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Jewish Russian chapter 18 Jewish Russian Anna Verschik 1 Historical Introduction 594 2 Jewish Russian Literature 596 3 Linguistic Profile of Jewish Russian 596 3.1 Phonology and Prosody 596 3.2 Semantics 597 3.3 Derivation 597 3.4 Idiomatic Calques 597 4 Further Study 598 5 Bibliography 599 1 Historical Introduction Jewish Russian has evolved as a result of language shift from Yiddish; it is a cluster of post-Yiddish ethnolects rather than a particular variety with clear borders. Nowadays, Jewish Russian functions as a linguistic repertoire on which one can draw in order to make a joke, to demonstrate in-group solidarity and one’s Jewish identity, and to mark one’s speech as Jewish (Verschik 2007: 213). The term ‘post-Yiddish ethnolect’ was introduced by Jacobs (2005: 303–306) in order to designate varieties that are a result of language shift from Yiddish to another lect not previously associated with Jews and Jewish speech (such as varieties of Jewish English, Jewish Polish, and so on; see Gold 1985; Fish- man 2005; Benor 2009). The term Jewish Russian is used by linguists; laypeople have no specific label to mark varieties of Jewish Russian. While some may realize that at times certain Jews use Russian differently as compared to the mainstream, non-specialists do not perceive it as a ‘real language’. Occasion- ally, vague characteristics such as ‘Jewish accent’ or ‘Odessa Russian/Odessa language’ are used (see section 2). The shift from Yiddish to Russian began in the middle of the 19th cen- tury among adherents of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and upwardly mobile Jews of the Russian Empire. Their choice of Russian over Yiddish was conscious and often accompanied by certain anti-Yiddish attitudes and inter- nalization of popular anti-Yiddish stereotypes (i.e., Yiddish as a ‘mere dialect’ © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004359543_020 jewish russian 595 as opposed to a full-fledged language, ‘corrupt German’, Yiddish as a symbol of provincialism and narrow-mindedness of shtetl life and the like). In the 1897 census, 97% of Jews in the Russian Empire declared Yiddish as their first language, while 1.3% named Russian as their mother tongue, and only about 30% of Jewish men and 16% of Jewish women claimed the/some ability to deal with a Russian text. However, as Estraikh (2008: 62) emphasizes, among certain upwordly mobile Jews in the late imperial period proficiency in Russian was actually much higher than required for everyday needs. The second half of the 19th century witnessed the rise of Russian-Jewish periodicals, published in Russian by Jews, featuring articles by Jewish authors and with Jews as a target audience (e.g. Rassvet, the first one of this kind, which was founded in Odessa in 1860). A new generation of Jewish poets and writers appeared who worked almost or entirely in Russian but nevertheless addressed Jewish readers and discussed Jewish topics (Shimon Frug, Lev Levanda, and several others). Such literati, using Russian and at the same time maintaining a Jewish identity, differed from those who viewed themselves as a part of mainstream Russian culture and distanced themselves from their Jewish origin and things Jewish (see section 2). This literature and journalism is referred to as Jewish Russian writings and publications. The authors in question occasionally used Jewish Russian as a stylistic device, for instance, in order to render direct speech by Jewish protagonists in fiction. After the Revolution of 1917, anti-Jewish restrictions were abolished and many Jews left the shtetls for greater urban centers in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, where knowledge of Russian was necessary. This segment of the Jewish population did not consider Russian as a means of cultural expression or access to secular knowledge and education, but rather learned the language for practical reasons and started using it for in-group communication as well (Estraikh 2008: 63). The Holocaust changed the sociolinguistic profile of Soviet Jewry, because it almost completely erased Yiddish-speaking Jews in traditional areas of Jewish residence. Post-war Jews spoke either mainstream Russian or a variety of Jewish Russian (with some exceptions such as the Baltic states that were occupied by the USSR in 1940 and where sociolinguistic tendencies differed from the rest of the Soviet Union). Not all Russian-speaking Jews are automatically speakers of Jewish Russian. Some are speakers of mainstream Russian and do not use (or even consciously avoid) any Jewish Russian elements, while some use certain Jewish Russian features as a marker of style and/or identity. Yet there are speakers who delib- erately choose to use Jewish Russian as their default variety, despite their pro- ficiency in mainstream Russian. Thus, it is not always a question of accessibil-.
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