the scholastic lexicon of ashkenazi hebrew and orthography

M Nosonovsky ldquoThe scholastic lexicon of Ashkenazi Hebrew and orthographyrdquo Pinkas ndash Annual of

the Culture and History of East European Jewry Vol 2 (Vilnius Zara 2008) pp 53-76

1

The scholastic lexicon of Ashkenazi Hebrew and

orthography

Michael Nosonovsky1

The language of Ashkenazic documents such as pinkases (the books of records) and epitaphs

which are usually treated as Hebrew is analyzed in the following study A comparison of these

documents with bilingual Yiddish-Hebrew texts and analysis of their orthography and

HebrewYiddish code-switching shows that their language is often similar to Yiddish saturated

with Hebraisms rather than to Hebrew Two different orthographical systems are used in these

texts the consonant orthography to spell HebrewAramaic words and phonetic Yiddish orthography

for all other words The functions of the orthography code-switching is discussed The consonant

orthography is used to relate a particular word to the realm of scholastic concepts (those related to

the Scripture and traditional Hebrew texts) whereas the phonetic orthography is used to relate a

word to the realm of oralmundane culture It is shown by example of the name YudeYide in the

1520 epitaph from Busk (Ukraine) that using the consonant or phonetic orthography for the same

word serves to relate it either to a Biblical or to a mundane subject For the pre-modern

consciousness the distinction between Hebrew and Yiddish was vague while the opposition of

scholastic vs mundane was important The emergence of the modern concept of Hebrew and

Yiddish being two separate languages and the relation of this concept to the Haskala is also

discussed

1 Independent scholar 427 West Side Dr 102 Gaithersburg MD 20878 phone 1-971-917-7716 Fax 1-301-975-

5334 e-mail nosonovskyyahoocom Адрес в России С Петербург 195197 Кондратьевский пр д 57 кв 26

тел 7-812-541-2791



2

1 Introduction Hebrew-Aramaic component of Yiddish

According to Max Weinreichrsquos definition Yiddish is a hybrid or fusion language

(shmeltsshprakh1) which includes three major components Hebrew-Aramaic (HA or loshn-

koydesh) Germanic and Slavic plus the forth Romanic (Loez) which is historically important but

found less frequently in the language The concept of linguistic fusion (oyfshmeltsung) implies that

the components of Yiddish have equal status As an example of the fusion the word doktoyrim

(ldquodoctorsrdquo) can be considered This word combines Hebrew plural ending (-im) with the borrowed

(possibly German) word doktor2 Another example is mefunetse (ldquospoiledrdquo feminine form of

masculine mefunek) which combines the Hebrew root with a Slavic ending ndashniknitse (an analogy

with for example nudniknudnetse ldquopestrdquo) A speaker of the language usually does not realize

during speaking which component a lexical unit belongs to and perceives them as parts of a

homogeneous Yiddish vocabulary Some cases of selectivity (selektivkeyt) or limitedness of the

fusion are rather exceptions3

However the position of the HA component is different from the others While the source of the

Germanic and Slavic component was living and located in close proximity to Yiddish languages

Hebrew and Aramaic were never spoken in Europe Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language

apparently in the 2nd

century AD ie more than 800 years before Yiddish emerged To de-

emphasize this problem the concept of ldquothe chain of Jewish languagesrdquo has been suggested by

several linguists4 According to this concept the HA component was not borrowed by Yiddish

directly from Hebrew and Aramaic but via the languages hypothetically spoken by the European

Jews before Yiddish each of which had its own HA component Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Greek

Judeo-Latin and Loez

The concept of the chain of Jewish languages however has weaknesses First very little is known

about the languages spoken by the European Jews of the first millennium AD Little is also known

about the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews5 The very existence of these languages is hypothetical and

more so the presence and extent of the HA component in them In Yiddish the HA component

lexica constitutes according to some estimates about 20 of the vocabulary6 Obviously such a

huge amount of words could not be inherited from the ldquochain of Jewish languagesrsquo while the very

existence of these languages are hypothetical and more the extent of HA component in them

Furthermore according to much evidence the knowledge of Hebrew among the European Jews in

the first millennium was low since Europe was at that time was a remote periphery of the Jewish

world7 Even if the HA component was present in spoken Judeo-Greek Judeo-Latin and Loez its

lexicon could not constitute a fraction close to that of the HA lexicon in Yiddish In terms of the



3

phonetic form of the HA words in Yiddish there is practically no evidence that they passed through

the ldquochain of Jewish languagesrdquo Actually the overwhelming majority of the HA Yiddish lexicon

was borrowed directly from the Hebrew and Aramaic of Jewish books This is evident from both

the linguistic data (the regularity of Hebrew phonetic reflexes in Yiddish) and from the Ashkenazi

cultural history (it was Torah study which lead to the penetration and active use of these words into

Yiddish since they were often considered as signs of learned ndash lomdish - speech)

If we agree that most of the Yiddish HA component was borrowed from the language of scholastic

books we have to accept also that the status of the HA component may be different from the status

of other components The source of the HA component was not in co-territorial languages but in

Ashkenazi Hebrew the phonetics and phonology of which were dependent upon the phonetics and

phonology of Yiddish itself

Additional evidence of the non-equal status of components may be found in the orthography There

are two parallel systems of orthography in both Old and Modern Yiddish8 Phonetic (or quasi-

phonetic) spelling with letters for vowels is used for the words with a Germanic and Slavic

component whereas the traditional Hebrew consonant orthography is used for the HA component

Thus orthography switching from the consonant to phonetic and back takes place constantly

during writing

In a normal situation involving oral communication a speaker normally does not realize whether

the pronounced word belongs to the HA or GermanicSlavic component and does not concentrate

on the etymology During writing he has to pay attention to whether the word belongs to the HA or

non-HA component since the spelling depends on it If the writer is proficient in written Hebrew

he writes the corresponding HA component word according to the rules of Hebrew orthography

otherwise he has to memorize the spelling of HA words

The above mentioned orthography switching is found not only in Yiddish texts per se but also in

many texts which are traditionally considered as Hebrew Non-HA words in Medieval Ashkenazi

texts are usually spelled according to the Yiddish phonetic orthography This is true for a vast

variety of pre-modern Hebrew texts from the Middle Ages until the early 20th

century exegetics

economic and communal records (including pinkasim the books of record) private and communal

correspondence gravestone inscriptions and names of places in title pages of Hebrew books

among others In all these cases lexemes of non-Biblical origin (eg proper or geographic names)

are spelled according to the ldquoYiddishrdquo phonetic orthography although the text itself is in Hebrew

Several examples of mixed Hebrew and Yiddish texts are provided below with attention focused



4

on the orthography code-switching and showing that the rules of orthography switching are not

always consistent with switching between Hebrew and Yiddish languages but consistent with the

switching from the mundaneoral to sacredscholastic realms We will also discuss attitudes towards

