Slavic words in Yiddish

[Petr Jan Vins]

The recent discussion about Hebrew/Aramaic component in Jewish
languages brings me to a similar question I am dealing with already
for some time - are you aware of any systematical (lexicological or
other) publication on the Slavic vocabulary in Jewish languages
(Yiddish in particular)? During the last few years I collected my own
list of a few hundred words of Polish, Ukrainian, Russian or other
Slavic (Czech, Ruthenian, etc.) origin, but I never came across any
systematical study of this segment of Yiddish vocabulary, despite the
fact that it is a very interesting topic indeed.
If you know any work on this topic, I would very much appreciate even
a hint.

Petr Jan Vins
Charles University Prague (CZ) & University of Bern (CH)

[Sarah Benor]

Petr,

You might want to check the work of Paul Wexler, who has written a great deal about the Slavic influences (lexical, morphosyntactic, etc.) on Yiddish. He has collected much of his work (including several articles on this topic) in a book:

 

Wexler, Paul. 2006. Jewish and Non-Jewish Creators of ‘Jewish’ Languages with Special Attention to Judaized Arabic, Chinese, German, Greek, Persian, Portuguese, Slavic (Modern Hebrew/Yiddish), Spanish, and Karaite, and Semitic Hebrew/Ladino: A Collection of Reprinted Articles from Across Four Decades with a Reassessment. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

 

Sarah

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[Joshua Lebenswerd]

[corrected version]

Since we're on this subject, i wonder where modern hebrew got ג'וק [ʤuk] 'cockroach' from.
All the languages below pronounce it [ʒuk], and the phoneme [ʒ] does exist in Hebrew.
Do you know of any other, local, slavic/yiddish pronunciations with [ʤ]?

'beetle'
Yiddish זשוק
Russian жук
Ukrainian жук
Belarusian жук
Polish żuk

All pronounced with a voiced palato-alveolar fricative [ʒ]. 

On 7 dec 2011, at 18:02, Tsvi Sadan wrote:

[corrected version]

Wexler, Paul. 2006. *Jewish and Non-Jewish Creators of ‘Jewish’

Languages with Special Attention to Judaized Arabic, Chinese, German,

Greek, Persian, Portuguese, Slavic (Modern Hebrew/Yiddish), Spanish,

and Karaite, and Semitic Hebrew/Ladino: A Collection of Reprinted

Articles from Across Four Decades with a Reassessment*. Wiesbaden:

Harrassowitz Verlag.

I agree with Sarah that this is a very important collection of studies
for every student of Jewish languages. Though I have a print version of
the book, I'd also love to have it digitally.

Paul, any chance of pursuading the publisher to prepare a digital
version of this important book of yours?

Tsvi

[AMR]

I personally don't.  It seems to me that this COULD be an example of a hypercorrection, though of course this is a guess.  The phenomenon I have in mind is one where some sound (or a given sound in a given position at least) is associated with foreignness or with some particular foreign language and then it is used in places where it doesn't belong.  Exx. include accent on other than the penult in polish, which is used in russian words or names that in fact have penultimate accent in russian, or the use of zh for correct (and earlier this was used in english too) dzh in foreign names and words in current english, e.g., raj or rajiv.  so if initial or any dzh was felt to be foreign by yiddish speakers they could easily have put into a slavic word with zh.

[Paul Glasser]

Makes sense. I've read that the reason the English word "tomato" ends in "o" (unlike in any other language I can think of) is because English speakers thought that final –o sounded more Spanish, even though the Spanish word is "tomate."
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[Tsvi Sadan]

> It seems to me that this COULD be an example of a hypercorrection,
> though of course this is a guess. The phenomenon I have in mind is
> one where some sound (or a given sound in a given position at least)
> is associated with foreignness or with some particular foreign
> language and then it is used in places where it doesn't belong.

In principle I agree with you. But I just wonder how you explain the
fact that both voiced post-alveolar affricate and voiced post-alveolar
fricative are foreign in the inventory of phonemes in Modern Hebrew.

I don't think the former is perceived less foreign than the latter in
Modern Hebrew.

TS

[Tamas Biro]

Are they really perceived foreign by non-linguist, non-religious, etc.
native speakers? I remember when we did a "fieldwork" with an Israeli
student studying veterinary studies in Hungary, and who did not consider
tsh, dzh and zh any less part of the Israeli (Hebrew) sound system than
the "traditional" sounds.

