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111-568: Joshua Fishman ( Yiddish : שיקל פֿישמאַן — Shikl Fishman; July 18, 1926 – March 1, 2015) was an American linguist who specialized in the sociology of language , language planning , bilingual education , and language and ethnicity . Joshua A. Fishman (Yiddish name Shikl ) was born and raised in Philadelphia . His sister was the poet Rukhl Fishman . He attended public schools while also studying Yiddish at elementary and secondary levels. As he grew up, his father would ask his children at

222-616: A Bachelorʼs degree in Liberal Arts. Kichwa is the variety of the Quechua language spoken in Ecuador and is one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages in South America. Despite this fact, Kichwa is a threatened language, mainly because of the expansion of Spanish in South America. One community of original Kichwa speakers, Lagunas, was one of the first indigenous communities to switch to

333-606: A PhD in social psychology from Columbia University in 1953. He is the father of David Fishman and Avi Fishman. After graduating, he studied Yiddish with Max Weinreich during the summer of 1948. During that time, he received a prize from the YIVO (Institute for Yiddish Research) for a monograph on bilingualism. In 1951-52 he held a position as a research assistant for the Jewish Education Committee of New York. In December 1951, he married Gella Schweid, with whom he shared

444-534: A collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah . The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita 's Bovo-Bukh ( בָּבָֿא-בּוך ), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the title Bovo d'Antona ). Levita,

555-428: A division can exist between educated revitalizers, interested in historicity, and remaining speakers interested in locally authentic idiom (as has sometimes occurred with Irish ). Some have argued that structural compromise may, in fact, enhance the prospects of survival, as may have been the case with English in the post- Norman period . Other linguists have argued that when language revitalization borrows heavily from

666-727: A dozen institutions around the world, including the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences ( Stanford, CA ) and the Institute for Advanced Study ( Princeton, NJ ). Fishman wrote over 1000 articles and monographs on multilingualism , bilingual education and minority education, the sociology and history of the Yiddish language , language planning , reversing language shift , language revival , 'language and nationalism ', 'language and religion', and 'language and ethnicity '. Fishman

777-661: A dozen languages from "elsewhere in Canada and around the globe", along with 17 dictionary apps. Similar to other indigenous languages, Tlingit is critically endangered. Fewer than 100 fluent Elders existed as of 2017. From 2013 to 2014, the language activist, author, and teacher, Sʔímlaʔxw Michele K. Johnson from the Syilx Nation, attempted to teach two hopeful learners of Tlingit in the Yukon. Her methods included textbook creation, sequenced immersion curriculum, and film assessment. The aim

888-530: A first language in Gaeltacht areas). Ó Béarra stated: "[to] follow the syntax and idiomatic conventions of English, [would be] producing what amounts to little more than English in Irish drag." With regard to the then-moribund Manx language , the scholar T. F. O'Rahilly stated, "When a language surrenders itself to foreign idiom, and when all its speakers become bilingual, the penalty is death." Neil McRae has stated that

999-738: A first language. Of course this came at the expense of local Italian languages, most of which are now endangered . Success was enjoyed in similar circumstances by High German , standard Czech , Castilian Spanish and other languages. The Coptic language began its decline when Arabic became the predominant language in Egypt. Pope Shenouda III established the Coptic Language Institute in December 1976 in Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo for

1110-508: A language spoken by the people of the same name in Massachusetts, underwent a language revival project led by Jessie Little Doe Baird , a trained linguist. Members of the tribe use the extensive written records that exist in their language, including a translation of the Bible and legal documents, in order to learn and teach Wampanoag. The project has seen children speaking the language fluently for

1221-485: A lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries. There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects . The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts. Uvular As in

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1332-460: A lifelong commitment to Yiddish. In 1953, he completed his Ph.D. in social psychology at Columbia University with a dissertation entitled Negative Stereotypes Concerning Americans among American-born Children Receiving Various Types of Minority-group Education . Shikl was approached by his hometown Phillies asking him to join the radio booth and announce one batter's plate appearance in Yiddish in

1443-751: A little" Ainu. As of 2001, Ainu was not taught in any elementary or secondary schools in Japan, but was offered at numerous language centres and universities in Hokkaido, as well as at Tokyo's Chiba University . In China, the Manchu language is one of the most endangered languages, with speakers only in three small areas of Manchuria remaining. Some enthusiasts are trying to revive the language of their ancestors using available dictionaries and textbooks, and even occasional visits to Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in Xinjiang , where