Hebrew and Yiddish in the pre-modern period and will show that the opposition between the two

languages was constructed during the modernization period by the ideologies of the Jewish

Enlightenment (Haskala) whereas for the pre-modern consciousness the opposition of the

mundaneoral and sacredscholastic was more relevant

2 YiddishHebrew code-switching in pre-modern written texts

21 Communal records and Scribal Yiddish

Historian Simon Dubnow (1860-1941) was one of the first who paid attention to the fact that the

language of many Ashkenazi historical documents is a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish9 Although

some socio-linguistic aspects of this phenomenon were investigated by U Weinreich in 195810

newer investigations of this topic are almost non-existent Most of the discussed documents are

communal records (pinkasim) which included regulations bookkeeping reports and birthdeath

records The language of these documents was called Scribal Yiddish (leshon ha-soferim in

Hebrew) U Weinreich brings examples of 16th

-19th

century communal documents Below is a

small fragment of community regulations (1676) from Nikolsburg (Mikulov in Moravia) The rules

of distribution of Yeshiva students among homeowners are discussed

רב או מעט לאיזה מלמד שכר לימוד שולדיק װער [בית-בעל]הסכמנו װען איזה בב

דרף קײן אנדרר מלמד לאותו הנער הלטין בחדרו יותר משמנה ימים

ldquoWe agreed that when any homeowner owes tuition to any teacher he is

responsible Much or little no other teacher must keep that student with him in his

school (literally room) for more than eight daysrdquo

In our English translation we italicized the words which are of Hebrew origin in the original The

text is apparently in Yiddish since auxiliary verbs and particles which form the syntactic structure

such as ven (ldquowhenrdquo) ver (ldquoisrdquo) keyn (ldquonordquo) are in Yiddish however the majority of lexical items

such as hiskamnu (ldquowe agreedrdquo) skhar limed (ldquotuitionrdquo) rav oy meat (ldquomuch or littlerdquo) anaer

(ldquostudentrdquo) shmoyne yomim (ldquoeight dasrdquo) are of Hebrew origin and not typical for standard

Yiddish

U Weinreich who compared this phenomenon with bilingual folk idioms and especially

bilingual folk songs stressed that the reason of mixing was not a bad knowledge of Hebrew or



5

Yiddish by the scribes but intentional code-switching between two languages which constituted a

certain style Such code-switching was typical for the language of communal records Another

example is the oath of tax-collector from the pinkas (record book) of the Vitebsk (Byelorussia)

community (circa 1700 )11

נוסח שבועה לאלופי שמאים דא שװער איך על דעת המקום ועל דעת הבד בלי ערמה

ומרמה ובלי הוראת היתר בעולם צו װעמען איך בין אײן קרוב אדער אײן פסול טאר איך קײן

ײן איטליכן בעל הבית נאך זײן אמתלאות ולפי האומרנה איך מוז מעריך ז דיעה ניט זאגין

און װי איך שװער רק װי מײן דיעה טראגט אױש קײנם ניט צו ליב און ניט להכעים שלי

אזו זאל מיר גאט העלפען בכל מעשי ובכל עסקי אמן אמן

ldquoOath formula for tax leaders So I swear by knowing before the God and before

the court without deceit or cheating and without any reservation in the world that

regarding those to whom I am a relative or to whom I am disqualified [as a

witness] I will not say any judgment I must apprise every homeowner without any

love or wrath only according to his testimonies and my own judgment And since

my oath is true may God help me in all my deeds and in every business Amen

amenrdquo

It was suggested by S Dubnow that Yiddish was used in the legal document (which otherwise

would be in Hebrew) because it was intended for a public reading among the people who could

not always understand Hebrew However a similar code-switching is found not only in the texts

intended for a public reading but also in the more mundane economic and bookkeeping records

For example the following is a record about buying books for Beth-Midrash in Volozhin

(Byelorussia) in 1763 12

Mishnaldquo ndash בעד גש ה עוד שג שלשים בסך אמשטרדם דפוס משניות בונד אײן

printed in Amsterdam total thirty grosh for a binding 5 groshes morerdquo The scribe used Hebrew

numerals particles and words dfus (ldquoprintedrdquo) and besakh (ldquototalrdquo which is quite common also in

Yiddish) however spoken words for the groshes (name of the currency) and bund (ldquobindingrdquo) are

used although a corresponding Hebrew word exists for both

How can one explain the style of the authors of the communal records and documents which seems

strange to us today What was the function of the code-switching It is noted that the modern

concept of ldquopurerdquo Hebrew or ldquopurerdquo Yiddish languages was non-existent for a scribe He could

freely vary the lexica of the two languages and considered both acceptable for his records

Apparently this was a single language for him and the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish

elements was perceived as a stylistic one and not as a difference of two opposed languages



6

22 Hassidic and ldquolomdishrdquo texts

The above-mentioned code-switching and mixing of Yiddish and Hebrew is typical not only for the

language of the communal records Many Hassidic treatises are written in a similar manner in

Yiddish but with many Hebrew insertions A fragment of the work of the second Lubavicher

Rebbe ldquoInyen Tfilerdquo (ldquoAn Aspect of a Prayerrdquo) with the typical HebrewYiddish code-mixing is a

good example13

דעריבער װײל דער מקור וכדי להבין זה עוד יותר למה חוט השדרה דװקא הוא המחבר

ידי האברים שבגוף דװקא-און הגם די התגלות מכל הפעולות איז על משכן הנשמה איז במוח

בפרטיות

ldquoAnd in order to understand it even better why it is the spinal cord that brings

together therefore the source of soulrsquos dwelling is in the brain and isnrsquot this also

the revelation from all the actions is by means of the organs which are in the body

just in particularrdquo

Here only particles and auxiliary verbs are in Yiddish forming the syntactic structure of the

sentences Interestingly the Hebrew phrase הפעולות מכל התגלות די (ldquorevelation from all the actionsrdquo)

which is incorrect according to the Hebrew grammar has the preposition mi (ldquofromrdquo) as a calque

from the Yiddish preposition fun (ldquofromrdquo) The later may mean either ldquofromrdquo or ldquoofrdquo The second

meaning ldquoofrdquo was brought mechanically upon the Hebrew preposition min (ldquofromrdquo) Apparently

such language was typical for oral discussions of Talmudic and philosophical problems during

Torah study

23 Epitaphs

Ashkenazi gravestone inscriptions or epitaphs were usually composed in Hebrew and Yiddish

elements are rare in them Stylistically they are close to pure Hebrew inscriptions of the pinkasim

However it is remarkable that non-Hebrew words such as proper names or toponyms were

spelled according to the Yiddish phonetic orthography and not according to Hebrew orthography

