Jüdische Studien - Sprache
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The paper discusses the request of the Jewish Middle/ Middle-East-European immigrants for images, impressions, feelings and memories from their native lands, which Aaron Lebedeff masterfully captured in his American-Jewish musicals. The paper focuses on multiculturalism and multilingualism in overlapping regions of extended cultural areas, particularly in territories along the borders of Middle/Middle-East-European states, which don’t form any abrupt cultural barriers. Using the example of a in our time in Jewish milieus worldwide frequently played quadrilingual song from Aaron Lebedeff about Romania (with the German translation of the complete version from 1925), the paper conveys the role of Yiddish as a major dialect of the German as a worldwide carrier of this language as well.
The first Conference for the Yiddish Language of 1908 was a highly significant event in the history of Yiddish language and culture, which became known in the literature as the Czernowitz Language Conference [Yidd. „di konferents far der yidisher shprakh“]. This conference was held in the city of Czernowitz from August 30 to September 3 and united prominent representatives of the worldwide Yiddish movement and, thus, triggered a significant impulse to the development of an energetic Yiddishspeaking constellation. The conference manifested awareness of the importance of Yiddish language and culture as a breeding ground for the survival of traditional “(Eastern) Jewish” values. Within this framework the debates regarding the cultivation of the Yiddish language have been intensified through reflective and resolute actions with the aim of releasing it from the stigma of jargon.
The merchant language of the Georgian Jews deserves scholarly attention for several reasons. The political and social developments of the last fifty years have caused the extinction of this very interesting form of communication, as most Georgian Jews have emigrated to Israel. In a natural interaction, the type of language described in this article can be found very rarely, if at all. Records of this communication have been preserved in various contexts and received different levels of scholarly attention. Our interest concerns the linguistic aspects as well as the classification.
In the following paper we argue that the specific merchant language of Georgian Jews belongs to the pragmatic phenomenon of “very indirect language.” The use of mostly Hebrew lexemes in Georgian conversation leads to an unfounded assumption that the speakers are equally competent in Hebrew and Georgian. It is reported that a high level of linguistic competence in Hebrew does not guarantee understanding of the Jewish merchant language. In the Georgian context, the decisive factors are membership in the professional interest group of merchants and residential membership in the Jewish community. These factors seem to be equivalent, because Jewish members of other professional groups (and those from outside the particular urban residential area) have difficulties in following the language that are similar to those of the Georgian majority. We describe the pragmatic structure of interactions conducted with the help of the merchant language and take into account the purpose of the language’s use or the intention of the speakers. Relevant linguistic examples are analysed and their sociocultural contexts explained.