10046089 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10046089 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 INTRODUCTION This study of the present state of the Livonian language, a Baltic-Finnic tongue spoken by a few elderly people formerly resident in a dozen fishing villages on the coast of Latvia, consists of four main parts. Part One gives an outline of the known history of the Livonian language, the history of research into it, and of its own relations with its closest geographical neighbour, Latvian, a linguistically unrelated Indo-European language. A state of Latvian/Livonian bilingualism has existed for virtually all of the Livonians' (or Livs') recorded history, and certainly for the past two centuries. Part Two consists of a Descriptive Grammar of the present- day Livonian language as recorded in an extensive corpus provided by one speaker.