Thus in the inscription from Trostyanets (the modern-day Vinnitsa region of Ukraine) of 1666 14

the name of the deceased is spelled as רגרשטערקבע יעקב במ משה מהורר התורני ndash ldquothe Torah sage ou[r

teacher] R[abbi] Moyshe b Yankev Shterkbergerrdquo and in the spelling of the surname the sound e

is denoted by the letter lsquoayin as in Yiddish orthography (Fig 1)

The language of the epitaphs is usually considered Hebrew but in light of the above-mentioned

observation that the distinction between Ashkenazi written Hebrew and Yiddish is vague and in



7

some cases is only stylistic we will look at the epitaphs as if they are Ashkenazi texts the

language of which may be Hebrew or Yiddish

Here is a fragment of an epitaph of 1520 from Busk (Lviv region of Ukraine) the oldest extent

Ashkenazi epitaph in Ukraine (Fig 2)15

היה ]יעקב דמתקרי ליודא יהודא בן ר נתן פאר תחת אפר כי פה נטמן איש נאמן ר]

Natan persquoar takhat rsquoapar ki po nitman rsquoish nersquo

eman r[abbi] Y

ehuda ben r[abbi]

Yalsquoakob d

emitk

ere

16 le-Yuda

Translation ldquoGave jewelry instead of ash (cf Isaiah 613) because here lies a reliable man R[abbi]

Yehuda son of R[abbi] Yaakov who was nicknamed Yudardquo

We have given a traditional Hebrew transcription (with some simplifications) used by Semitists

which is based upon Johannes Reuchlinrsquos academic pronunciation and goes back to the Sephardi

pronunciation norm This is a standard method of transcription essentially similar to transliteration

(in the case of a vocalized text) which allows one to reconstruct the original text from the

transcription without considering dialect variations of pronunciation in the case when they are not

important Certainly the Ashkenazi Jews did not read the epitaph using the Sephardi pronunciation

The corresponding Ashkenazi transcription would look as follows

Noson peyr takhas eyfer ki poy nitmon ish neymon r[eb] Yehudo ben r[eb] Yankoyv

demiskrey le-Yudo

This transcription is based upon the standard pronunciation of Yiddish However standard

Yiddish emerged in the 20th

century as a compromise between different dialect pronunciations17

Of

course in Galicia in 1520 nobody spoke Standard Yiddish but rather a local dialect The

difficulty however is that it is not possible to say exactly how Yiddish words were pronounced in

Busk in the first half of the 16th

century Busk is situated upon the Western Buh river and the

border of modern central (Polish) and southeastern (Ukrainian) dialects of Yiddish goes

approximately along the river18

In addition due to the significant migration of the Jewish

population in the 17th

century caused by the Cossack and Turkish wars it is problematic to

extrapolate modern dialect boundaries back to the 16th

century However based upon the

pronunciation which was later accepted in Galicia and upon vowel reduction the following

transcription would be more authentic for the 16th

century text

Nusn peyr takhas ayfer ki poy nitmen ish neymen r[eb] Yehide ben r[eb] Yankev

demiskere le-Ide



8

We can further note that proper names were usually pronounced not exactly as they were spelled

Thus יעקב Yalsquoakoyv would be pronounced Yankev even during the Torah reading in the synagogue

Similarly the name יהודא was most likely pronounced as Ide Therefore a more accurate

transcription of the last sentence would be ליודא דמתקרי יהודא ר ldquoReb Ide nicknamed Iderdquo We

abandoned transliteration of the epitaph and tried to find a transcription of the phrase which would

reflect pronunciation in the most accurate way However the phrase turned out to be a tautology

without any content like a mathematical equality which when simplified finally yields ldquozero equal

to zerordquo Apparently in order to keep the meaning of the expression we should have considered

the transliteration and realize that the phrase has a meaning as a written phrase and not an oral

phrase Its meaning is not in identifying the person named Ide with himself but in relating the real

person named Ide whose name is spelled phonetically יודא with the scholastic hero Biblical Judah

whose name is spelled יהודא we bnH ni19

The difference in orthography does not reflect a

difference in pronunciation but the difference between the everyday and scholastic realities20

24 Birth records

Our next example is from the birthdeath record books of the 19th

century Russian Chernigov

gubernia (currently in Ukraine) which are also typical for other regions21

The records were

written in Hebrew however they often involve Russian proper names toponyms and

administrative terms The orthography of these words uses theYiddish phonetic system and not

Hebrew as one would expect in a Hebrew text Thus the sound o is denoted by the letter aleph

e is lsquoayin and so on The word meschanin (ldquocitizenrdquo) which is a Russian administrative term

denoting the belonging to the class of urban citizens is spelled מעשצאנין (while in Hebrew

orthography it could be expected for example משאנין22

) Furthermore Yiddish word combinations

such as מעשצאנין צרניגאװער chernigover meschanin (ldquoa citizen of Chernigovrdquo) are found in parallel

with Hebrew syntactic forms eg מצרניגאװ מעשצאנין meschanin mi-Chernigov (ldquoa citizen of

Chernigovrdquo) which indicates that the scribe saw a Yiddish syntactic structure beyond the Hebrew

calques

It is typical for the surnames of Hebrew origin to be spelled according to the traditional Hebrew

orthography for example שפירא Shapiro חפץ Kheyfets At the same time the surnames which did

not have an obvious connection to the Hebrew language were spelled in accordance with Yiddish

phonetic orthography Thus the surname of my great-grandfather which originates from the

Hebrew name נתן Noson (Nosn) was spelled as נאסאנאװסקײ Nosonovsky (and not as נאסנאבסקי or

(as one could expect in a Hebrew text נתנובסקי



9

We have considered several examples of code-mixing on the lexical and syntactical level The

border between the Ashkenazi Hebrew and Yiddish cannot always be easily defined23

It is difficult

to establish a criterion of whether a particular HA word is a part of the Yiddish language or not In

a certain context practically every Hebrew word or expression may be an organic part of a Yiddish

text24

The code-mixing at the syntactic level is even more striking Medieval authors of Hebrew

texts in most cases could not and did not try to follow the Semitic structure of the sentence The

syntax of medieval Ashkenazi Hebrew is closer to the Yiddish syntax than to the syntax of Biblical

Hebrew It was suggested on these grounds by P Wexler and some other linguists that modern