1554-588: A part of the Phillies Jewish week. Shikl turned down the offer for fear it would "make a mockery of Yiddish." From 1955 to 1958, he taught the sociology of language at the City College of New York while he was also directing research at the College Entrance Examination Board . In 1958, he was appointed an associate professor of human relations and psychology at Penn. He subsequently accepted

1665-432: A plan for language revitalization. One of these is provided by celebrated linguist Joshua Fishman . Fishman's model for reviving threatened (or sleeping) languages, or for making them sustainable, consists of an eight-stage process. Efforts should be concentrated on the earlier stages of restoration until they have been consolidated before proceeding to the later stages. The eight stages are: This model of language revival

1776-910: A post as professor of psychology and sociology at Yeshiva University in New York, where he would also serve as dean of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities as well as academic vice president. In 1966, he was made Distinguished University Research Professor of Social Sciences. In 1988, he became professor emeritus and became affiliated with a number of other institutions: Visiting Professor and Visiting Scholar, School of Education, Applied Linguistics and Department of Linguistics, Stanford University ; Adjunct Professor of Multilingual and Multicultural Education, School of Education, New York University ; Visiting Professor of Linguistics, City University of New York , Graduate Center. He has held visiting appointments and fellowships at over

1887-736: A range of different techniques or methods that speakers can use to try to revitalize a language, including techniques to revive extinct languages and maintain weak ones. The techniques he lists are often limited to the current vitality of the language. He claims that the immersion method cannot be used to revitalize an extinct or moribund language. In contrast, the master-apprentice method of one-on-one transmission on language proficiency can be used with moribund languages. Several other methods of revitalization, including those that rely on technology such as recordings or media, can be used for languages in any state of viability. David Crystal , in his book Language Death , proposes that language revitalization

1998-621: A strong renewal. This happened, for example, in the revival of Classical Latin in the Renaissance , and the revival of Sanskrit in the early centuries AD. An analogous phenomenon in contemporary Arabic -speaking areas is the expanded use of the literary language ( Modern Standard Arabic , a form of the Classical Arabic of the 6th century AD). This is taught to all educated speakers and is used in radio broadcasts, formal discussions, etc. In addition, literary languages have sometimes risen to

2109-406: A voluntary language. As a result of its loss as an official language and years of marginalization at the official level during and after American colonization, the use of Spanish amongst the overall populace decreased dramatically and became moribund, with the remaining native speakers left being mostly elderly people. The language has seen a gradual revival, however, due to official promotion under

2220-501: A wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language, rather than being genuinely indicative of the presence of thousands of L1 Sanskrit speakers in India. There has also been a rise of so-called "Sanskrit villages", but experts have cast doubt on the extent to which Sanskrit is really spoken in such villages. The Soyot language of the small-numbered Soyots in Buryatia , Russia , one of

2331-503: Is severely limited . Sometimes various tactics of language revitalization can even be used to try to revive extinct languages . Though the goals of language revitalization vary greatly from case to case, they typically involve attempting to expand the number of speakers and use of a language, or trying to maintain the current level of use to protect the language from extinction or language death . Reasons for revitalization vary: they can include physical danger affecting those whose language

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2442-626: Is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557. Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh , and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה Tseno Ureno and

2553-475: Is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews . It originated in 9th century Central Europe , and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic ) and to some extent Aramaic . Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages . Yiddish has traditionally been written using

2664-480: Is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer ). Hebrew Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic Other Jewish diaspora languages Jewish folklore Jewish poetry By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe. By

2775-464: Is dying, economic danger such as the exploitation of indigenous natural resources, political danger such as genocide, or cultural danger/assimilation. In recent times alone, it is estimated that more than 2000 languages have already become extinct. The UN estimates that more than half of the languages spoken today have fewer than 10,000 speakers and that a quarter have fewer than 1,000 speakers; and that, unless there are some efforts to maintain them, over

