- “Diffusion of Languages and Structural Linguistics,” Romance Philology 6.5–13 (1952/53), p. 7.
- Cf., for instance, Walther Mitzka's dialectological survey of a German-Polish bilingual strip in his Grundzüge nordostdeutscher Sprachgeschichte, Halle/S., Niemeyer, 1937, pp. 89–91.
- Geographie names are cited in their English forms, if such exist, or in the languages of the appropriate countries according to the pre-1939 map. Yiddish place names are omitted, although they represent an interesting subject of study in themselves.
- On the classification of Yiddish dialects, see Max Weinreich, “Yidish,” in Algemeyne yidishe entsiklopedye, supplementary volume Yidn B, pp. 23–90; p. 69.
- Yiddish, German, and Slavic forms are cited in the text in a uniform transcription in which c indicates [ts], j stands for consonantal i, y for a high back or mid unrounded vowel, x for [x]; 'indicates palatalization of the preceding consonant,—stands for vowel length, ∼ for nasality, and non-penultimate stress is marked by an acute accent on the vowel. The sign ∼ represents opposition. Unless otherwise specified, Yiddish examples are cited in their Standard Yiddish form. In the bibliographic references, Yiddish titles are transliterated according to the system of the Yiddish Scientific Institute—Yivo, while Russian and Belorussian titles follow the system of The American Slavic and East European Review.
- This was discovered by T. Gutman[s], “Di konsonantn-asimilatsye in zats,” Filologishe shriftn [fun Yivo] 2.107–10 (1927). The East Slavic-East Polish sandhi system consists of the voicing or unvoicing of final consonants according to the voicednese, if phonemically relevant, of the initial consonant of the following word.
- Mordkhe Veynger, Yidishe dialektologye, Minsk, 1929, pp. 57f. Roman Jakobson, in his trailblazing paper on language affinities (“Sur la théorie des affinités phonologiques entre les langues,” Actes du IVème Congrès international de linguistes [1936], Copenhagen, 1938; reprinted as an appendix to N. S. Troubetzkoy, Principes de phonologie, Paris, Klingsieck, 1949, pp. 351–65), showed (p. 361) that Yiddish also acquired from its Slavic environment a distinction between palatal and non-palatal consonants (e.g. mol ‘paint!’ ∼ moł ‘moth’; nit ‘not’ ∼ ńit ‘brownness of bread or cake crust’). However, the exact phonetic facts of the case remain to be correlated areally with the far from uniform situation in the Slavic languages themselves.
- Cf. Judah A. Joffe, “Der slavisher element in yidish,” Pinkes [fun Amopteyl fun Yivo] 1/2.235–56, 296–312 (1927/28), p. 298. The combinations [dz] and [dž], which occur in Yiddish but rarely, are here analyzed as phoneme clusters. They are, of course, subject to the same confusion: general Yiddish blondžen ‘to have lost one's way’ ∼ undzer ‘our’; sábesdiker losn: blondzen, undzer.
- In Lithuania, the single set was clearly hushing, or intermediate between š and s, with varying degrees of palatality. This can be heard on the dialect records made by Beatrice S. Weinreich in 1948 for the Yiddish Scientific Institute—Yivo in New York (cf. especially Records Li 1–9, Le 1–2, Rus 12, 16, P 3, 7, 46, 59, 63, 64, 66, 74, 81, 87, 107). In northern Belorussia, the single set appears to have had hushing variants before some vowels and hissing variants elsewhere, e.g. zax = [zax], but zibn = [ž'ibm]; see Leyzer Vilenkin, Yidisher shprakhatlas fun Sovetn-farband, Minsk, 1931, maps 67, 68, 72.
- This ad-hoc term is used in the present paper to designate varieties of East European Yiddish not affected by sábesdiker losn, i.e. possessing the opposition between hissing and hushing consonants.
- Litvak, though obviously cognate with Lite (the geographical name meaning Lithuania, in the historical sense), actually denotes a Jew from the northeast of the Yiddish language territory. A gentile Lithuanian is never a litvak, but a litviner.
