Wednesday, January 09, 2013

On Yiddish and German, from 1829

Here's an interesting excerpt from a much lengthier multi-part article from 1829, illustrating the differences between Yiddish and German.


















One part of the article gives encouragement to Christians in learning how to read and understand Yiddish literature, which is says would be easier than Rabbinic literature:


























From The Jews, and Jewish Literature in the Christian Review of 1829 (link).

7 comments:

  1. There isn't such a big difference,
    they just blended in some hebrew words into yiddish.

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  2. It's also pronunciation, look closely. It's also not "Yiddish" per se, i.e., not eastern European Yiddish. It's Judeo-German.

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  3. You find it a lot in responsa about Agunot.

    Does anyone know what linz/zins means, I never heard that word in today's yiddish.

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  4. It's a financial term, means interest. It's German. The lamed is a mistake.

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  5. It's quite a mix of Eastern Yiddish, Western Yiddish, hypercorrected Hebrew and Standard German, overemphasising the Hebraisms to make the point, as so often in transcriptions by non-Jews who know too much German and Hebrew and have too much contact with Eastern Jews while living in the West or the Centre.

    Zins - that's not a spelling or printing mistake but a regular צ. If you look at the last letter of וואול, you'll see what the ל looks like in this font.

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  6. צינז is taxes atleast in the (white russian) yiddish I speak

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  7. Now I get it, I did hear some say צאהלען צינזן, which means paying interest.

    I thought interest means like interesting.

    thanks for clarifying.

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