(and pre-modern) Hebrew constitutes in fact a variant of Yiddish25

Although the issue is a matter

of discussion it is possible at least in some cases to view medieval Ashkenazi Hebrew as a variant

of Yiddish which is saturated with words with a HA component and to speak about an Ashkenazi

language continuum (Figure 1) which combines forms of Yiddish with greater or smaller number

of HA elements standard Yiddish secret languages saturated with HA words26

Scribal Yiddish

lomdish speech etc This situation affected the perception of Hebrew and Yiddish by the traditional

consiousness

3 Hebrew and scholastic orthography

We have considered various bilingual HebrewYiddish texts and found that code-switching and the

mixing of both the lexicon and grammatical structures was quite common in Ashkenazi documents

of the pre-modern period Now we will concentrate on the orthography code-switching in these

texts In the above-mentioned examples the Yiddish orthography was used within a Hebrew text to

spell the words which are not Yiddishisms Among them are geographic and proper names which

are equally foreign for both Hebrew and Yiddish therefore the orthography code-switching

requires an explanation An obvious criterion for choosing the Hebrew orthography was whether

the author is familiar with the word from the sacred Hebrew texts The words which were

identified by the author or scribe as ldquoscholasticrdquo were spelled in accordance with Hebrew

orthography whereas the rest was spelled in accordance to Yiddish phonetic orthography

The spelling of the HA words in Yiddish was known to the speakers from Hebrew books The

criterion for orthography switching was not based upon the etymology (GermanicSlavic vs

Semitic word) but upon whether the word belonged to the bookishscholastic or oralmundane

language Whether the word is familiar to him from the holy books (loshn-koydesh ldquoholy

languagerdquo the traditional name for Hebrew) or ldquofrom his motherrdquo (mame-loshn ldquomotherrsquos

languagerdquo the traditional name for Yiddish) This distinction served the basis for the opposition of



10

the HA component and other components of Yiddish and not the historical etymology about which

a pre-modern speaker had no idea27

Therefore in order to explain the Ashkenazi orthography switching both in predominantly Yiddish

and predominantly Hebrew texts the opposition of the scholastic lexicon (and realties beyond it)

vs everyday lexicon (and corresponding realties) is important rather than the opposition of the

Semitic vs GermanicSlavic components of Yiddish This opposition of the scholastic and

mundane is apparently significant for the whole of pre-modern Jewish culture which considered

the ldquoOral Lawrdquo (or ldquothe oral Torahrdquo which is a name for the Talmud and other post-biblical

literature) in opposition to the ldquoWritten Lawrdquo (the ldquowritten Torahrdquo or the Scripture) The tendency

to compare everyday realties to the biblical or scholastic realties is characteristic of various forms

of Jewish literature and culture

It is usually believed that the words with a HA component in Yiddish are not spelled with Hebrew

orthography but have a fossilized ldquotraditionalrdquo spelling28

The fact that in the texts which are

usually considered Hebrew such as the epitaphs or birthdeath records orthography-switching into

Yiddish takes place every time when a non-Hebrew (more exactly non-scholastic) word appears

shows that Hebrew was not actually perceived as the language of these texts The use of Hebrew

lexical in these texts is a stylistic phenomenon Similarly to Ashkenazi texts with a smaller amount

of HA elements the lack of attempts to use the Hebrew orthography for the borrowed words shows

that authors of these texts perceived the HA component as fossilized external and purely scholastic

4 The opposition of Hebrew vs Yiddish

As we have found in the preceding discussions the border between Ashkenazi Hebrew and

Yiddish is not always clearly defined Possibly in the case of the above-mentioned texts it is more

convenient to speak about the Ashkenazi language continuum which involves forms of Yiddish

with smaller or greater amount of HA elements or with the dominance of scholastic or everyday

lexica The principles of orthography-switching are the same for predominantly Yiddish and

predominantly Hebrew texts and depend upon whether the word belongs to the scholastic language

of the books This situation affected the perception of the Yiddish and Hebrew language by

speakers and writers As M Weinreich showed the Ashkenazi communities existed in the situation

of a specific diglossia or the ldquoInternal Jewish bilingualismrdquo (ineveynikste yidishe

tsveyshprakhikayt) with the ldquohighrdquo Hebrew language predominantly written and ldquolowrdquo Yiddish

language predominantly oral or written for a limited number of purposes (mostly for women and

uneducated men)29



11

Besides the actual classification of Ashkenazi texts as Yiddish or Hebrew it is important to

consider the socio-linguistic perception of these languages by pre-modern writers and scribes For a

traditional Ashkenazi writer the distinction between written Hebrew and written Yiddish was to a

great extent stylistic Similarly to how we use today different variants of English eg when

speaking to a child and when writing an article a yeshive-student who wrote a letter home to his

parents could appeal ldquoin Hebrewrdquo to his father (that is using a large amount of HA lexica) and ldquoin

Yiddishrdquo to his mother (but with some HA words as well) however both were for him the Jewish

language with the same alphabet and the same system of writing30

The modern concept of Hebrew

and Yiddish being two independent languages and the idea that it is necessary to write in ldquocorrectrdquo

Hebrew (meaning similar to Biblical Hebrew) apparently originates in the period of Haskala

(18th-19th centuries) These were the first maskilim (followers of Haskala) who insisted on exactly

following the norms of Hebrew Grammar31

(and later of Yiddish Grammar) It were the maskilim

who started to use Hebrew orthography to spell foreign words in Hebrew texts Maskilim also

stayed at the cradle of both the Hebrew and Yiddish cultural movements and also laid the

foundation of scientific study of Hebrew and Yiddish32

It is due to their activity that both literary

Yiddish and modern literary Hebrew were constructed during the 19th

century Yiddish terminology

was created to substitute Hebrew and borrowed words and Hebrew terminology was created for the

words which had been absent in Biblical or medieval Hebrew sources Since that time the Hebrew

orthography was used consistently for proper and geographic names33

A virtually separate non-

consonant alphabet was created for Yiddish with special letters like tsvey vovn pasakh tsvey yudn

etc in which Hebrew vocalization signs kamets patakh and khirek did not have a separate

phonetic meaning but served as mere diacritical signs with the letters aleph tzvey yudn and yud34

Within the traditional pre-modern conscience there were no distinct boundary between Hebrew and

Yiddish for authors of the Ashkenazi documents The important issue for them was whether the

corresponding word is used in the Hebrew traditional sources since the spelling depended upon

that Throughout the modernization process Jewish texts have become perceived in the framework

of the HebrewYiddish opposition while the opposition of the Oral vs Written became less

significant

5 Conclusions

We have considered several types of Ashkenazi written texts which involve HebrewYiddish code

switching Since Yiddish has a HA component while Ashkenazi Hebrew is affected by Yiddish at

the phonetic and syntactic levels for these texts it is difficult to define the boundary not only



12

between Hebrew and Yiddish speech but also between Hebrew and Yiddish language itself

Instead the concept of the Ashkenazi language continuum was suggested Such a symbiosis of

Yiddish and Ashkenazi Hebrew led to a specific perception of these two languages by pre-modern

scribes and writers as a single ldquoJewishrdquo language with the differences of a stylistic nature rather

than of a linguistic one For the traditional consciousness the opposition between

writtensacredscholastic and oralmundane was more relevant than the opposition between the

