Presented by The Workers Circle
Advanced with Leyzer Burko: Hungarian Yiddish Between Two Worlds
Share:
Presented by The Workers Circle
Share:
Sunday at 12:00 – 1:30 PM: Feb. 22, Mar. 1, 8, 15, 22, Mar. 29, Apr. 12, 19, 26, May 3
Course Goals: Before World War II, Hungarian Yiddish did not play much of a role in secular Yiddish culture. There were no famous Yiddish writers from Hungary. Most secular and modern Jews there spoke Hungarian or German, while only the very Orthodox stuck to Yiddish. But Hungarian Yiddish would have a remarkable fate because it became the mother dialect of the Hasidic Yiddish spoken today. Most Hasidic families have roots in the old Kingdom of Hungary, which once had a much larger territory, including large parts of Romania, Slovakia, and even Ukraine. Hungarian Yiddish itself is very interesting, because it belongs to two different dialect areas. In the western part of the country, Jews spoke a type of Western Yiddish similar to what was once spoken in Germany—very exotic! In the eastern part, Jews spoke a dialect that was similar to Polish Yiddish, but often with some western elements. The latter is the basis for most Yiddish spoken today.
Course Tools: Materials prepared by the instructor, especially from the interviews of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry and from the Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe.
Additional Information: This course will be taught entirely in Yiddish.
Sunday at 12:00 – 1:30 PM: Feb. 22, Mar. 1, 8, 15, 22, Mar. 29, Apr. 12, 19, 26, May 3
Course Goals: Before World War II, Hungarian Yiddish did not play much of a role in secular Yiddish culture. There were no famous Yiddish writers from Hungary. Most secular and modern Jews there spoke Hungarian or German, while only the very Orthodox stuck to Yiddish. But Hungarian Yiddish would have a remarkable fate because it became the mother dialect of the Hasidic Yiddish spoken today. Most Hasidic families have roots in the old Kingdom of Hungary, which once had a much larger territory, including large parts of Romania, Slovakia, and even Ukraine. Hungarian Yiddish itself is very interesting, because it belongs to two different dialect areas. In the western part of the country, Jews spoke a type of Western Yiddish similar to what was once spoken in Germany—very exotic! In the eastern part, Jews spoke a dialect that was similar to Polish Yiddish, but often with some western elements. The latter is the basis for most Yiddish spoken today.
Course Tools: Materials prepared by the instructor, especially from the interviews of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry and from the Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe.
Additional Information: This course will be taught entirely in Yiddish.