- Language borders (except Yiddish) according to map in A. Meillet, Les langues dans l'Europe nouvelle, Paris, Payot, 1928; eastern border of Belorussian corrected according to R. I. Avanesov, Očerki russkoj dialektologii I, Moscow, 1949 (map of East Slavic dialects); Yiddish language borders in the east are the outer limits of the pre-1914 Pale of Settlement (Jewish Encyclopedia, New York, Funk and Wagnall, 1905, X, p. 531). Polish mazurzenie after Kazimierz Nitsch, “Dialekty j¸zyka polskiego,” in T. Benni et al., Gramatyka jezyka polskiego, Cracow, 1923, pp. 491ff. (and map); Belorussian cókanje after P. Buzuk, Sproba lingvistyčnaje geografii Belarusi, Minsk, 1928, map 8; Russian cókanje roughly after Avanesov's map and S. A. Koporskij, “Cokanje v kalininskoj oblasti,” Materialy i issledovanija po russkoj dialektologii 3.152–232 (1949). Traces of total sibilant confusion in Belorussian according to sources listed in footnotes 51 and 52. Sábesdiker losn according to sources listed in footnote 68.
- Examples: Germanic—visn ‘to know’, višn ‘to wipe’; ferz (recent) ‘line of verse’, hirž ‘millet’; necn ‘to wet’, kvečn ‘to squeeze’; Slavic—kose ‘scythe’, paše ‘pasture’; zaveruxe ‘snowstorm’, žabe ‘frog’; cełnik ‘haberdashery’, čepen ‘to touch’; Semitic—oser ‘(ritually) forbidden’, košer ‘(ritually) pure (food)’; zokn ‘old man’; core ‘trouble’. Secondary developments resulting from assimilations and contractions produced forms of ultimately Semitic origin like xežbn < xešbn ‘account’, hažgoxe < hažgoxe ‘supervision’, mirčem < mírcešem < im jirce hašém ‘God willing’.
- Loaz may be roughly described as Oldest Judeo-French with a sprinkling of Oldest Judeo-Italian; cf. Max Weinreich, “Yidishkayt and Yiddish: on the Impact of Religion on Language in Ashkenazic Jewry,” Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume, New York, 1953, p. 488.
- For further details, see the paper by M. Weinreich cited in footnote 4, pp. 30f.
- Cf. S. Birnbaum, “The Age of the Yiddish Language,” Transactions of the Philological Society 1939, pp. 31–43; pp. 42f.
- E.g. benčn ‘to bless’, vire ‘ruler’, léjenen ‘to read’.
- The process is not unknown in Yiddish. It was Slavic borrowing, for instance, that established the phonemic distinctions between palatal ľ, ń and alveolar l, n in the language (cf. the examples in footnote 7). On the establishment of new phonemic distinctions as a result of lexical borrowing, see Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact, New York, 1953, p. 27.
- The few exceptions, e.g. šames ‘beadle’ < šammaš or (dialectal) metuštes ‘vague’ < metuštaš, can be explained as dissimilations in Yiddish.
- The Jews of northern France, i.e. the speakers of Loaz, allegedly read šin like ṯaυ(=[θ]?), according to the Provençal Hebrew grammarian and exegete David Qimhi (1160–1235) in his commentary on the shibboleth passage of Judges; cf. Meyer Lambert, “Notes exégétiques,” Revue des études juives 29.146f. (1904).
- In sábesdiker losn, the letter šin is identified, like the three others, with s; however, different degrees of effort to distinguish hissing and hushing sounds in the liturgy must be counted with.
- In addition, Polish palatal ś, ź, ć, dź were as a rule treated as hushing; cf. Polish śedlce (place name) > Yiddish šedlec, xoč ‘although’ > xoč, and so on. In sábesdiker losn, Slavic hissing and hushing sounds are treated alike. The precise development of the oldest Slavisms in Yiddish, like zejde (< Old Czech děd?), remains to be explored.