Tamas

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[Tsvi Sadan]

> Are they really perceived foreign by non-linguist, non-religious,
> etc. native speakers?

This is my impression about their perception, though I haven't done any
systematic fieldwork. But even without any fieldwork you can see their
phonological behavior is different from that of other native phonemes.

By the way, I don't understand why being non-religious is relevant here.

> I remember when we did a "fieldwork" with an Israeli student
> studying veterinary studies in Hungary, and who did not consider tsh,
> dzh and zh any less part of the Israeli (Hebrew) sound system than
> the "traditional" sounds.

What only one informant living in a foreign land said remains rather
anecdotal and proves nothing, especially if you made a direct question
such as whether he considered these consonants foreign.

TS

[Tamas Biro]

On Fri, 9 Dec 2011, Tsvi Sadan wrote:

>> Are they really perceived foreign by non-linguist, non-religious,
>> etc. native speakers?
>
> This is my impression about their perception, though I haven't done any
> systematic fieldwork. But even without any fieldwork you can see their
> phonological behavior is different from that of other native phonemes.

Sounds interesting. Do you have specific examples of different
phonological behaviour?

For instance, what would be a hitpael of a verb derived from "tshiktshak"?
Would there be metathesis?

> By the way, I don't understand why being non-religious is relevant here.

May be irrelevant and I am not surprised you ask this question :). I was
thinking that someone who is exposed to pre-modern texts on a daily basis
from early childhood, and whose (linguistic and other) values are
determined by a conservative acceptance of the (linguistic and other)
models mirrored by those texts may be more sensible to this issue. A
linguistically less conscious chiloni may never have realized that these
sounds never appear in Hebrew texts before the 20th century (with the
exception of foreign words).

>> I remember when we did a "fieldwork" with an Israeli student
>> studying veterinary studies in Hungary, and who did not consider tsh,
>> dzh and zh any less part of the Israeli (Hebrew) sound system than
>> the "traditional" sounds.
>
> What only one informant living in a foreign land said remains rather
> anecdotal and proves nothing, especially if you made a direct question
> such as whether he considered these consonants foreign.

I fully agree, even if in other respects he fully confirmed our
expectations.

Best,

Tamas

[Joshua Lebenswerd]

Since i am currently investigating the yiddish imprint on modern
hebrew phonology, i might share some of my conclusions.

First of all, as i have stated before, i will only discuss what is
called "general hebrew", itself a continuation of what Blanc called
ashkenazoid hebrew.
In a time when no native hebrew speakers existed, ashkenazoid hebrew
was probably entirely founded on yiddish phonology and phonetics (just
like the ashkenazic hebrew reading tradition).
Since hebrew became nativized, some development might have occurred,
but from the starting point of yiddish phonology.
The phonemes which are being referred to here as "foreign" is so only
in the context of being extra-hebraic.
However, they have phonemic status in hebrew, as opposed to other "non-
foreign" segments such as uvular voiceless plosive [q] quf.
The foreignness can't be discussed from a biblical hebrew perspective.
Since ʧ, ʒ, ʤ and ʦ (ʦ for that matter also foreign to biblical hebrew
phonology) are inherited from yiddish, there were never a period in
the history of modern hebrew when they weren't part of the phonemic
inventory.
It is true that they only occur in words of extra-hebraic origin (not
counting ʤ as an allophone of ʃ), but they are not foreign in the
sense they are for instance in my native swedish.
Many people in sweden would pronounce James as [yeyms] and Charles as
[ʃa:ls], and only people who makes an effort would try to approximate
the english pronunciation would say it differently. Also [z] is
foreign to swedes, who turn it into [s]. Many swedes would say /ma se/
instead of /ma ze/ when speaking hebrew. Just as much as that doesnt
make sense to a hebrew native, would a swedish /ʃuk/ for /ʤuk/ (a
minimal pair) not make sense.

ʧ, ʤ, ʒ and ʦ are not foreign. And unless we find more proof of
confusion between ʒ and ʤ we might have to assume a different cause.
Maybe in some dialect of the exporting language it was called ʤuk and
not ʒuk. Its not inconceivable.