Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface and acknowledgments
- Glossary
- 1 Is Hebrew an endangered language?
- 2 The emergence of Hebrew
- 3 Hebrew–Aramaic bilingualism and competition
- 4 Three languages in Hellenistic and Roman Palestine
- 5 From statehood to Diaspora
- 6 The Arabian and African connections
- 7 The spread of Islam
- 8 The Jews of France
- 9 The Jews of Spain and their languages
- 10 Loter-Ashkenaz and the creation of Yiddish
- 11 The Yavanic area: Greece and Italy
- 12 Jews in Slavic lands
- 13 Linguistic emancipation and assimilation in Europe
- 14 Britain, its former colonies, and the New World
- 15 Islam and the Orient
- 16 The return to Zion and Hebrew
- Appendix Estimated current status of Jewish languages1
- Notes
- References
- Index
12 - Jews in Slavic lands
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface and acknowledgments
- Glossary
- 1 Is Hebrew an endangered language?
- 2 The emergence of Hebrew
- 3 Hebrew–Aramaic bilingualism and competition
- 4 Three languages in Hellenistic and Roman Palestine
- 5 From statehood to Diaspora
- 6 The Arabian and African connections
- 7 The spread of Islam
- 8 The Jews of France
- 9 The Jews of Spain and their languages
- 10 Loter-Ashkenaz and the creation of Yiddish
- 11 The Yavanic area: Greece and Italy
- 12 Jews in Slavic lands
- 13 Linguistic emancipation and assimilation in Europe
- 14 Britain, its former colonies, and the New World
- 15 Islam and the Orient
- 16 The return to Zion and Hebrew
- Appendix Estimated current status of Jewish languages1
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Where did they come from?
There are two conflicting views of Jews in Slavic lands. The standard view, supported by most scholars, goes like this. Starting with the First Crusade, in 1096, Jews in Spain, France, and Italy suffered regularly from periodic pogroms and other persecutions, and were from time to time expelled from the towns and countries in which they lived. This pressure for migration continued for several hundred years, and, with no outlet to the west yet available, the obvious direction was to the east, through Loter (which was the foundation of Ashkenaz), into the countries that were now largely occupied by the Slavic peoples – Indo-Europeans who had moved into the region from the sixth century (see Map 9). One of the linguistic effects of this migration was the addition to the Jewish repertoire of varieties of Slavic, identified in Jewish linguistics as Knaanic. The term is a pun on the word “Slav” as slave, and the biblical category of Canaanite slaves. Knaanic, as some linguists following Solomon Birnbaum call it, was eventually replaced by Yiddish.
The alternative view is that there was only a comparatively small and temporary eastern migration, followed rapidly by a return to Loter. In this view, the bulk of Jews in eastern Europe either were there already, perhaps local converts (the Sorbian and Ukrainian hypothesis), or came from the Caucasus or Persia (including the Khazarian theory). In either event, we are left with the question of how Knaanic or other Slavic varieties were so completely replaced by Yiddish.
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- Information
- The Languages of the JewsA Sociolinguistic History, pp. 171 - 189Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014