- This applies to the phonemic structure as a whole. On the other hand, in certain positions, the yield of the opposition was greatly increased by the addition of Slavic and Semitic vocabulary: thus, word-initially, s- and ž- occur frequently, but only in non-Germanic stems.
- This stage differs, in East European Yiddish and in certain present-day dialects of German, from the “classical” New High German form in that initial p has become f (rather than pf), while medial and final pp remain largely unshifted: funt ‘pound’, but epl ‘apple’, top ‘pot’.
- “At the Rhine, the majority of shifted forms already lay [as far north as] the approaches of Cologne around the year 1000” (Adolf Bach, Deutsche Mundartforschung, Heidelberg, Winter, 21950, p. 209). See also Theodor Frings, Grundlegung einer Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, Halle/S., Niemeyer, 11948, p. 26.
- The sounds designated here as ş and s̠ were distinguished in the script respectively as s and z (or a 3-type graph).
- Martin Joos, “The Medieval Sibilants,” Language 28.222–31 (1952), pp. 224, 226.
- Ernst Schwarz, Die germanischen Reibelaute s, f, eh im Deutschen (= Schriften der Deutschen wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft in Reichenberg 1), Reichenberg, 1926, pp. 22ff.
- Anton Mayer, “Zum Alter des Übergangs von sk zu š,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 53.286–90 (1929).
- Cf., for example, Hermann Paul, Deutsche Grammatik, Halle/S., Niemeyer, 1916, I, §220.
- Schwarz, op. cit., p. 24.
- Their possible role in the development of sábesdiker losn is mentioned in §3.5. It would be interesting, moreover, to determine how Hebrew šin was read before sk had changed to š.
- The combination [č] is even rarer in the Germanic component of Yiddish than in German itself (cf. Paul, op. cit., §223), despite its occurrence in several words inherited from Loaz (e.g. benčn ‘to bless’, čolnt < ča·let ‘Sabbath dish cooked on Friday and kept warm overnight in a closed oven’). Most of the occurrences of [č] involve special conditions, such as a morpheme boundary (e.g. henčke ‘glove’ < hant-šuox), affrication after sonants (e.g. menč < menš ‘human being’), or contractions (e.g. tajš ‘meaning, explanation’ < tü·tš ‘German’ < diutisk). For the earlier stages of Yiddish, prior to the addition of the Slavic words with their abundant č's, it is therefore preferable to consider [č] a phoneme cluster, tš, as does Troubetzkoy (op. cit., p. 74) for New High German.
- From the general linguistic point of view, a phonemic system with three series of sibilants of the type which existed in medieval German and Yiddish (and, incidentally, also in some Sorbían dialects) is quite unusual; cf. Troubetzkoy, op. cit., p. 143. It might be worth examining the possibility that the excessively delicate balance of the oppositions was itself a contributing cause of the subsequent rearrangements; cf. André Martinet, “Function, Structure, and Sound Change,” Word 8.1–32 (1952), on the principles involved.
- After short vowels, s had been spelled -33-, but no opposition between -s̠- and -s̠s̠- seems to have existed.
- Sporadically, -s̠ became -z, e.g. špies̠ > špiz ‘spear’; cf. Veynger, op. cit., p. 87.
- The reader will note that with reference to some vowels, “classical” Middle High German forms have been chosen as hypothetical points of departure. In spite of the inconsistency of this procedure, it had to be followed because numerous medieval Yiddish texts have not yet been sufficiently studied phonemically.
- For parallels of this development in Bavarian dialects of German, see Primus Lessiak in Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum, und deutsche Literatur 32.133f. (1908). Incidentally, the multiple phonemic split-up of ṣ was doubtless due to the low or non-existent functional yield of the opposition s̠ ∼ ṣ ∼ š in most positions. Only in the subsequent development of Yiddish did the derivatives of ṣ enter into well burdened oppositions as a result of the addition of Semitic and Slavic elements (for examples, see footnote 40). Individual deviants such as paršójn ‘person’ < perṣo·n(e), nisn ‘tosneeze’(M. H. G. nieṣen), or dejže ‘kneading trough’, which Veynger (op. cit., p. 86) derives from dö·ṣe (cf. J. and W. Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, s. v. Döse), need special explanations.