2886-515: Is essentially Spanish monolingualism. The feelings of the Lagunas people present a dichotomy with language use, as most of the Lagunas members speak Spanish exclusively and only know a few words in Kichwa. The prospects for Kichwa language revitalization are not promising, as parents depend on schooling for this purpose, which is not nearly as effective as continual language exposure in the home. Schooling in

2997-405: Is intended to direct efforts to where they are most effective and to avoid wasting energy trying to achieve the later stages of recovery when the earlier stages have not been achieved. For instance, it is probably wasteful to campaign for the use of a language on television or in government services if hardly any families are in the habit of using the language. Additionally, Tasaku Tsunoda describes

3108-493: Is largely based on an independent community-based school system, known generally as Gaelscoileanna . These schools teach entirely through Irish and their number is growing, with over thirty such schools in Dublin alone. They are an important element in the creation of a network of urban Irish speakers (known as Gaeilgeoirí), who tend to be young, well-educated and middle-class. It is now likely that this group has acquired critical mass,

3219-462: Is more likely to be successful if its speakers: In her book, Endangered Languages: An Introduction, Sarah Thomason notes the success of revival efforts for modern Hebrew and the relative success of revitalizing Maori in New Zealand (see Specific Examples below). One notable factor these two examples share is that the children were raised in fully immersive environments. In the case of Hebrew, it

3330-493: Is printed in Hebrew script.) According to a study by the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH), more than 40 printed Yiddish newspapers and magazines were published worldwide in 2024, and the trend is rising. The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch , i. e. "Moses German" —declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and

3441-457: Is pronounced [haɡˈdɔmɜ] . The vowel phonemes of Standard Yiddish are: In addition, the sonorants /l/ and /n/ can function as syllable nuclei : [m] and [ŋ] appear as syllable nuclei as well, but only as allophones of /n/ , after bilabial consonants and dorsal consonants , respectively. The syllabic sonorants are always unstressed. Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in

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3552-588: Is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymos and Yiddish Todres ). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages , Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German , and from these groups

3663-536: Is the founder and editor of the Contributions to the Sociology of Language book series by Mouton de Gruyter . Fishman devised the influential Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS), used for determining whether languages are endangered, in his book Reversing Language Shift . The Enhanced GIDS was based on this and is used by Ethnologue . According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann , "The founder and general editor of

3774-493: Is uncertain). An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script , from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino ,

3885-554: The Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. The 19th century Prussian-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz , for example, wrote that "the language of the Jews [in Poland] ... degenerat[ed] into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit." A Maskil (one who takes part in

3996-650: The Haskalah ) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages. –  Osip Aronovich Rabinovich , in an article titled "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air, We Must Speak Its Language" in

4107-587: The Hebrew alphabet . Prior to World War II , there were 11–13 million speakers. Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However,

4218-570: The High Holy Days ) and בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ , 'synagogue' (read in Yiddish as beis hakneses ) – had been included. The niqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation. Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in

4329-568: The Middle High German diphthong ei and long vowel î to /aɪ/ , Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German /ɔʏ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong öu and the long vowel iu , which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterparts ei and î , respectively. Lastly, the Standard German /aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong ou and

4440-525: The Odessan journal Рассвет (dawn), 1861. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew , Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement ). Notable Yiddish writers of

4551-542: The Siberian Turkic languages , has been reconstructed and a Soyot- Buryat - Russian dictionary was published in 2002. The language is currently taught in some elementary schools. The Ainu language of the indigenous Ainu people of northern Japan is currently moribund, but efforts are underway to revive it. A 2006 survey of the Hokkaido Ainu indicated that only 4.6% of Ainu surveyed were able to converse in or "speak

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4662-480: The Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian , Polish , and Ukrainian ), but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration ; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation , so that, for example, זאָגט /zɔɡt/ ('says') is pronounced [zɔkt] and הקדמה /hakˈdɔmɜ/ ('foreword')

4773-554: The high medieval period , their area of settlement, centered on the Rhineland ( Mainz ) and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer ), came to be known as Ashkenaz , originally a term used of Scythia , and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In the medieval Hebrew of Rashi (d. 1105), Ashkenaz becomes a term for Germany, and אשכּנזי Ashkenazi for the Jews settling in this area. Ashkenaz bordered on

4884-431: The תחנות Tkhines . One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln , whose memoirs are still in print. The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש loshn-koydesh , and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish

