Linguistic outcomes of a Hasidic renewal: The case of Skver (original) (raw)
Related papers
Phonetic Contrast in New York Hasidic Yiddish Vowels: Language Contact, Variation, and Change
2021
This study analyzes the acoustic correlates of the length contrast in New York Hasidic Yiddish (HY) peripheral vowels /i/, /u/, and /a/, and compares them across four generations of native speakers for evidence of change over time. HY vowel tokens are also compared to English vowels produced by the New York-born speakers to investigate the influence of language contact on observed changes. Additionally, the degree to which individual speakers orient towards or away from the Hasidic community is quantified via an ethnographically informed survey to examine its correlation with /u/-fronting, a sound change that is widespread in the non-Hasidic English-speaking community. The data for this study consist of audio segments extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with fifty-seven New York-born speakers representing three generations; and from recordings of Holocaust testimonies by thirteen survivors from the Transcarpathian region of Eastern Europe, the ancestral homeland of most contem...
Outcomes of language contact in New York Hasidic Yiddish
2021
Hasidic Yiddish (HY), brought to the U.S. by post-Holocaust immigrants, is<br> currently the native language of five generations of bilingual speakers in New York.<br> In this new contact setting, a unified variety is emerging, which has diverged from<br> its Eastern European Yiddish parent dialect(s). The present study is a bilingual<br> comparison whose aim is to examine, for a subset of HY and English vowels, how early<br> HY-English bilinguals organize their phonetic system(s), and to explore the degree<br> and direction of cross-linguistic influence. To that end, 24 early HY-English<br> bilinguals, eight per generation (starting with Gen2, the children of immigrants), were<br> recorded reading monosyllabic HY and English CVC words containing the vowels<br> /i, ɪ, u, ʊ, a/ (approximately 100 tokens per speaker, ten of each vowel). Pillai scores<br> were calculated for each vowel category by generational group to measure...
Chapter 3 Outcomes of language contact in New York Hasidic Yiddish
2021
Hasidic Yiddish (HY), brought to the U.S. by post-Holocaust immigrants, is currently the native language of five generations of bilingual speakers in New York. In this new contact setting, a unified variety is emerging, which has diverged from its Eastern European Yiddish parent dialect(s). The present study is a bilingual comparison whose aim is to examine, for a subset of HY and English vowels, how early HY-English bilinguals organize their phonetic system(s), and to explore the degree and direction of cross-linguistic influence. To that end, 24 early HY-English bilinguals, eight per generation (starting with Gen2, the children of immigrants), were recorded reading monosyllabic HY and English CVC words containing the vowels /i, ɪ, u, ʊ, a/ (approximately 100 tokens per speaker, ten of each vowel). Pillai scores were calculated for each vowel category by generational group to measure the extent of overlap in the category by language. For /u/, Pillai scores were calculated separatel...
Innovations in the Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish pronominal system
Innovations in the Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish pronominal system, 2021
Although under existential threat in the secular world, Yiddish continues to be a native and daily language for Haredi (Hasidic and other strictly Orthodox) communities, with Hasidic speakers comprising the vast majority of these. Historical and demographic shifts, specifically in the post-War period, in the population of speakers have led to rapid changes in the language itself. These developments are so far-reaching and pervasive that we consider the variety spoken by today’s Haredi speakers to be distinct, referring to it as Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish. This chapter presents a study involving 29 native Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish speakers, and demonstrates that significant changes have occurred in the personal pronoun, possessive, and demonstrative systems. Specifically, the personal pronoun system has undergone significant levelling in terms of case and gender marking, but a distinct paradigm of weak pronominal forms exists, independent possessives have lost case and grammatical gender distinctions completely, and a new demonstrative pronoun has emerged which exhibits a novel case distinction.
This article discusses why and how English was able to turn into a contemporary Jewish language among Yiddish-speaking American Hasidic Jews, in marked contrast to Israeli Hebrew (IH), which has not been similarly adjusted. One reason is that communal attitudes towards English are not as ideologically charged as compared to the " zealous " opposition to IH. Another reason is that English is able to undergo phonological and lexical modifications that enable Hasidic English to function as an ethnolect used within the community. This process, however, is linguistically more complex for IH, which thus remains an outsider language among Israeli Yiddish-speaking Haredim. The outsider status of IH versus the insider status of Hasidic English is reflected in the code-switching patterns attested among Yiddish public speakers, resulting in a common and effortless pattern of Yiddish-English switching among American speakers, as opposed to rare and marked instances of switches to IH among Israeli speakers.
Contentious partners: Yiddish and Hebrew in Haredi Israel
This article is a study in language competition and language shift drawing upon the circumstances of Israeli Haredi society. In this complex, multi-faceted setting, two languages have been continued äs heritage languages. Hebrew äs "holy tongue" and also äs revived everyday language competes with Yiddish, a language that connects this population to their Ashkenazi roots. Language domain is at issue in vernacularfunctions, and the roles of Community andsanctity are key to language maintenance and vitality while perpetuating vernacular uses of Yiddish. Countervailing forces are at play resulting in language shift and shifting role of dialects in Yiddish.
Non-Vernacular Language in Action: Ashkenazic Hebrew in 21st-Century Diaspora Hasidic Communities
Non-Vernacular Language in Action: Ashkenazic Hebrew in 21st-Century Diaspora Hasidic Communities, 2024
This article is devoted to the role of contemporary Ashkenazic Hebrew in Hasidic communities in English-speaking countries, presented within a theoretical framework that we refer to as internal diglossia and external bilingualism. It has typically been believed that Ashkenazic Hebrew, the historical variety of Hebrew used in Central and Eastern European Jewish communities in a diglossic situation alongside the vernacular Yiddish, fell out of use in the first half of the 20th century and was replaced by either the co-territorial majority languages, or by Israeli Hebrew as a language of both speech and writing. However, contrary to this widespread assumption, the traditional Eastern European form of Hebrew continues to thrive as a productive written language alongside Yiddish and English in Hasidic communities. This 21st-century Ashkenazic Hebrew has its own linguistic features that differ significantly from Israeli Hebrew (Kahn and Yampolskaya 2022). The article examines the acquisition and use of contemporary Ashkenazic Hebrew among men and women in Hasidic communities as well as user attitudes to the language in terms of gender, social status, and holiness.