- Before r, only š seems to have occurred (e.g. šri·ben ‘to write’); before other consonants, only ṣ (e.g. ṣla·fen ‘to sleep’, ṣma·l ‘narrow’, etc.).
- The distribution has been completed by the addition of vocabulary of Semitic and Slavic origin. Examples (G = Germanic, H = Semitic, S = Slavic): (1) H sam ‘poison’, H šabes ‘Saturday’, G zamd ‘sand’, S žabe ‘frog’, G capn ‘bung’, S čate ‘flock’; (2) H svive ‘environment’, G švicn ‘to sweat’, H zvuln ‘Zebulun’, S žvir ‘gravel’, G cvogn ‘to wash (hair)’, S čvok ‘nail’; (3) H girse ‘version’, G karš ‘cherry’, G (recent) ferz ‘line of verse’, G hirž ‘millet’, G harc ‘heart’, S burčen ‘to growl’; (4) G mist ‘dung’, S rešt ‘remainder’, S brazg ‘thud’, H xežbn ‘account’, G icter ‘now’, S počtn ‘rumors’; (5) G nus ‘nut’, G veš ‘wash’, G noz ‘nose’, S až ‘as much as’, G kac ‘cat’, G pač ‘slap’. In the Semitic component of the Sudeten dialect of Yiddish, s- did not normally occur even in modern times (cf. Franz Beranek, “Yidish in Tshekhoslovakay,” Yivo-Bleter 9.63–75 [1936], p. 67); whether this restriction on distribution reflects an older stage of general Yiddish remains to be investi, gated.
- This was the case, for example, in the dialects underlying New High German: kiṣṣen > kisen ‘pillow’.
- A number of earlier linguists, because they considered the problem non-structurally, were led astray into futile disputations by the “quasi-hushing” articulation of ṣ. It should be clear from the above discussion that ṣ is not really relevant to the problem. Arguments based on the quality of this phoneme were used both by defenders of the hypothesis of the internal development of sábesdiker losn, like Mordkhe Veynger (“Vegn yidishe dialektn,” Tsaytshrift far yidisher geshikhte,… shprakh-visnshaft un etnografye [Minsk] 1.181–208 [1926], p. 204) or Viktor Žirmunskij (“O nekotorykh voprosakh jevrejskoj dialektografii,” Jazyk i myšlenie 9.135–45 [1940]; partial Yiddish translation in Yivo-Bleter 19.243–9 [1942], p. 247) and by opponents of the hypothesis, like Nokhem Shtif (“M. Veyngers dialektologishe arbetn,” Di yidishe shprakh [Kiev], nos. 14,15 [1929], esp. pp. 6f. in no. 15) or Noyekh Prilutski (Review of Tsaytshrift 1 in Literarishe bleter [Warsaw], 1928, p. 562). Veynger, for example, was criticized by Shtif for his parallels with a sk > sx > s development in Low German on the grounds that Yiddish-Low German affinities were unlikely. Actually, neither the pros nor the cons of the argument are fully to the point, since the Low German dialectal confusion is not between the ancestors of s̠ and š, but those of ṣ and š.
- Much of the older documentary evidence is quite ambiguous. The šin was widely used in Yiddish to render both s and š, even where a phonemic confusion is out of the question. Systematic distinctions between šin = š and samek = s begin to appear only in the sixteenth century. Cf. Nokhem Shtif's study of 16th-century conditions, “Mikhael Adams dray yidishe bikher,” Filologishe shriften [fun Yivo [2.135–68 (1928), esp. pp. 139–46.
- Most recently by Yudl Mark in his comprehensive study, “Undzer litvisher yidish,” in Lite, ed. M. Sudarsky et al., New York, 1951, I, pp. 429–72; p. 436.
