Soviet Yiddish - Language-Planning and Linguistic Development (Hardcover)

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 the 1980sis 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 to self-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 of the 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 of Soviet Yiddish word-formation are analysed, notably univerbation, or compressing a phrase into one word.

General

Imprint:	Clarendon Press
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs
Release date:	February 1999
Authors:	Gennady Estraikh (Editor of Yiddish Publications)
Dimensions:	224 x 144 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	227
ISBN-13:	978-0-19-818479-9
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Sociolinguistics Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics > General Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Promotions
LSN:	0-19-818479-4
Barcode:	9780198184799

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