Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning And Linguistic Development (oxford Modern Languages And Literature Monographs)

This is the first comprehensive study of Yiddish in the former Soviet Union. A chronicle of orthographic and other reformsfrom the state of the language in pre-Revolutionary Russia, through active language-planning in the 1920s and 1930s, repression, and subsequent developments up to the1980sis recreated from contemporary publications and archival materials. Later chapters draw on the author's own experience as a Yiddish writer and lexicographer in Moscow.At a time when the Bolshevik party's Jewish sections held an influential position, Yiddish attained a functional diversity without precedent in its history; but underlying contradictions between ideas expressed in the slogans `Proletarians of all countries, unite!' and `The right of nations toself-determination' led to extremes in language-planning. A golden mean was achieved after the 1934 Yiddish language conference in Kiev. Using contemporary literary works as a source of linguistic and sociolinguistic information, Gennady Estraikh charts the development of the resultant variety ofthe language, `Soviet Yiddish'; the effects of severe repression in the late 1930s and 1940s; and the subsequent decline in usage. Comparisons are drawn between Soviet Yiddish language-planning and concurrent reforms in Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, and German; and the features and types ofSoviet Yiddish word-formation are analysed, notably univerbation, or compressing a phrase into one word. "This is the first comprehensive study of Yiddish in the former Soviet Union. A chronicle of orthographic and other reforms - from the state of the language in pre-Revolutionary Russia, through active language-planning in the 1920s and 1930s, repression, and subsequent developments up to the 1980s - is recreated from contemporary publications and archival materials. Later chapters draw on the author's own experience as a Yiddish writer and lexicographer in Moscow."--BOOK JACKET 1. Yiddish In Late Imperial Russia -- 2. Yiddish Proletarian Language -- 3. Language Planning Of The 1930s -- 4. Soviet Yiddish In The 1940s To 1980s -- 5. Soviet Yiddish Orthography -- 6. Soviet Yiddish Word-formation. Gennady Estraikh. Based On The Author's Thesis (doctoral--oxford) Presented Under The Title: Origin And Features Of Soviet Yiddish. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [176]-200) And Indexes. This first comprehensive study of Yiddish in the former Soviet Union chronicles orthographic and other reforms from the state of the language in pre-revolutionary Russia, through active language-planning in the 1920s and 1930s, repression, and subsequent developments up to the 1980s.