- There is no mention of a š-s confusion in any of the standard works on Lithuanian dialectology (e.g. Alfred Senn, Lithuanian Dialectology, Supplement 1 to The American Slavic and East European Review, 1945; A. Salys, “Kelios postabas tarmių istorijai,” Archivum philologicum [Kaunas] 4.21–34 [1933]). The absence in Lithuanian of a confusion of this type has been explicitly confirmed by Professor Senn in a communication to this writer dated January 8, 1953. The affrication and depalatalization of soft dental stops (T' > c, d' > dz)—a characteristic of the Lithuanian speech of the so-called Dzükai (cf. Senn, op. cit., p. 38)—is a rather different phenomenon. For example, the dialect described monographically by B. Larin (“Materialy po litovskoj dialektologii,” Jazyk i literatura 1.93–170 [1926]) is typically Dzūkish, but shows no signs of a hissing-hushing confusion (p. 107).
- N[okhem] Shtif, “Di dialektologishe ekspeditsye fun der katedre far yidisher kultur,” Di yidishe shprakh (Kiev), no. i (1929), pp. 1–29; pp. 24f.
- Avanesov, op. cit., p. 212; A. Seliščev, “Sokanje i šokanje v slavjanskikh jazykakh,” Slavia 10.718–41 (1931), p. 719.
- As Avanesov puts it (loc. cit.), “we do not have sufficient or reliable sources to evaluate the degree of diffusion of this phenomenon.” See also Seliščev, loc. cit.
- See, for example, Nikolaj Karinskij, Jazyk Pskova i jego oblasti v XV veke (=Zapiski istoriko-filolog. fakul'teta Imper. sankt-peterburgskogo universiteta 93), St. Petersburg, 1909, p. 178.
- Karinskij assigns the hissing-hushing confusion to the North Russian, and not to the Belorussian, “component” of the Pskov dialect. The northern affinities of the confusion are accepted even by A. A. Šakhmatov in his criticism of Karinskij (“Neskol'ko zametok ob jazyke pskovskikh pamjatnikov XIV-XV v.,” reprint from Žurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveščenija n.s. 22.105–77 [1909], p. 175).
- I. Volk-Levonovič, “Ješčë k voprosu o ‘ljašskikh’ čertakh v belorusskoj fonetike,” Slavia 9.500–23 (1930/1), pp. 511f. The Svisloč referred to in this study is apparently the town on the Berezina north of Bobrujsk, not the place south of Grodno. Curiously enough, the town name of Suraž also occurs in the Białystok area and at least twice in eastern Belorussia (near Brjansk and near Vitebsk). The present writer is not aware of any attempt to correlate these and other toponomastic correspondences with the phonemic affinities as possible evidence of Slavic migrations.
- Noted by E. R. Romanov (Materialy po etnografit grodnenskoj gubernii, Vilna, 1912, II) for Gorodisk (Grodzisk) and Velikaja Čorna; by Michał Federowski (Lud bialoruski na Rust litewskiej, Cracow, 1897, I, p. xii) for the Sokółka and Białystok regions (quoted after Jiří Polívka, “Z maloruské dialektologie,” Časopis pro moderní filologit 3.306–9 [1913]). See also Ludwik Czarkowski, “Powiat bielski w gubernii grodzienskiej,” Rocznik Towarzyslwa przyjaciół nauk w Wilnie 1.39–132 (1907), p. 74; Kazimierz Nitsch, op. cit., p. 425; G. O. Vinokur, “Zametki po fonetike odnogo ukrainskogo govora,” Bjuleten' Dialektologičeskogo sektora Instituta russkogo jazyka [Akademii Nauk SSSR] 1.23–42 (1947).
- Thus E. F. Karskij, Materialy dlja izučenija belorusskikh govorov IV (= Sbornik Otdelenija russkogo jazyka i slovesnosti Imper. Akademii nauk 75, no. 5), St. Petersburg, passim; idem, Materialy dlja izučenija malorusskikh govorov [etc.] II (= Sbornik… 75, no. 6), passim; P. A. Rastorgujev, “K voprosu o ljašskikh čertakh v belorusskoj fonetike,” Trudy Postojannoj kommissii po dialektologii russkogo jazyka 9.35–48 (1927), p. 44; Buzuk, op. cit., p. 44.
