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Soviet Yiddish
Language-Planning and Linguistic Development
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This is the first comprehensive study of Yiddish in the former Soviet Union. A chronicle of orthographic and other reformsfrom the state of the language in pre-Revolutionary Russia, through active language-planning in the 1920s and 1930s, repression, and subsequent developments up to the 1980sis recreated from contemporary publications and archival materials. Later chapters draw on the author's own experience as a Yiddish writer and lexicographer in Moscow. At a time when the Bolshevik party's Jewish sections held an influential position, Yiddish attained a functional diversity without precede...
This is the first comprehensive study of Yiddish in the former Soviet Union. A chronicle of orthographic and other reformsfrom the state of the language in pre-Revolutionary Russia, through active language-planning in the 1920s and 1930s, repression, and subsequent developments up to the 1980sis recreated from contemporary publications and archival materials. Later chapters draw on the author's own experience as a Yiddish writer and lexicographer in Moscow. At a time when the Bolshevik party's Jewish sections held an influential position, Yiddish attained a functional diversity without precedent in its history; but underlying contradictions between ideas expressed in the slogans `Proletarians of all countries, unite!' and `The right of nations to self-determination' led to extremes in language-planning. A golden mean was achieved after the 1934 Yiddish language conference in Kiev. Using contemporary literary works as a source of linguistic and sociolinguistic information, Gennady Estraikh charts the development of the resultant variety of the language, `Soviet Yiddish'; the effects of severe repression in the late 1930s and 1940s; and the subsequent decline in usage. Comparisons are drawn between Soviet Yiddish language-planning and concurrent reforms in Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and German; and the features and types of Soviet Yiddish word-formation are analysed, notably univerbation, or compressing a phrase into one word.
Review quote:
Yiddish continues to interest both linguists and those among Russian Jews who prefer to stay in the country without being completely assimilated. Whether they will create another spoken variety of Yiddish or the Yiddish of their ancestors will be studied as a dead language, one thing is clear enough: no student of Soviet/Russian Yiddish will be able to do without Estraikh's book (Studies in Language)
Estraikh's book is a timely publication, especially valuable since its author relies not only on a very comprehensive bibliography but also on first-hand information resulting from his (grand-)parents' experience, as well as his own (Studies in Language)
I am impressed by the archival research that Gennady Estraikh put into his book and the care he has taken with his exposition. There is much here of interest and usefulness for sociolinguists of every variety (Language in Society)
The differences in orthography and spelling strike the eye first, and Estraikh deals with these matters at length in Soviet Yiddish; but his richly detailed and thoroughly documented account of every aspect of Soviet Yiddish shows that the visual eccentricities were the tip of the iceberg, and what a complex and absorbing a history there is here for the linguist, the sociolinguist, and the student of the politics of language (Language in Society)
This is the first comprehensive study of Yiddish in the former Soviet Union. A chronicle of orthographic and other reforms from the state of the language in pre-Revolutionary Russia, through active language-planning in the 1920s and 1930s, repression, and subsequent developments up to the 1980s is recreated from contemporary publications and archival materials. Soviet Yiddish language-planning is compared with concurrent reforms in Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and German; and the features and types of Soviet Yiddish word-formation are analysed.
Review quote:
Yiddish continues to interest both linguists and those among Russian Jews who prefer to stay in the country without being completely assimilated. Whether they will create another spoken variety of Yiddish or the Yiddish of their ancestors will be studied as a dead language, one thing is clear enough: no student of Soviet/Russian Yiddish will be able to do without Estraikh's book (Studies in Language)
Estraikh's book is a timely publication, especially valuable since its author relies not only on a very comprehensive bibliography but also on first-hand information resulting from his (grand-)parents' experience, as well as his own (Studies in Language)
I am impressed by the archival research that Gennady Estraikh put into his book and the care he has taken with his exposition. There is much here of interest and usefulness for sociolinguists of every variety (Language in Society)
The differences in orthography and spelling strike the eye first, and Estraikh deals with these matters at length in Soviet Yiddish; but his richly detailed and thoroughly documented account of every aspect of Soviet Yiddish shows that the visual eccentricities were the tip of the iceberg, and what a complex and absorbing a history there is here for the linguist, the sociolinguist, and the student of the politics of language (Language in Society)
This is the first comprehensive study of Yiddish in the former Soviet Union. A chronicle of orthographic and other reforms from the state of the language in pre-Revolutionary Russia, through active language-planning in the 1920s and 1930s, repression, and subsequent developments up to the 1980s is recreated from contemporary publications and archival materials. Soviet Yiddish language-planning is compared with concurrent reforms in Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and German; and the features and types of Soviet Yiddish word-formation are analysed.