Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:49:19.213Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language Shift Revisited. Linguistic Repertoires of Jews in Low German-Speaking Germany in the Early 20th Century: Insights from the LCAAJ Archive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2018

Gertrud Reershemius
Gertrud Reershemius*
Affiliation:
Aston University
*
School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK, [[email protected]]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper analyzes the linguistic repertoires of Jews in the Low German-speaking areas in the first decades of the 20th century, as a contribution to historical sociolinguistics. Based on fieldwork questionnaires held in the archives of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ), it addresses the question of whether the Jewish minorities spoke a supralectal form of standard German or Koiné forms of dialects, relating this to issues of language shift from Western Yiddish. The study shows that many Jews living in northern Germany during the 1920s and 1930s still had access to a multilingual repertoire containing remnants of Western Yiddish; that a majority of the LCAAJ interviewees from this area emphasized their excellent command of standard German; and that their competence in Low German varied widely, from first language to no competence at all, depending on the region where they lived.*

Keywords

Western YiddishLow Germanlinguistic repertoireslanguage shiftsuccessor lects
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 134 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Albert, Christian. 2000. Parenthesen als syntaktisches Charakteristikum des Israel-Corpus. Betten & Du-nour 2000, 311–337.Google Scholar
Althaus, Hans-Peter. 2002. Mauscheln. Ein Wort als Waffe. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2010. Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14. 159–183.Google Scholar
Betten, Anne (ed.). 1995. Sprachbewahrung nach der Emigration—Das Deutsch der 20er Jahre in Israel. Teil 1: Transkripte und Tondokumente. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Betten, Anne. 2000a. “Vielleicht sind wir wirklich die einzigen Erben der Weimarer Kultur.” Einleitende Bemerkungen zur Forschungshypothese “Bildungsbürgerdeutsch in Israel” und zu den Beiträgen dieses Bandes. Betten & Du-nour 2000, 157–181.Google Scholar
Betten, Anne. 2000b. Satzkomplexität, Satzvollständigkeit und Normbewusstsein. Zu syntaktischen Besonderheiten des Israel-Corpus. Betten & Du-nour 2000, 217–270.Google Scholar
Betten, Anne, & Du-nour, Miryam (eds.). 2000. Sprachbewahrung nach der Emigration—Das Deutsch der 20er Jahre in Israel. Teil II: Analysen und Dokumente. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, & Backus, Ad. 2011. Repertoires revisited: “Knowing language” in superdiversity. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies 67. 1–26.Google Scholar
Busch, Brigitta. 2012. The linguistic repertoire revisited. Applied Linguistics 33. 503–523.Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 2003. Dynamic of language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishman, Joshua. 1989. Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Fishman, Joshua. 1991. Reversing language shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Fleischer, Jürg. 2004. The sociolinguistic setting of Swiss Yiddish and the impact on its grammar. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 10. 89–102.Google Scholar
Fleischer, Jürg. 2005. Surbtaler und Hegauer Jiddisch. Tonaufnahmen und Texte zum Westjiddischen in der Schweiz und Südwestdeutschland. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freimark, Peter. 1979. Language behaviour and assimilation: The situation of the Jews in Northern Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 24. 157–177.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 1979. Language shift: Social determinants of linguistic change in bilingual Austria. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gertz, Janet. 2008. Audio preservation and the LCAAJ archive at Columbia University. Herzog, Kiefer, Neumann, Putschke, & Sunshine 2008, 59–69.Google Scholar
Gold, David. 1984. “Gentlemen, we know more Yiddish than we admit.” (On Werner Weinberg's Die Reste des Jüdischdeutschen.) Jewish Language Review 4. 77–123.Google Scholar
Guggenheim-Grünberg, Florence. 1954. The horse dealers’ language of the Swiss Jews in Endingen and Lengnau. The field of Yiddish. Studies in Yiddish language, folklore, and literature, ed. by Weinreich, Uriel, 48–62. New York, NY: The Linguistic Circle of New York.Google Scholar
Guggenheim-Grünberg, Florence. 1958. Zur Phonologie des Surbtaler Jiddischen. Phonetica 2. 86–108.Google Scholar
Guggenheim-Grünberg, Florence. 1961. Gailinger Jiddisch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck.Google Scholar
Guggenheim-Grünberg, Florence. 1966. Surbtaler Jiddisch. Frauenfeld: Huber.Google Scholar
Guggenheim-Grünberg, Florence. 1973. Jiddisch auf alemannischem Sprachgebiet. Zürich: Juris.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harshav, Benjamin. 2008. Essay on multilingualism. Herzog, Kiefer, Neumann, Putschke, & Sunshine 2008, 97–118.Google Scholar
Herzog, Marvin, Kiefer, Ulrike, Neumann, Robert, Putschke, Wolfgang, & Sunshine, Andrew (eds.). 2008. Eydes. Evidence of Yiddish documented in European societies. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet, & Meyerhoff, Miriam. 1999. The community of practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in Society 28. 173–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Neil. 1996. On the investigation of 1920s Vienna Jewish speech: Ideology and linguistics. American Journal of Germanic Linguistics & Literatures 8. 177–217.Google Scholar