- It seems that in many cases the confusion affects only hushing and PALATALIZED hissing consonants (e.g. š and s', but not š and s). If that is the case, it could not have been the model for sábesdiker losn in Yiddish. The only work which deals with the problem structurally, viz. Vinokur's (see footnote 52), shows that, though the old š-series in the Bielsk region had indeed been merged with the s-series, a new hushing (derived from the old palatalized hissing) series has been evolved, so that hushing and hissing are again opposed: ľezát ‘they lie’ ∼ vnžát ‘they transport’.
- This thesis is advanced, for example, by Volk-Levonovič (op. cit., pp. 517, 522) and in a somewhat different context by Rastorgujev (op. cit., p. 44). But in the Bielsk area, on the western fringe of Belorussia, the confusion is ascribed by all investigators to local Polish influence. As for the Belorussian north, A. I. Sobolevskij (Russkij filologičeskij vestnik 1886, no. 1) characterized the dialects just south of Pskov (Smolensk, Polock), which are of much greater relevance to Yiddish than Pskov itself, as distinguishing hissing and hushing phonemes in the late Middle Ages, when these sounds were confused in Pskov.
- Advanced by A. A. Šakhmatov (cf., for example, his Vvedenie v kurs istorii russkogo jazyka, Petrograd, 1916, I, pp. 55f., 105, 110f.) and refuted, in an apparently definitive manner, by W. Porzeziński (“Rzekome pierwiastki lechickie w j¸zykach wschodnio- słowiańskich,” Prace filologiczne 10.86–104 [1926]), P. A. Rastorgujev (op. cit.), and T. Lehr-Spławiński (“Stosunki pokrewieństwa j¸zyków ruskich,” Rocznik slawistyczny 9.23–72 [1930]).
- Cf. E. F. Karskij, Belorussy, Warsaw, 1903, I, pp. 139–80; D. K. Zelenin, Velikorusskie govory s neorganičeskim i neperekhodnym smjagčeniem zadnenëbnykh soglasnykh, St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 492.
- The oldest records concerning the Jewish community of Bielsk date from 1487. Surrounding Jewish settlements in the nearby towns of Mielnik, Ciechanowiec, Łosica, and Kamieniec Litewski go back to the first quarter of the sixteenth century, while most settlements to the northeast are of somewhat more recent origin. See Istorija jevrejskogo naroda, Moscow, Mir, 1914, XI, page opposite 112. Cf. also Mark Wischnitzer, “Di geshikhte fun yidn in Lite fun mitl-elter biz der ershter velt-milkhome,” Lite, ed. M. Sudarsky et al., New York, 1951, I, pp. 43–88; p. 62.
- Cf. Nitsch, op. cit., pp. 491f.; or Wenzel Vondrák, Vergleichende slavische Grammatik, Göttingen, 1906, I, pp. 374–7.
- Cf. Wiktor W¸glarz, “Problem t. zw. mazurzenia w świetle fonologii,” Slavia 15.517–24 (1937/8), pp. 517f.
- The principal difference between mazurzenie and sábesdiker losn is that, in the Polish phenomenon, a new hushing phoneme, ž (allophonically also [š] and [č]: [pšez] ‘through’, [čy] ‘three’) has been formed from ř (< r j). However, while in Polish the two developments seem to have been structurally connected (see W¸glarz, op. cit., p. 521f.), the Yiddish ž-less system could still have been produced by imitation of Polish, since no ř existed in Yiddish to give rise to a new ž. Cf. T. Gutman[s], “Tsum goyrl fun poylishn rz in yidish,” Yidishe Filologye [Warsaw] 1. 382–8 (1924).