Semitic and non-Semitic components of the language The modern concept of Hebrew and Yiddish

as two independent languages emerged during the period of modernization by the Haskala

movement Like in modern Yiddish the pre-modern Ashkenazi texts utilized two distinctly

different systems of orthography the consonant (ldquoHebrewrdquo) orthography and the phonetic

(ldquoYiddishrdquo) orthography However unlike in modern Yiddish texts where the consonant

orthography is associated with Hebrew and the phonetic one with Yiddish in the pre-modern texts

the code-switching convention was different We found many examples of the phonetic

orthography used in a ldquoHebrewrdquo text and some examples of consonant orthography used for non-

Hebrew words The question of the function of orthography code-switching can be raised Analysis

of the orthography shows that the consonant orthography was utilized to relate a particular word to

the realm of the scholasticwritten sacral (related to the Scripture) objects and concepts whereas

the phonetic orthography was used to for the realm of mundaneoral We found a specific example

where different spellings of the same word (a given name Yehuda) relate it to either the sacral or the

mundane worlds The opposition of Written vs Oral is one of the central topics for Jewish culture



13

Figure 1 Epitaph of R Moyshe ben R Yankev Shterkberger Trostyanets (Ukraine) 1666 The

letter lsquoayin is used for e in the surname Shterkberger



14

Figure 2 Fragment of the epitaph of Yehuda ben R Yaakov nicknamed Ide Busk 1520



15

Figure 3 The Ashkenazi language continuum An approximate scheme shows various

ldquointermediaterdquo forms between Yiddish and Hebrew Standard Yiddish has mostly non-Semitic

grammar but may have a significant amount of HA words The oral ldquosecret languagesrdquo have a non-

Semitic grammar but a huge number of HA words The Scribal Yiddish has both some Semitic

lexicon and grammar The ldquolomdisherdquo Yiddish of Talmudic scholars has a large number of HA

words with a mostly Yiddish sentence structure Medieval Hebrew texts (such as poetry) have

mostly Hebrew lexicon but significant amount of non-Hebrew syntactic structure Biblical Hebrew

has mostly Semitic vocabulary and grammar

Semitic grammatical elements 100 0

100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16

1 M Weinreich History of the Yiddish Languages trans J Fishman (Chicago 1980) We show in parentheses the

original terminology of Weinreich in Yiddish

2 The plural form doktoyrim could be formed with the Germanic plural ending ndashin ltdoktorn (D Kerler The Origins

of Modern Literary Yiddish (Oxford 1999) On the other hand we find it more plausible that the word entered Yiddish

from Ashkenazi Hebrew where the form doktoyrim with the Hebrew ending ndashim formed This word is found for

instance in a Hebrew chronicle of the 16th

century by David Ganz (1541-1613) from Prague (D Ganz Tzemakh David

(Jerusalem 1983) 134) The word doktor is found also in the Hebrew-Yiddish-Latin-German glossary Shemot Devarim

by Elia Levita and Paul Fagius printed in 1542 (in its Yiddish column)

3 As a reason of selectivity Weinreich History of the Yiddish Languages 656 states the component consciousness (di

komponentn visikayt) ie realizing by a speaker that a lexeme belongs to a particular component of the language

4 The concept was suggested by Paul Wexler (P Wexler ldquoJewish Interlinguistics Facts and Conceptual Frameworkrdquo

Language vol 57 (1981) 99 ndash 149) Nisn Jacobs who accepts Wexlerrsquos concept writes ldquoIn the scenario traditionally

accepted in Yiddish scholarship Yiddish arose via the following chain of vernaculars Spoken Hebrew ndash Judeo-

Aramaic ndash Judeo-Greek ndash Judeo-Romance ndash Yiddishhellip Internal Jewish bilingualism continued as subsequent language

shifts created new Jewish languages The Loshn-koydesh texts (and oral recitation or citation from these) continued as

potential sources of enrichment in later Jewish languages while Judeo-Greek and subsequent Jewish languages did not

could not fill that function Furthermore it can be argued that acrolectal Loshn-koydesh may have served to reinforce

the survival and transmission of (merged) HA-origin words in the later Jewish vernaculars giving these a boost in

ways that Judeo-Greek origin words for example lacked Commencing in the fourth century BCE Judeo-Greek

emerged via the shift of some speakers of Hebrew and Aramaic This was followed by the shift of some speakers of

Hebrew Aramaic and Greek to Judeo-Latin in the first century BCE (Wexler 1981110) The exact nature of a

purported Judeo-Latin is unclear rdquo (N G Jacobs Yiddish a linguistic introduction (Cambridge 2005) However no

evidence was presented by these scholars about the presumed language shifts or of ldquoboosting HA-origin words in the

Judeo-Greekrdquo (and other Jewish languages) by Loshn-Koydesh and these claims remain purely speculative

5 The most popular theory states that the Ashkenazi ethnic group was formed in the Rhineland in the 10

th-12

th centuries

CE (Weinreich History of the Yiddish Languages Jacobs Yiddish a linguistic introduction) However there is little

evidence about the language of the Jews in the German lands during that period The oldest surviving literary document

in Yiddish is a blessing in a Hebrew prayer book from 1272 CE consisting of 12 words (of which 3 are of the HA

component) There are several alternative theories about the origin of Yiddish

6 It is difficult to estimate the percentage of HA words in Yiddish because it can vary significantly depending upon the

subject area and style Uriel Weinriech stated in his popular textbook College Yiddish (NY YIVO 1992) that ldquoon

different levels of Yiddish speech and writing the proportion of Hebrew elements differs sometimes exceeding 15

percentrdquo (p 66)

7 There were no significant Talmudic scholars in Christian Europe until the 10

th century CE Jewish tombstone epitaphs

of the first millennium CE were composed in Greek or Latin sometimes with single words or phrases in Hebrew such



17

as blessing formulas (PW Van der Horst Ancient Jewish Epitaphs (Kampen 1991) The evidence of knowledge of

Hebrew by the Jews in Europe in the first centuries CE is very limited

8 ldquoOld Yiddishrdquo or ldquoWritten Language Ardquo is the language of texts of the 13

th-18

th centuries close to the western

Yiddish dialects as opposed to the new literary Yiddish (ldquowritten language Brdquo) formed at the end of the 18th

century

which had a significantly different orthography (see Kerler The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish)

9 ldquoNumerous pinkasim of the Jewish communities and other documents confirm the fact that the scholastic written

language dominated in writings and business correspondence of the 16th

and consequent centuries But what do we see

Every time when a public act required a broad proclamation to be read in a synagogue or at a fair as a proclamation it

was composed in the popular language of the people - judisch-deutsch The style of these lsquokeruzimrsquo or proclamations

which we still remember from the recent time was a mixture of jargon phrases with Hebrew which was intended to

give a special solemnity to the act being readrdquo (С Дубнов ldquoРазговорный язык и народная литература польско-

