The Complicated Language Situation of German Jewry, 1760-1914

IT entirely HAS BECOME distinct CONVENTIONAL entities, which despite to think their of Yiddish relationship, and German can clearly as two be entirely distinct entities, which despite their relationsh p, can clearly b distinguished from each other. In part this is because the usual concept of these two languages is based on the standard German and Yiddish literary languages of the modern period. Here the differences are clear, from the alphabet in which they are written, to many items of vocabulary, to differences in pronunciation and grammatical rules. This simple and clear dichotomy based on modern standard German and modern eastern Yiddish becomes more and more clouded and complex, however, the more we look at the relationship between the language of Jews and the language of Gentiles in Germany between the late eighteenth and the early twentieth century. The actual linguistic situation of the Jews of Germany during this period of rapid change is far more complex than a simple contrast between separate Yiddish and German entities. First of all Jewish speech in Germany varied internally on a number of different planes geographically, socially and by type of formal education. German, too, was not a single entity, but differed even more widely than did the speech of the Jews. Before the nineteenth century literary High German was known only to an educated minority of the population of Germany. Outside of the educated elite, local dialects were dominant. These varied so greatly, that people in different parts of the German speaking world could not understand the dialects of people in other parts of the German speaking area.1