- Cf. W. Taszycki, Dawność t. zw. mazurzenia w jçzyku polskim, Warsaw, 1948; and the rebuttals by St. Rospond (“Czy mazurzyli Małopolanie na przełomie XV/XYI wieku?” Je̱zyk polski 29.23–7 [1949]) and Kazimierz Nitsch (“Granice mazurzenia w świetle Polski plemiennej,” Biuletyn Polskiego towarzystwa jçzykoznawczego 10.159–63 [1950]).
- “A more substantial growth of the Jewish population in Lithuania is evidenced only about the middle of the fifteenth century, when… Jews from Silesia, Little Poland, and Mazowsze [areas of mazurzenie!] began to migrate to these parts” (Ignacy Schiper, “Rozwój ludności żydowskiej na ziemiach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej,” in Żydzi w Polsce odrodzonej, ed. Schiper et al., Warsaw, [1935], I, 21–36).
- This supposition is bolstered by other linguistic evidence, such as the Bavarian-type second person plural pronouns ets (nominative), enk (oblique), enker (possessive) in the Yiddish of Poland.
- This differentiated reaction to coterritorial phonetics appears in keeping with the varying treatment of sandhi in the two dialects of Yiddish (see §1.2). The loss of distinctive vowel length, at least in Belorussia, contrasted with its preservation in Poland, also accords with the theory of greater receptivity of northeastern Yiddieh to Slavic phonic influence.
- See Mark, op. cit., p. 437.
- Ibid., p. 438.
- Borders of the Yiddish language territory are the outer limits of the pre-1914 Pale of Settlement (cf. footnote 12). Isoglosses in the Soviet part of the area are according to Vilenkin, op. cit., maps 66, 69, 71; in the Polish and Lithuanian parts of the region, they are extended according to indications by Veynger, Yidishe dialektologye (see footnote 7), p. 131. Traces of the confusion in the Suwałki area according to Mark, op. cit., p. 443. Sources concerning Courland are cited in footnotes 75 and 77.
- Mark, op. cit., p. 438.
- Mordkhe Veynger, “Vegn yidishe dialektn,” Tsaytshrift far yidisher geshikhte,… shprakh-visnshaft un etnografye 2.613–52 (1928), p. 615.
- Buzuk, op. cit., pp. 41f.
- Ibid., p. 1.
- Avanesov, op. cit., p. 132.
- In the collection described in footnote 9, contrast, for example, record P 76 (opposition) with P 64 (confusion).
- E.g. kisn ‘pillow’, šejxl ‘intelligence’, záleven ‘to be stingy with’, klace ‘mare’, etc. See Max Weinreich, “Dos kurlender yidish,” in his Shtaplen, Berlin, Wostok, 1923, pp. 204–4; Z. Kalmanovitsh, “Der yidisher dialekt in Kurland,” Filologishe shriftn [fun Yivo] 1.161–88 (1926), pp. 167f.
- Accordingly, where the distribution of hissing and hushing sounds differs in German and in general Yiddish, Courland Yiddish agrees with German (e.g. German kisen ‘pillow’, gen. Yid. kišn, Courl. Yid. kisn). In cases where German offers no model, i.e. in words of Semitic and Slavic origin, Courland Yiddish developed a unique pattern (cf. Weinreich, “Dos kurlender yidish,” pp. 202f.). The fact that, after the single sibilant series had been split on the German model, Semitic elements ended up with universal š, suggests that the articulation of the old single series must have been more hushing than hissing. On the other hand, the occurrence of c and z in words like cepen ‘to touch’, záleven ‘to be stingy with’ (general Yiddish čepen, žáleven) may be due to the fact that, because of the extremely low functional yield or virtual absence of a c ∼ č and z ∼ ž opposition in German, the old single affricate and voiced fricative phonemes of Courland Yiddish were not split into c and č, z and ž, but were automatically converted to c and z, respectively.
- B. Rivkin, “Di kurlender litvakes,” Lite, ed. M. Sudarsky et al., New York 1961, I, 407–16, p. 415.
WORD
Volume 8, 1952 - Issue 4: Slavic Word No. 1