There is probably no other language in existence on which so much
opprobrium has been heaped as on the Judeo-German.[12] Philologists have
neglected its study, Germanic scholars have until lately been loath to
admit it as a branch of the German language, and even now it has to beg
for recognition. German writers look upon it with contempt and as
something to be shunned; and for over half a century the Russian and
Polish Jews, whose mother-tongue it is, have been replete with apologies
whenever they have had recourse to it for literary purposes.[13] Such a
bias can be explained only as a manifestation of a general prejudice
against everything Jewish, for passions have been at play to such an
extent as to blind the scientific vision to the most obvious and common
linguistic phenomena. Unfortunately, this interesting evolution of a
German dialect has found its most violent opponents in the German Jews,
who, since the day of Mendelssohn, have come to look upon it as an
arbitrary and vicious corruption of the language of their country.[14]
This attack upon it, while justifiable in so far as it affects its
survival in Germany, loses all reasonableness when transferred to the
Jews of Russia, former Poland and Roumania, where it forms a
comparatively uniform medium of intercourse of between five and six
millions of people, of whom the majority know no other language. It
cannot be maintained that it is desirable to preserve the Judeo-German,
and to give it a place of honor among the sisterhood of languages; but
that has nothing to do with the historic fact of its existence. The many
millions of people who use it from the day of their birth cannot be held
responsible for any intentional neglect of grammatical rules, and its
widespread dissemination is sufficient reason for subjecting it to a
thorough investigation. A few timid attempts have been made in that
direction, but they are far from being exhaustive, and touch but a small
part of the very rich material at hand. Nor is this the place in which a
complete discussion of the matter is to be looked for. This chapter
presents only such of the data as must be well understood for a correct
appreciation of the dialectic varieties current in the extensive
Judeo-German literature of the last fifty years.
All languages are subject to a continuous change, not only from within,
through natural growth and decay, but also from without, through the
influence of foreign languages as carriers of new ideas. The languages
of Europe, one and all, owe their Latin elements to the universality of
the Roman dominion, and, later, of the Catholic Church. With the
Renaissance, and lately through the sciences, much Greek has been added
to their vocabularies. When two nations have come into a close
intellectual contact, the result has always been a mixture of languages.
In the case of English, the original Germanic tongue has become almost
unrecognizable under the heavy burden of foreign words. But more
interesting than these cases, and more resembling the formation of the
Judeo-German, are those non-Semitic languages that have come under the
sway of Mohammedanism. Their religious literature being always written
in the Arabic of the Koran, they were continually, for a long period of
centuries, brought under the same influences, and these have caused them
to borrow, not only many words, but even whole turns and sentences, from
their religious lore. The Arabic has frequently become completely
transformed under the pronunciation and grammatical treatment of the
borrowing language, but nevertheless a thorough knowledge of such
tongues as Turkish and Persian is not possible without a fair
understanding of Arabic. The case is still more interesting with
Hindustani, spoken by more than one hundred millions of people, where
more than five-eighths of the language is not of Indian origin, but
Persian and Arabic. With these preliminary facts it will not be
difficult to see what has taken place in Judeo-German.
Previous to the sixteenth century the Jews in Germany spoke the dialects
of their immediate surroundings; there is no evidence to prove any
introduction of Hebrew words at that early period, although it must be
supposed that words relating purely to the Mosaic ritual may have found
their way into the spoken language even then. The sixteenth century
finds a large number of German Jews resident in Bohemia, Poland, and
Lithuania. As is frequently the case with immigrants, the Jews in those
distant countries developed a greater intellectual activity than their
brethren at home, and this is indicated by the prominence of the
printing offices at Prague and Cracow, and the large number of natives
of those countries who figure as authors of Judeo-German works up to the
nineteenth century. But torn away from a vivifying intercourse with
their mother-country, their vocabulary could not be increased from the
living source of the language alone, for their interests began to
diverge. Religious instruction being given entirely in Hebrew, it was
natural for them to make use of all such Hebrew words as they thus
became familiar with. Their close study of the Talmud furnished them
from that source with a large number of words of argumentation, while
the native Slavic languages naturally added their mite toward making the
Judeo-German more and more unlike the mother-tongue. Since books printed
in Bohemia were equally current in Poland, and _vice versa_, and Jews
perused a great number of books, there was always a lively interchange
of thoughts going on in these countries, causing some Bohemian words to
migrate to Poland, and Polish words back to Bohemia. These books printed
in Slavic countries were received with open hands also in Germany, and
their preponderance over similar books at home was so great that the
foreign corruption affected the spoken language of the German Jews, and
they accepted also a number of Slavic words together with the Semitic
infection. This was still further aided by the many Polish teachers who,
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were almost the only
instructors of Hebrew in Germany.[15]
We have, then, here an analogous case to the formation of Osmanli out of
the Turkish, and Modern Persian out of the Old by means of the Arabic,
and if the word Jargon is used to describe the condition of Judeo-German
in the past three centuries, then Gibberish would be the only word that
would fit as a designation of the corresponding compounds of the
beautiful languages of Turkey, Persia, and India. A Jargon is the
chaotic state of a speech-mixture at the moment when the foreign
elements first enter into it. That mixture can never be entirely
arbitrary, for it is subject to the spirit of one fundamental language
which does not lose its identity. All the Romance elements in English
have not stifled its Germanic basis, and Hindustani is neither Persian
nor Arabic, in spite of the overwhelming foreign element in it, but an
Indian language. Similarly Judeo-German has remained essentially a
German dialect group.