литовских евреев в 16 и первой половине 17 векаrdquo Еврейская Старина vol 1 (1909) 27 In the present paper we

bring examples of mixed documents not intended for a public recital

10 U Weinreich ldquoNusakh ha-soferim ha-lsquoivri-yidirdquo Leshonenu Vol 22 (1958) 54-66

11 П Марек ldquoРаскладчики налогов в литовских кагалах 17-го-18 вrdquo Еврейская Старина vol 1 (1909) 164

12 G Hundert ldquoThe library of the Study Hall in Volozhin 1762 Some notes on the basis of a newly discovered

manuscriptrdquo Jewish History vol 14(2) (2000) 225 - 44

13 The author would like to thank Yoyl Matveev from the newspaper Forverts (New York) for this example

14 M Nosonovsky Hebrew epitaphs and inscriptions from Ukraine and Former Soviet Union (Lulu 2006) 117 The

monument was discovered by Valery and Olga Dymshits in 1990

15 This is the oldest extant Hebrew monument in Ukraine and eastern Poland (with the exception of the Crimea which

has monuments of the 14th

century) See M Nosonovsky ldquoEpitaphs of the 16th

century from Jewish tombstones in

Ukrainerdquo Monuments of Culture New Discoveries Yearly book for 1998 (Moscow 1999) 2 And Nosonovsky

Hebrew epitaphs and inscriptions from Ukraine and Former Soviet Union (Washington 2006) 70

16 Ср ידמתקר יהודה Yehuda demitkere Gurk (ldquoYehuda nicknamed Gurkrdquo) at the monument of 5 גורק

th-6

th century from

Mtskhet (Republic of Georgia) D Chwolson Corpus Inscriptionum Hebraicarum (St Petersburg 1882) 527

17 There are several standards of Yiddish that emerged in the 20

th century The standard of the Institute for Yiddish

Studies (YIVO Vilnius-New York) which is based phonologically upon the Lithuanian Yiddish dialect is generally

recognized today In the Soviet Union a slightly different variant of literary Yiddish was accepted There was also so-

called Theater Yiddish based upon the Volhyn dialect Among the Hassidim in Europe and America Polish and

Transylvanian pronunciations are used as standards

18 M Herzog The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry Vols 1-3 (New York 1995-2000)

19 The spelling יהודא(instead of יהודה ) is typical for Ashkenazi medieval documents in which the scribes tried to avoid a

combination of letters yud vav and he which form the Divine Name in order to avoid ldquosaying the Godrsquos name in

vainrdquo which may serve an additional reference to the Ashkenazi reading YudeIde It is noted also that a nickname was

mentioned next to the full name in documents which required an exact name of a person such as divorce letters (gitin)

for example Yoysef ha-mekhune Yosl (ldquoYoysef nicknamed Yoslrdquo) (Weinreich History of the Yiddish Languages 271)

20 It is typical in general for the traditional Hebrew epitaphs the desire to compare the deceased with a Biblical hero

who has the same name This was usually achieved by bringing a corresponding Biblical quotation (Nosonovsky

Hebrew epitaphs and inscriptions from Ukraine and Former Soviet Union 40-41)



18

21

Черниговский областной архив lsquoChernigov region archiversquo f 679 op 10 d 1261 (the author used a copy at the

Family History Library archive of Salt Lake City Utah)

22 Note that words with a similar meaning בורגני burgani and קרתן kartan existed in Hebrew in the end of the 19

th

century

23 The Hebrew-Yiddish interaction takes place not only at the speech (or text) level but involves also the language

itself Since Yiddish had a significant HA component and the Ashkenazi Hebrew was affected by Yiddish in many

ways (mostly at the phonological and syntactic level) the very task of identifying the boundaries of Hebrew and

Yiddish segments in the speech (or text) is complicated Therefore the problem of mixed HebrewYiddish texts cannot

be solved by assuming that the code-switching takes place in speech between two distinct languages The classical

approach to this problem is to assume following M Weinreich (1980) that there are two different forms of Hebrew

words the Whole Hebrew (WH) as pronounced in Ashkenazi Hebrew and the Merged Hebrew (MH) as pronounced

in Yiddish The difference between the two is mostly in the vowel reduction (for example WH shabos vs MH shabes

ldquoSaturdayrdquo) However Dovid Katz showed convincingly that between the poles of the WH and MH there is a whole

spectrum of intermediate forms with significant variations (D Katz ldquoThe phonology of Ashkenazicrdquo Hebrew in

Ashkenaz a language in exile (New York 1993) 77)

24 This creates significant problems for lexicographers who compose dictionaries of HA words in Yiddish and have to

make a decision which Hebrew words would be included Such dictionaries are required because the spelling of HA

words is not familiar to many Yiddish speakers who do not know Hebrew

25 P Wexler believes that modern Hebrew was created by native speakers of Yiddish by means of a ldquopartial language

shiftrdquo and that Modern Hebrew is actually Yiddish that underwent a re-lexification process but that its syntax and

semantics remained Indo-European (P Wexler The schizoid nature of modern Hebrew a Slavic language in search of

Semitic past (Wiesbaden 1990) 100) Yiddish had a potential for such a shift due to its huge HA component and since

various forms of Yiddish saturated with HA words existed throughout its history He furthermore claims that Yiddish

(together with Modern Hebrew) is a Slavic language (P Wexler Two-Tiered Relexification in Yiddish Jews Sorbs

Khazars and the Kiev-Polessian Dialect (Berlin 2002) Angel Saacuteenz-Badillos notes that although some of Wexlerrsquos

claims cannot be faulted his thesis is unlikely to attract much scholarly support (A Saacuteenz-Badillos A History of

Hebrew Language (Cambridge 1996) 277) Ghillsquoad Zuckerman who believes in multi-source borrowing considers

both Yiddish and Biblical Hebrew as sources of Modern Hebrew (G Zuckerman Language contact and lexical

enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (London 2003) 19-20 Although these viewpoints represent to a certain extent a ldquopost-

Zionistrdquo reaction upon the ideological attitudes toward Hebrew which had existed in Israel for decades they may

actually have a broader value The idea of possibility of a language shift from Yiddish towards Hebrew using the HA

component has been expressed long ago and is deeply rooted in the Jewish culture For example Israel Taviov who

composed in 1903 CE the fist dictionary of HA words in Yiddish wrote that ldquothe richness of Hebrew elements in the

spoken Jewish jargon will allow to gradually transform this jargon and to start speaking Hebrewrdquo (Sh Brisman History

and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances (Hoboken 2000) 43 50-53 167)