4995-629: The 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO . In Vilnius , there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish. Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that

5106-580: The Ashkenazi community took shape. Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the Rhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into

5217-434: The Lagunas community, although having a conscious focus on teaching Kichwa, consists of mainly passive interaction, reading, and writing in Kichwa. In addition to grassroots efforts, national language revitalization organizations, like CONAIE , focus attention on non-Spanish speaking indigenous children, who represent a large minority in the country. Another national initiative, Bilingual Intercultural Education Project (PEBI),

5328-548: The Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels. Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o 11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish quality (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and

5439-457: The Spanish language. According to King, this was because of the increase of trade and business with the large Spanish-speaking town nearby. The Lagunas people assert that it was not for cultural assimilation purposes, as they value their cultural identity highly. However, once this contact was made, language for the Lagunas people shifted through generations, to Kichwa and Spanish bilingualism and now

5550-553: The administration of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo . Most notably, Resolution No. 2006-028 reinstated Spanish as a mandatory subject in secondary schools and universities. Results were immediate as the job demand for Spanish speakers had increased since 2008. As of 2010, the Instituto Cervantes in Manila reported the number of Spanish-speakers in the country with native or non-native knowledge at approximately 3 million,

5661-580: The area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews , who ranged into southern France . Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations. Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been Aramaic ,

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5772-587: The breadth and depth of Fishman’s work through a combined Jewish-sociolinguistic lens." Zuckermann has argued that "Fishman’s research embodies the integration of Jewish scholarship with general linguistics. [...] Jewish linguistics, the exploration of Jewish languages such as Yiddish, has shaped general sociolinguistics. Throughout history Jews have been multilingual immigrants, resulting in Jewish languages embodying intricate and intriguing mechanisms of language contact and identity. These languages were thus fertile ground for

5883-527: The case of Hebrew , resulting in Modern Hebrew - now the national language of Israel . In this case, there was a unique set of historical and cultural characteristics that facilitated the revival. (See Revival of the Hebrew language .) Hebrew, once largely a liturgical language , was re-established as a means of everyday communication by Jews, some of who had lived in what is now the State of Israel, starting in

5994-609: The central governments of the different states imposed their vernacular language as the standard throughout education and official use (this was the case in the United Kingdom , France , Spain , Italy and Greece , and to some extent, in Germany and Austria-Hungary ). In the last few [when?] decades, local nationalism and human rights movements have made a more multicultural policy standard in European states; sharp condemnation of

6105-666: The creation of the Saroyan Committee or the Armenian Language Preservation Committee, launched in 2013. Other attempts at language revitalization can be seen within the University of California in Irvine . In Thailand, there exists a Chong language revitalization project, headed by Suwilai Premsrirat. In Europe , in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the use of both local and learned languages declined as

6216-456: The death or emigration of many Irish speakers during the Irish famine of the 1840s, and continued emigration since. Efforts to revitalise Irish were being made, however, from the mid-1800s, and were associated with a desire for Irish political independence. Contemporary Irish language revitalization has chiefly involved teaching Irish as a compulsory language in mainstream English-speaking schools. But

6327-740: The dialect remain in diasporic communities away from their homeland in Anatolia, following the Armenian genocide . In spite of this, there have been various efforts to revitalize the language, especially within the Los Angeles community where the majority of Western Armenians reside. Within her dissertation, Shushan Karapetian discusses at length the decline of the Armenian language in the United States, and new means for keeping and reviving Western Armenian, such as

6438-429: The dinner table, "What did you do for Yiddish today?" He studied Yiddish in Workmen's Circle Schools, which emphasized mastery of the Yiddish language along with a focus on literature, history, and social issues. He graduated from Olney High School. He attended the University of Pennsylvania on a Mayor's Scholarship, 1944-1948, earning a B.S. and an M.S., in history and psychology , respectively. He went on to get

6549-562: The earlier practices of suppressing regional languages was expressed in the use of such terms as " linguicide ". In Francoist Spain , Basque language use was discouraged by the government's repressive policies . In the Basque Country, "Francoist repression was not only political, but also linguistic and cultural." Franco's regime suppressed Basque from official discourse, education, and publishing, making it illegal to register newborn babies under Basque names, and even requiring tombstone engravings in Basque to be removed. In some provinces

