THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC PILGRIMAGE OF YIDDISH (SOME EXAMPLES OF FUNCTIONAL AND STRUCTURAL PIDGINIZATION AND DEPIDGINIZATION)

Fishman, Joshua A.

Publication

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC PILGRIMAGE OF YIDDISH (SOME EXAMPLES OF FUNCTIONAL AND STRUCTURAL PIDGINIZATION AND DEPIDGINIZATION)

Fishman, Joshua A.

Abstract

The second in a series of case studies of societies in which the mother tongue is merely the process language but not target language of education. This paper reviews the changes in Yiddish orthography which have paralleled its users' views as to its proper functions. Hebrew and German have both served as models and as anti-models for Yiddish orthography, resulting in four recognizable clusters of orthographies over a period of nearly one thousand years of printed use: both toward Hebrew and toward German, toward Hebrew but away from German, toward German but away from Hebrew, and, in most recent days, away from Hebrew and away from German. Change in orthographic models has always accompanied change in lexical and syntactic models as well and, all in all, been indicative of users' views as to the internal diglossia and the external diglossia relationships into which Yiddish should be involved.