Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface and acknowledgments
- Glossary
- 1 Is Hebrew an endangered language?
- 2 The emergence of Hebrew
- 3 Hebrew–Aramaic bilingualism and competition
- 4 Three languages in Hellenistic and Roman Palestine
- 5 From statehood to Diaspora
- 6 The Arabian and African connections
- 7 The spread of Islam
- 8 The Jews of France
- 9 The Jews of Spain and their languages
- 10 Loter-Ashkenaz and the creation of Yiddish
- 11 The Yavanic area: Greece and Italy
- 12 Jews in Slavic lands
- 13 Linguistic emancipation and assimilation in Europe
- 14 Britain, its former colonies, and the New World
- 15 Islam and the Orient
- 16 The return to Zion and Hebrew
- Appendix Estimated current status of Jewish languages1
- Notes
- References
- Index
13 - Linguistic emancipation and assimilation in Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of maps
- Preface and acknowledgments
- Glossary
- 1 Is Hebrew an endangered language?
- 2 The emergence of Hebrew
- 3 Hebrew–Aramaic bilingualism and competition
- 4 Three languages in Hellenistic and Roman Palestine
- 5 From statehood to Diaspora
- 6 The Arabian and African connections
- 7 The spread of Islam
- 8 The Jews of France
- 9 The Jews of Spain and their languages
- 10 Loter-Ashkenaz and the creation of Yiddish
- 11 The Yavanic area: Greece and Italy
- 12 Jews in Slavic lands
- 13 Linguistic emancipation and assimilation in Europe
- 14 Britain, its former colonies, and the New World
- 15 Islam and the Orient
- 16 The return to Zion and Hebrew
- Appendix Estimated current status of Jewish languages1
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Into the modern world
We have followed the addition of languages to the Jewish sociolinguistic ecology historically and regionally: the adoption of Hebrew in Canaan; the addition of Aramaic and Greek in the ancient world; the spread of Greek and addition of Latin in the Mediterranean Diaspora, and of Judeo-Persian in the eastern; the spread of Arabic to Jews as well as others as a result of the Muslim conquest; the development of Judeo-Romance varieties in Western and Southern Loez; the process from German dialects to Yiddish in Ashkenaz and further east; and the period of Judeo-Slavic (Knaanic) before Yiddish took over in eastern Europe.
This survey took us through the ancient and medieval worlds, with surprisingly little variation in pattern as Jews, usually forced to migrate by conquest or persecution, added new languages to their repertoire, modified them when isolated by internal or external pressure, and, throughout, generally maintained Hebrew as their heritage, sacred, and literary language. In Renaissance Europe, the expulsion of Jews in 1492 from the Iberian Peninsula did not just spread Judezmo as far as Turkey, but also was associated with a flurry of translations by Jews of Classical texts via Arabic to western languages. Essentially, in the next two chapters we trace the next stage of development in what might be called the modern world, remembering that modernization, industrialization, political emancipation, and westernization came to different parts of that world at different times; earliest in Germany, and never in some Islamic nations, whose Jews were emancipated as citizens only after their escape to a western Diaspora or to the new State of Israel.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Languages of the JewsA Sociolinguistic History, pp. 190 - 215Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014