6660-487: The earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written פּאַריז און װיענע Pariz un Viene ( Paris and Vienna ). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט Vidvilt (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as Kinig Artus Hof , an adaptation of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Grafenberg . Another significant writer

6771-525: The early Jewish immigrants to Ottoman Palestine and received the official status in the 1922 constitution of the British Mandate for Palestine and subsequently of the State of Israel . There have been recent attempts at reviving Sanskrit in India. However, despite these attempts, there are no first language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue. However, these reports are thought to signify

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6882-480: The end of the high medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Worms machzor (a Hebrew prayer book). This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר , makhazor (prayerbook for

6993-407: The establishment and evolution of the sociology of language in general. Given the importance in Judaism not only of mentshlikhkayt (cf. humaneness) but also of education and 'on the other hand' dialectics, it is not surprising to find the self-propelled institute Fishman trailblazing simultaneously both in Yiddish scholarship in particular and in the sociology of language in general." In 1991, Fishman

7104-412: The eve of Italian unification , the language only counted about 500,000 speakers (many non-native), out of a total population of c.  22,000,000 . The subsequent success of the language has been through conscious development, where speakers of any of the numerous Italian languages were taught standard Italian as a second language and subsequently imparted it to their children, who learned it as

7215-445: The extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas . The term "Yiddish"

7326-453: The failure to teach it in an effective and engaging way means (as linguist Andrew Carnie notes) that students do not acquire the fluency needed for the lasting viability of the language, and this leads to boredom and resentment. Carnie also noted a lack of media in Irish (2006), though this is no longer the case. The decline of the Gaeltachtaí and the failure of state-directed revitalisation have been countered by an urban revival movement. This

7437-409: The field of historical linguistics by, for instance, weakening the family tree model , which implies that a language has only one parent." There are disagreements in the field of language revitalization as to the degree that revival should concentrate on maintaining the traditional language, versus allowing simplification or widespread borrowing from the majority language . Zuckermann acknowledges

7548-401: The figure albeit including those who speak the Spanish-based creole Chavacano . Complementing government efforts is a notable surge of exposure through the mainstream media and, more recently, music-streaming services. The Western Armenian language, has been classified as a definitely endangered language in the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010), as most speakers of

7659-638: The first time in over 100 years. In addition, there are currently attempts at reviving the Chochenyo language of California, which had become extinct. Efforts are being made by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community and others to keep Chinook Jargon , also known as Chinuk Wawa , alive. This is helped by the corpus of songs and stories collected from Victoria Howard and published by Melville Jacobs . The open-source platform FirstVoices hosts community-managed websites for 85 language revitalization projects, covering multiple varieties of 33 Indigenous languages in British Columbia as well as over

7770-435: The globe. According to Zuckermann, "revival linguistics combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning. After all, language reclamation is the most extreme case of second-language learning. Revival linguistics complements the established area of documentary linguistics , which records endangered languages before they fall asleep." Zuckermann proposes that "revival linguistics changes

7881-425: The home, and maintaining national and regional attention. The revival of the Hebrew language is the only successful example of a revived dead language. The Hebrew language survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy and rabbinic literature . With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, becoming primarily a spoken lingua franca among

7992-404: The land, making up an essential part of their history and self-image. Language revitalization is also closely tied to the linguistic field of language documentation . In this field, linguists try to create a complete record of a language's grammar, vocabulary, and linguistic features. This practice can often lead to more concern for the revitalization of a specific language on study. Furthermore,

8103-431: The language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata , and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base. The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in

8214-525: The late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant , which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains

8325-708: The late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim ; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem , whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער ( Tevye der milkhiker , " Tevye the Dairyman") inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof ; and Isaac Leib Peretz . In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish

8436-438: The leading refereed publication International Journal of the Sociology of Language , Fishman created an intellectual platform that has greatly facilitated the introduction and dissemination of novel models and revolutionary theories that have led to numerous academic debates, syntheses and cross-fertilizations. He has often acted as an epistemological bridge between, and antidote for, parallel discourses." And "One ought to assess

8547-423: The level of becoming first languages of very large language communities. An example is standard Italian , which originated as a literary language based on the language of 13th-century Florence , especially as used by such important Florentine writers as Dante , Petrarch and Boccaccio . This language existed for several centuries primarily as a literary vehicle, with few native speakers; even as late as 1861, on