Had the Judeo-German had for its basis some dialect which widely differs
from the literary norm, such as Low German or Swiss, it would have long
ago been claimed as a precious survival by German philologists. But it
happens to follow so closely the structure of High German that its
deviations have struck the superficial observer as a kind of careless
corruption of the German. A closer scrutiny, however, convinces one that
in its many dialectic variations it closely follows the High German
dialects of the Middle Rhine with Frankfurt for its centre. There is not
a peculiarity in its grammatical forms, in the changes of its vocalism,
for which exact parallels are not found within a small radius of the old
imperial city, the great centre of Jewish learning and life in the
Middle Ages. No doubt, the emigration into Russia came mainly from the
region of the Rhine. At any rate those who arrived from there brought
with them traditions which were laid as the foundation of their written
literature, whose influence has been very great on the Jews of the later
Middle Ages. While men received their religious literature directly
through the Hebrew, women could get their ethical instruction only by
means of Judeo-German books. No house was without them, and through them
a certain contact was kept up with the literary German towards which the
authors have never ceased to lean. In the meanwhile the language could
not remain uniform over the wide extent of the Slavic countries, and
many distinct groups have developed there. The various subdialects of
Poland differ considerably from the group which includes the northwest
of Russia, while they resemble somewhat more closely the southern
variety. But nothing of that appears in the printed literature previous
to the beginning of this century. There a great uniformity prevails, and
by giving the Hebrew vowels, or the consonants that are used as such,
the values that they have in the mouths of German Jews, we obtain, in
fact, what appears to be an apocopated, corrupted form of literary
German. The spelling has remained more or less traditional, and though
it becomes finally phonetic, it seems to ascribe to the vowels the
values nearest to those of the mother-language and current in certain
varieties of the Lithuanian group. From this it may be assumed that the
Polish and southern Russian varieties have developed from the
Lithuanian, which probably bears some relation to the historical
migrations into those parts of the quondam Polish kingdom, and this is
made the more plausible from the fact that the vowel changes are
frequently in exact correspondence with the changes in the White
Russian, Polish, and Little Russian. Such a phenomenon of parallelism is
found also in other languages, and in our case may be explained by the
unconscious changes of the Germanic vowels simultaneously with those in
the Slavic words which, having been naturalized in Judeo-German, were
heard and used differently in the new surroundings.
However it may be, the language of the Judeo-German books in the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries is subject to but
slight variations. It is true, the Blitz Bible printed in Amsterdam in
1676 seems to deviate greatly from other similar works, and the uncouth
compound which is found there does, indeed, have all appearances of a
Jargon. It owes its origin to the Polish Jews who but a few years before
had been exiled from more than two hundred and fifty towns[16] and who,
having settled in Holland, began to modify their Judeo-German by
introducing Dutch into it. Although the Bible was intended for Polish
Jews, as is evident by the letters-patent granted by John the Third of
Poland, yet it has never exerted any influence on the dialects in Russia
and Poland, for not one word of Dutch origin can be found in them. This
older stage of the language is even now familiar to the Russian Jewish
women through the 'Zeena Ureena,' the prayer book, and the special
prayers which they recite in Judeo-German, and Jewish writers have
recourse to it whenever they wish to express a prayer, as, for example,
in Abramowitsch's 'Hymns' and 'Saturday Prayers.' This older stage is
known under the name of _Iwre-teutsch_, _Korben-ssider-teutsch_,
_Tchines-teutsch_, thus indicating its proper sphere in lithurgical
works. This form of the language is comparatively free from Hebrew
words.[17] On the other hand, Cabbalistic works become almost unreadable
on account of the prevalence of Semitic over German words.[18]
In the beginning of the nineteenth century a Galician, Minchas Mendel
Lefin, laid the foundation for the use of the vernacular for literary
purposes.[19] This example was soon followed by the writers in Russia
who became acquainted with German culture through the followers of the
Mendelssohnian School at Lemberg, who comprise nearly all the authors
from Ettinger to Abramowitsch, most of whom wrote in some southern
dialect. The language of these abounds in a large number of idiomatic
expressions for which one would in vain look in the older writings;
words of Slavic origin that were familiar in everyday life were freely
introduced, and an entirely new diction superseded that of the past
century. At first their spelling was quite phonetic. But soon their
leaning towards German literature led them into the unfortunate mistake
of introducing German orthography for their dialect, so that it now is
frequently impossible to tell from the form of a word how it may have
been pronounced. Add to this the historical spelling of the Hebrew and
the phonetic of the Slavic words, and one can easily imagine the chaos
that prevails in the written language. And yet it must not be supposed
that Judeo-German stands alone in this. The same difficulty and
confusion arises in all those tongues in which the historical continuity
has been broken. Thus Modern Greek is spelled as though it were Ancient
Greek, with which it has hardly any resemblance in sound, while
Bulgarian is still wavering between a phonetic, a Russian, and an Old
Slavic orthography. Similar causes have produced similar results in
Judeo-German.