26 Secret jargon (or cryptolects) were used by Jewish tradesmen in Germany and Central Europe in order to conceal the

subject from non-Jews They involve many HA words Non Jewish jargons of cattle-traders (called Lakudesh) and of

thieves homeless people and other marginal elements (called Rotwelsch) in 17th

-19th

century Germany Switzerland

and Holland also involved many HA elements (Y Guggenheim ldquoMeeting the road encounters between German Jews



19

and Christians on the margins of societyrdquo In and out the Ghetto Jewish-Gentile Relations in late Medieval and early

modern Germany (Washington 1995) 131)

27 Sometimes Hebrew orthography was intentionally used to spell borrowed words to make impression that they belong

to the scholastic language For example consider names קלמן Kalman (from Kalonimos) and זלמן Zalman (from

Solomon) Another interesting trend is to find a Hebrew word which sounds similarly to a East-European toponym

Thus the town name Kuty was spelled sometimes as טוב כי Ki-Tov (ldquoIs Goodrdquo) name באברקא Bobrka as ברק בני Bney

Brak By spelling these toponyms in the Biblical orthography the East European town was compared with a scholastic

reality a Biblical toponym

28 U Weinreich wrote ldquoTwo essential systems underline Yiddish spelling rules One part is spelled almost entirely

lsquophoneticallyrsquo each sound being denoted by one letter or combination of letters Another part of the vocabulary which

is of Hebrew derivation retains a traditional spelling which must be memorized individually in each caserdquo

29 Weinreich History of the Yiddish Languages 279

30 It is interesting to discuss traditional attitudes towards the loshn-koydesh and Jewish mundane languages such as

Yiddish The Talmud considers the status of the Aramaic language loshn Targum (literally ldquothe language of the

Translationrdquo) as different from both loshn koydesh and ldquothe 70 languages of the worldrdquo in particular that the prayer ldquo18

blessingsrdquo should not be read in Aramaic (eg Megilla 2a Sota 33a) According to many kabbalists loshn Tatgum

corresponds to the intermediate layer between the holy (Hebrew language) and the evil (non-Jewish languages) (Shelah

on Pesakhin cited from Aspeklaria lashon v 13 Likkute Moharan by Rabbi Nachman 119) Metaphorically it

corresponds to the parokhet (a holy curtain) separating the Ark from the mundane world Loshn Targum allows the

encounter between the holy and the secular and thus propagation of elements and concepts of holiness in non-Jewish

language due to translation (the very word targum ndash ldquotranslationrsquo hints upon this) The non-perfect and limited loshn

koydesh obtains its perfectness only in combination with loshn Targum (and with the ability to translate into other

languages) Therefore Targum is a necessary part of the Judaism and the Torah must be read ldquotwice the Scripture once

the Targumrdquo Ashkenazi scholars noted that in their time Yiddish being a spoken language plays the same role as

loshn Targum (Tosafot on Berakhot 8a) According to Maharal from Prague (1525-1609) loshn Targum is a universal

language of a united mankind (since according to the Talmud it does not belong to any particular people) which was

used by Adam in the Garden of Eden and thus is has an important function in the messianic redemption (Khiddushe

Aggadot on Sota 33a Sanhedrin 38b Tiferet Israel 13) Chassidic leaders accepted that Yiddish which plays the role

of loshn Targum is important for the preparation of the Messiah to come (eg the Rebbe from Vilednik Shearit Israel

Zmanim Shavuot) It can be seen from the above-mentioned information that Yiddish was considered by many Rabbis

(especially those mystically minded) as a language which complimented Hebrew rather than as a completely separate

entity (M Nosonovsky ldquoHe who separates between Holy and Secular bilingualism and Judaismrdquo Jewish Education

vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)

31 For example the educator from Germany Isaac Wetzlar (circa 1680-1751 CE) who is considered one of the first

maskilim noticed with bewilderment that some ldquoeven so-called scholarsrdquo make ldquomistakesrdquo in Hebrew language

According to him it is better to write a book in Yiddish rather than in Hebrew with mistakes therefore he himself

wrote his ethical and pedagogical treatise Libes Briv in Yiddish (The Libes Briv of Isaac Wetzlar ed and trans by M

Faierstein Atlanta 1996 p 43) The same motif of the necessity to learn Hebrew grammar is found also among other

early maskilim such as Solomon Hanau (1687-1746) who influenced Moses Mendelson (D Sorkin ldquoThe Early

Haskalahrdquo New Perspectives on the Haskalah (London-Portland 2001) This was apparently related to the desire of



20

many maskilim to interpret the Scripture literary without any connection to the Oral Law (simultaneously with the

insistence to study the grammar of Biblical Hebrew the first maskilim asked to clearly distinguish between Talmudic

legends and midrashim from the Biblical narrative) The grammarians of the from the period of European

Enlightenment were their predecessors in that such as Elia Levita (Bakhur) who composed in 1542 the first Hebrew-

Yiddish-Latin-German dictionary and believed following Sephardi grammarians that the Sephardi pronunciation is

more authentic than the Ashkenazi one

32 Interestingly both the first dictionary and grammar of Yiddish were written for Christians The first dictionary

prepared by Elia Levita and a Christian scholar Paul Fagius and printed in Isny (Germany) in 1542 CE (see notes 31

and 2) had four columns (Hebrew Yiddish Greek and German) and was intended for Christian scholars According to

Brisman History and Guide to Judaic Dictionaries and Concordances 43 its primary purpose was to teach them to

translate from German into Hebrew However the fact that the Yiddish column was included in the first edition (it was

actually omitted in the second edition printed in Holland in 1652) shows that Yiddish was of interest by itself Yiddish

was of interest to the Christian Hebraists because they met Yiddish glosses fragments and whole texts within Jewish

Hebrew manuscripts and books from time to time The first grammar of Yiddish was composed and printed in 1607 CE

by another Christian Hebraist Johannes Buxtorf Thus the concept of Yiddish being a separate language with a separate

value originates first outside of Jewish tradition

33 The ldquotraditionalrdquo (or more exactly phonetic in the orthography of the New or Old Yiddish) spelling of geographic

names was substituted by the early 20th

century with the Hebrew spelling Thus Hebrew קוסוב or Yiddish קאסעװ instead

of קאסוב (Kosov) נובוסליצה instead of נאבאסעליצע (Novoselitsa) Since then many surnames have been spelled with the

ldquoHebrewrdquo orthography instead of the ldquoYiddishrdquo one As soon as Hebrew and Yiddish started to be perceived as two

independent languages which to the possible extent should be spoken without contamination by foreign words terms

which had been lacking emerged in both languages The above-mention record of books purchase would perhaps now

sound in Hebrew as כריכה בעד גש ה עוד שג שלשים בסך אמסטרדם דפוס משניות or in Yiddish as בסך אמסטערדאם דפוס משניות