8658-522: The limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing from German , Polish and Russian . Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic , from Hebrew , from Aramaic and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, it contributed to English – American . [sic] Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It

8769-512: The long vowel û , but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as /ɔɪ/ , the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut , such as in forming plurals: The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties,

8880-445: The majority language, the result is a new language, perhaps a creole or pidgin . For example, the existence of "Neo-Hawaiian" as a separate language from "Traditional Hawaiian" has been proposed, due to the heavy influence of English on every aspect of the revived Hawaiian language. This has also been proposed for Irish, with a sharp division between "Urban Irish" (spoken by second-language speakers) and traditional Irish (as spoken as

8991-479: The mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language. Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had

9102-586: The most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today. Modern Yiddish has two major forms : Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by

9213-521: The most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms." The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to

9324-433: The next hundred years most of these will become extinct. These figures are often cited as reasons why language revitalization is necessary to preserve linguistic diversity. Culture and identity are also frequently cited reasons for language revitalization, when a language is perceived as a unique "cultural treasure." A community often sees language as a unique part of their culture, connecting them with their ancestors or with

9435-414: The nineteenth century. It is the world's most famous and successful example of language revitalization. In a related development, literary languages without native speakers enjoyed great prestige and practical utility as lingua francas , often counting millions of fluent speakers at a time. In many such cases, a decline in the use of the literary language, sometimes precipitous, was later accompanied by

9546-456: The number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim ", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of

9657-416: The old. One of the best known European attempts at language revitalization concerns the Irish language . While English is dominant through most of Ireland, Irish, a Celtic language , is still spoken in certain areas called Gaeltachta í , but there it is in serious decline. The challenges faced by the language over the last few centuries have included exclusion from important domains, social denigration,

9768-732: The presence of "local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies" but suggests that "there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists and first nations' leaders to work more efficiently. For example, it is easier to resurrect basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than sounds and word order. Revivalists should be realistic and abandon discouraging, counter-productive slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!" Nancy Dorian has pointed out that conservative attitudes toward loanwords and grammatical changes often hamper efforts to revitalize endangered languages (as with Tiwi in Australia), and that

9879-492: The public use of Basque was suppressed, with people fined for speaking it. Public use of Basque was frowned upon by supporters of the regime, often regarded as a sign of anti-Francoism or separatism . in the late 1960s. Since 1968, Basque has been immersed in a revitalisation process, facing formidable obstacles. However, significant progress has been made in numerous areas. Six main factors have been identified to explain its relative success: While those six factors influenced

9990-472: The purpose of reviving the Coptic language. In recent years, a growing number of Native American tribes have been trying to revitalize their languages. For example, there are apps (including phrases, word lists and dictionaries) in many Native languages including Cree , Cherokee , Chickasaw , Lakota , Ojibwe , Oneida , Massachusett , Navajo , Halq'emeylem , Gwych'in , and Lushootseed . Wampanoag ,

10101-659: The region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance. In Max Weinreich 's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic , or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia (later known in Yiddish as Loter ) extending over parts of Germany and France. There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in

10212-458: The related Xibe language is still spoken natively. In the Philippines, a local variety of Spanish that was primarily based on Mexican Spanish was the lingua franca of the country since Spanish colonization in 1565 and was an official language alongside Filipino (standardized Tagalog ) and English until 1987, following the ratification of a new constitution, where it was re-designated as

10323-459: The revitalisation process, the extensive development and use of language technologies is also considered a significant additional factor. Overall, in the 1960s and later, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish. A sociolinguistic survey shows that there has been a steady increase in Basque speakers since the 1990s, and the percentage of young speakers exceeds that of

10434-415: The second refers to quantity or diphthongization (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25). Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German ; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with

10545-461: The six-degree scale) to "characterize a language’s overall sociolinguistic situation". The nine factors with their respective scales are: One of the most important preliminary steps in language revitalization/recovering involves establishing the degree to which a particular language has been “dislocated.” This helps involved parties find the best way to assist or revive the language. There are many different theories or models that attempt to lay out