There is no linguistic norm in the language as now used for literary
purposes. The greater number of the best authors write in slightly
varying dialects of Volhynia; but the Lithuanian variety is also well
represented, and of late Perez has begun to write in his Polish
vernacular.[20] German influence began to show itself early, and it
affected not only the spelling, but also the vocabulary of the early
writers in Lithuania. Dick looked upon Judeo-German only as a means to
lead his people to German culture, and his stories are written in a
curious mixture in which German at times predominates. This evil
practice, which in Dick may be excused on the ground that it served him
only as a means to an end, has come to be a mannerism in writers of the
lower kind, such as Schaikewitsch, Seiffert, and their like. The
scribblers of that class have not only corrupted the literature but also
the language of the Jews.
Various means have been suggested by the writers for the enrichment of
the Judeo-German vocabulary. Some lovers of Hebrew have had the bad
taste to propose the formation of all new words on a Semitic basis, and
have actually brought forth literary productions in that hybrid
language. Others again have advised the introduction of all foreign
words commonly in use among other nations. But the classical writers,
among whom Abramowitsch is foremost, have not stopped to consider what
would be the best expedient, but have coined words in conformity with
the spirit of their dialect, steering a middle course between the
extremes suggested by others. In America, where the majority of the
writers knew more of German than their native vernacular, the literary
dialect has come to resemble the literary German, and the English
environment has caused the infusion of a number of English terms for
familiar objects. But on the whole the language of the better writers
differs in America but little from that of their former home. There is,
naturally, a large divergence to be found in the language, which ranges
from the almost pure German of the prayers and, in modern times, of the
poems of Winchevsky, to the language abounding in Russicisms of
Dlugatsch, and in Hebraisms of Linetzki, from the pure dialects of the
best writers to the corrupt forms of Dick and Meisach, and the even
worse Jargon of Seiffert, but in all these there is no greater variety
than is to be found in all newly formed languages.[21] The most recent
example of such variety is furnished by the Bulgarian, where the writers
of the last fifty years have wavered between the native dialects with
their large elements of Turkish and Greek origin, a purified form of the
same, from which the foreign infection has been eliminated, approaches
to the Old Slavic of a thousand years ago, and, within the last few
years, a curious mixture with the literary Russian. Judeo-German not
only does not suffer by such a comparison, but really gains by it, for
all the best writers have uniformly based their diction on their native
dialects.
In former days Judeo-German was known only by the name of
_Iwre-teutsch_, or _Jüdisch-teutsch_. Frequently such words were used as
_Mame-loschen_ (Mother-tongue), or _Prost-jüdisch_ (Simple Yiddish), but
through the efforts of the disciples of the Haskala (Reform), the
designation of _Jargon_ has been forced upon it; and that appellation
has been adopted by later writers in Russia, so that now one generally
finds only this latter form as the name of the language used by the
writers in Russia. The people, however, speak of their vernacular as
_Jüdisch_, and this has given rise in England and America to the word
_Yiddish_ for both the spoken and written form. It is interesting to
note that originally the name had been merely _Teutsch_ for the language
of the Jews, for they were conscious of their participation with the
Germans in a common inheritance. Reminiscences of that old designation
are left in such words as _verteutschen_, 'to translate,' _i.e._ to do
into German, and _steutsch_, 'how do you mean it?' contracted from _is
teutsch?_ 'how is that in German?'
The main differences between Judeo-German[22] and the mother-tongue are
these: its vocalism has undergone considerable change, varying from
locality to locality; the German unaccented final _e_ has, as in other
dialects of German, disappeared; in declensional forms, the genitive has
almost entirely disappeared, while in the Lithuanian group the dative
has also coincided with the accusative; in the verb, Judeo-German has
lost almost entirely the imperfect tense; the order of words is more
like the English than the German. These are all developments for which
parallels can be adduced from the region of Frankfurt. Judeo-German is,
consequently, not an anomaly, but a natural development.