Previously mostly stylistic differences between the layers of the language became the בונד א פאר גש ה אױך שג דרײסיק

difference between languages Certainly the concept of the difference of the loshn-koydesh and taych existed among

pre-modern Jews too However it reflected rather the opposition of the scholastic vs spoken language than of two

independent languages of equal status They very names show this loshn-koydesh (ldquoholy languagerdquo) meaning the

language of the holy books and taych (ldquopopularrdquo ldquounderstandablerdquo) or mameloshn (ldquoMomrsquos languagerdquo)

34 Typical is the graphic shift of the vowel signs from the position before aleph or yud (as they used to vocalize Hebrew

texts) to the position under these letters and the transformation of a letter with a vowel sign into a single fossilized

graphic element Thus pasekh tsvey yudn ײ in a Hebrew text would be read ya whereas in Yiddish it is read ay It

is interesting to note that most consistently the phonetic orthography of Yiddish was used in the Soviet Union where

even HA words were spelled phonetically



2

1 Introduction Hebrew-Aramaic component of Yiddish

According to Max Weinreichrsquos definition Yiddish is a hybrid or fusion language

(shmeltsshprakh1) which includes three major components Hebrew-Aramaic (HA or loshn-

koydesh) Germanic and Slavic plus the forth Romanic (Loez) which is historically important but

found less frequently in the language The concept of linguistic fusion (oyfshmeltsung) implies that

the components of Yiddish have equal status As an example of the fusion the word doktoyrim

(ldquodoctorsrdquo) can be considered This word combines Hebrew plural ending (-im) with the borrowed

(possibly German) word doktor2 Another example is mefunetse (ldquospoiledrdquo feminine form of

masculine mefunek) which combines the Hebrew root with a Slavic ending ndashniknitse (an analogy

with for example nudniknudnetse ldquopestrdquo) A speaker of the language usually does not realize

during speaking which component a lexical unit belongs to and perceives them as parts of a

homogeneous Yiddish vocabulary Some cases of selectivity (selektivkeyt) or limitedness of the

fusion are rather exceptions3

However the position of the HA component is different from the others While the source of the

Germanic and Slavic component was living and located in close proximity to Yiddish languages

Hebrew and Aramaic were never spoken in Europe Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language

apparently in the 2nd

century AD ie more than 800 years before Yiddish emerged To de-

emphasize this problem the concept of ldquothe chain of Jewish languagesrdquo has been suggested by

several linguists4 According to this concept the HA component was not borrowed by Yiddish

directly from Hebrew and Aramaic but via the languages hypothetically spoken by the European

Jews before Yiddish each of which had its own HA component Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Greek

Judeo-Latin and Loez

The concept of the chain of Jewish languages however has weaknesses First very little is known

about the languages spoken by the European Jews of the first millennium AD Little is also known

about the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews5 The very existence of these languages is hypothetical and

more so the presence and extent of the HA component in them In Yiddish the HA component

lexica constitutes according to some estimates about 20 of the vocabulary6 Obviously such a

huge amount of words could not be inherited from the ldquochain of Jewish languagesrsquo while the very

existence of these languages are hypothetical and more the extent of HA component in them

Furthermore according to much evidence the knowledge of Hebrew among the European Jews in

the first millennium was low since Europe was at that time was a remote periphery of the Jewish

world7 Even if the HA component was present in spoken Judeo-Greek Judeo-Latin and Loez its

lexicon could not constitute a fraction close to that of the HA lexicon in Yiddish In terms of the



3

















during writing











century exegetics








4

















-19th














Yiddish





5
















amenrdquo




















6






good example13



בפרטיות











Torah study

23 Epitaphs













7







eman r[abbi] Y

ehuda ben r[abbi]

Yalsquoakob d

emitk

ere

16 le-Yuda











demiskrey le-Yudo




Of














century text


demiskere le-Ide



8















24 Birth records




The records were











calques









9



It is difficult



text24











Scribal Yiddish


consiousness




















10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































3

















during writing











century exegetics








4

















-19th














Yiddish





5
















amenrdquo




















6






good example13



בפרטיות











Torah study

23 Epitaphs













7







eman r[abbi] Y

ehuda ben r[abbi]

Yalsquoakob d

emitk

ere

16 le-Yuda











demiskrey le-Yudo




Of














century text


demiskere le-Ide



8















24 Birth records




The records were











calques









9



It is difficult



text24











Scribal Yiddish


consiousness




















10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































4

















-19th














Yiddish





5
















amenrdquo




















6






good example13



בפרטיות











Torah study

23 Epitaphs













7







eman r[abbi] Y

ehuda ben r[abbi]

Yalsquoakob d

emitk

ere

16 le-Yuda











demiskrey le-Yudo




Of














century text


demiskere le-Ide



8















24 Birth records




The records were











calques









9



It is difficult



text24











Scribal Yiddish


consiousness




















10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































5
















amenrdquo




















6






good example13



בפרטיות











Torah study

23 Epitaphs













7







eman r[abbi] Y

ehuda ben r[abbi]

Yalsquoakob d

emitk

ere

16 le-Yuda











demiskrey le-Yudo




Of














century text


demiskere le-Ide



8















24 Birth records




The records were











calques









9



It is difficult



text24











Scribal Yiddish


consiousness




















10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































6






good example13



בפרטיות











Torah study

23 Epitaphs













7







eman r[abbi] Y

ehuda ben r[abbi]

Yalsquoakob d

emitk

ere

16 le-Yuda











demiskrey le-Yudo




Of














century text


demiskere le-Ide



8















24 Birth records




The records were











calques









9



It is difficult



text24











Scribal Yiddish


consiousness




















10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































7







eman r[abbi] Y

ehuda ben r[abbi]

Yalsquoakob d

emitk

ere

16 le-Yuda











demiskrey le-Yudo




Of














century text


demiskere le-Ide



8















24 Birth records




The records were











calques









9



It is difficult



text24











Scribal Yiddish


consiousness




















10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































8















24 Birth records




The records were











calques









9



It is difficult



text24











Scribal Yiddish


consiousness




















10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































9



It is difficult



text24











Scribal Yiddish


consiousness




















10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































10

































uneducated men)29



11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































11

































significant

5 Conclusions






12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































12























13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































13





14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































14




15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































15










100

Sem

itic

lex

ical

ele

men

ts

Biblical

Hebrew

Standard

Yiddish

Oral secret

languages

Chassidic

texts lomdish

Yiddish

Scribal

Yiddish

Medieval

Hebrew

Epitaphs



16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































16



























th-12

th centuries








percentrdquo (p 66)






17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































17




th-18



century

























th-6

th century from



















18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































18

21




th

century



































-19th





19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































19

































vol 1-2 (2004) 9-34)










20





































20



































the scholastic lexicon of ashkenazi hebrew and orthography

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