10656-504: The task of documentation is often taken on with the goal of revitalization in mind. Uses a six-point scale is as follows: Another scale for identifying degrees of language endangerment is used in a 2003 paper ("Language Vitality and Endangerment") commissioned by UNESCO from an international group of linguists. The linguists, among other goals and priorities, create a scale with six degrees for language vitality and endangerment. They also propose nine factors or criteria (six of which use

10767-619: The two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East. The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in The Forward argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on

10878-406: The uses of Scottish Gaelic are becoming increasingly tokenistic, and native Gaelic idiom is being lost in favor of artificial terms created by second-language speakers. The total revival of a dead language (in the sense of having no native speakers ) to become the shared means of communication of a self-sustaining community of several million first language speakers has happened only once, in

10989-617: The vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia . The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek -speakers, and this

11100-830: The vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged and so the phonemic distinction has remained. There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddish deaffricates the Middle High German voiceless labiodental affricate /pf/ to /f/ initially (as in פֿונט funt , but this pronunciation is also quasi-standard throughout northern and central Germany); /pf/ surfaces as an unshifted /p/ medially or finally (as in עפּל /ɛpl/ and קאָפּ /kɔp/ ). Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not Northern Standard German. Reversing language shift Languages targeted for language revitalization include those whose use and prominence

11211-608: The work of Weinreich and his challengers alike." Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as " Judeo-Sorbian " (a proposed West Slavic language ) that had been relexified by High German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Yiddish orthography developed towards

11322-586: The world (for a total of 600,000). The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז ‎ ( loshn-ashknaz , "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש ‎ ( taytsh ), a variant of tiutsch , the contemporary name for Middle High German . Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון ‎ ( mame-loshn , lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש ‎ ( loshn koydesh , "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become

11433-461: The −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series. In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs . All varieties of Yiddish lack the German front rounded vowels /œ, øː/ and /ʏ, yː/ , having merged them with /ɛ, e:/ and /ɪ, i:/ , respectively. Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged

11544-513: Was ווײַבערטײַטש ( vaybertaytsh , 'women's taytsh ' , shown in the heading and fourth column in the Shemot Devarim ), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט mesheyt or מאַשקעט mashket —the construction

11655-1279: Was awarded the Linguapax Prize . He was also named "an honorary member of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language." On September 10, 2006, Fishman was honored by a one-day symposium at the University of Pennsylvania , commemorating his 80th birthday. He died in the Bronx , New York, on March 1, 2015, at the age of 88. In 1994 the Stanford University Libraries established the 'Joshua A. Fishman and Gella Schweid Fishman Family Archives' within their Special Collections Section. The archive contains drafts of subsequently published books and articles, course outlines, lectures given, professional correspondence, family correspondence, photographs, audio-tapes, video-tapes, and other materials pertaining to Fishman's work. Yiddish Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit.   ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit.   ' Judeo-German ' )

11766-470: Was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of the official languages of the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic . Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland ) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to

11877-484: Was honored by two Festschriften , publications to celebrate his 65th birthday, each filled with articles by colleagues that followed his interests. One was a three volume collection of articles concerned with his interests, edited by Garcia, Dow, and Marshall, the other a single volume edited by Cooper and Spolsky. In 1999, Fishman received the Itzik Manger Prize for contributions to Yiddish letters. In 2004, he

11988-419: Was ineffective in language revitalization because instruction was given in Kichwa and Spanish was taught as a second language to children who were almost exclusively Spanish monolinguals. Although some techniques seem ineffective, Kendall A. King provides several suggestions: Specific suggestions include imparting an elevated perception of the language in schools, focusing on grassroots efforts both in school and

12099-721: Was on early collective-communities called kibbutzim . For the Maori language In New Zealand, this was done through a language nest . Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposes "Revival Linguistics" as a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. Zuckermann's term 'Revival Linguistics' is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics'. Revival linguistics inter alia explores the universal constraints and mechanisms involved in language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over

12210-498: Was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer , its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power. –  Paul Johnson , A History of the Jews (1988) Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to

12321-578: Was to assist in the creation of adult speakers that are of parent-age, so that they too can begin teaching the language. In 2020, X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell led a Tlingit online class with Outer Coast College . Dozens of students participated. He is an associate professor of Alaska Native Languages in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alaska Southeast which offers a minor in Tlingit language and an emphasis on Alaska Native Languages and Studies within

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