Jeggle, Utz. 1969. Judendörfer in Württemberg. Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul, & Williams, Ann. 1999. Dialect levelling: Change and continuity in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull. Urban voices. Accent studies in the British Isles, ed. by Fookes, Paul & Docherty, Gerard, 141–162. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Kiefer, Ulrike, & Neumann, Robert. 2008. Der LCAAJ als explorierbares Gedächtnis. Herzog, Kiefer, Neumann, Putschke, & Sunshine 2008, 169–216.Google Scholar
Kossakowski, Astrid. 2000. Satzabbrüche in Gesprächen. Zu den Bedingungen ihres Vorkommens bei einer ansonsten grammatisch sehr normierten Sprechergruppe. Betten & Du-nour 2000, 338–362.Google Scholar
Lässig, Simone. 2000. Sprachwandel und Verbürgerlichung: Zur Bedeutung der Sprache im innerjüdischen Modernisierungsprozess des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts. Historische Zeitschrift 270. 617–667.Google Scholar
LCAAJ (The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry). 1992. Vol. I, Historical and theoretical foundations, ed. by Herzog, Marvin, Baviskar, Vera, Kiefer, Ulrike, Neumann, Robert, Puschke, Wolfgang, Sunshine, Andrew, & Weinreich, Uriel. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
LCAAJ (The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry). 1995. Vol. II, Research tools, ed. by Herzog, Marvin, Baviskar, Vera, Kiefer, Ulrike, Neumann, Robert, Puschke, Wolfgang, Sunshine, Andrew, & Weinreich, Uriel. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
LCAAJ (The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry). 2000. Vol. III, The Eastern Yiddish–Western Yiddish continuum, ed. by Herzog, Marvin, Baviskar, Vera, Kiefer, Ulrike, Neumann, Robert, Puschke, Wolfgang, Sunshine, Andrew, & Weinreich, Uriel. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Lowenstein, Steven. 1969. Results of atlas investigations among Jews of Germany. The field of Yiddish. Studies in language, folklore, and literature. Third collection, ed. by Marvin Herzog, Wita Ravid, & Weinreich, Uriel, 16–35. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowenstein, Steven. 1979. The Yiddish written word in nineteenth-century Germany. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 24. 179–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowenstein, Steven. 1980. The rural community and the urbanisation of German Jewry. Central European History 13. 218–236.Google Scholar
Lowenstein, Steven. 1983. Jewish residential concentration in post-emancipation Germany. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 28. 471–495.Google Scholar
Lowenstein, Steven. 2008. The Language and Culture Atlas—reminiscences and reflections. Herzog, Kiefer, Neumann, Putschke, & Sunshine 2008, 231–240.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 1991. Zur Rekonstruktion des jüdischen Wortschatzes in den Mundarten ehemaliger “Judendörfer” in Südwestdeutschland. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 58. 267–293.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 2010. Romani in Britain. The afterlife of a language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron, Gardner, Hazel, Jones, Charlotte, Schulman, Veronica. 2007. Angloromani: A different kind of language? Anthropological Linguistics 49. 142–164.Google Scholar
Mauser, Peter. 2000. “Überhaupt: Die Sprache hat sich ja sehr geändert.” Beobachtungen zur Flexionsmorphologie an Interviews mit österreichisch-jüdischen Emigranten. Betten & Du-nour 2000, 423–444.Google Scholar
Peters, Robert. 1998. Zur Sprachgeschichte des niederdeutschen Raumes. Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 117. 108–127.Google Scholar
Reershemius, Gertrud. 2007. Die Sprache der Auricher Juden. Zur Rekonstruktion westjiddischer Sprachreste in Ostfriesland. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Reershemius, Gertrud. 2008. Jiddisch—niederdeutsche Sprachbeziehungen in Ost-friesland. Jahrbuch des Vereins für Niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 131. 71–111.Google Scholar
Reershemius, Gertrud. 2014. Language as the main protagonist? East Frisian West Yiddish in the writing of Isaac Herzberg. Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute 59. 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Römer, Nils. 1995. Tradition und Akkulturation: Zum Sprachwandel der Juden in Deutschland zur Zeit der Haskalah. Münster: Waxmann.Google Scholar
Römer, Nils. 2002. Sprachverhältnisse und Identität der Juden in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert. Jüdische Sprachen in deutscher Umwelt: Hebräisch und Jiddisch von der Aufklärung bis ins 20. Jahrhundert, ed. by Brenner, Michael, 11–18. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Schmelz, Usiel. 1989. Die demographische Entwicklung der Juden in Deutschland von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1933. Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute 29. 15–62.Google Scholar
Toury, Jacob. 1983. Die Sprache als Problem der jüdischen Einordnung im deutschen Kulturraum. Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte der Universität Tel Aviv, Beiheft 4. 75–96.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Werner. 1973. Die Reste des Jüdischdeutschen. 2nd edn. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.Google Scholar
Weiss, Andreas. 2000. Satzverknüpfung in erzählenden Passagen des Israel-Corpus. Betten & Du-nour 2000, 271–310.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. 1953. Languages in contact: Findings and problems. New York, NY: The Linguistic Circle of New York.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. 1962. Multilingual dialectology and the new Yiddish atlas. Anthropological Linguistics 4. 6–22.Google Scholar
Wexler, Paul. 1981. Ashkenazic German. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 30. 119–130.Google Scholar