Methodology in Yiddish historical linguistics

Abstract

In his paper (in Yiddish), Dovid Katz defends the overall understanding of the history of Yiddish developed by Ber Borokhov, Max Weinreich, Solomon A. Birnbaum and other twentiethcentury pioneers of modern Yiddish linguistics, while pointing out seminal issues that continue to be contentious, including the age and region of origin of the language, and the precise relationship of (modern) Eastern Yiddish to (the now defunct) Western Yiddish. These pioneers, and their followers and critics alike, have for the last century been solidly anchored to the comparative method with its measures for empirical evidence. The paper is a response to the alternative model followed by Alexander Beider in the maiden issue of the Journal of Jewish Languages (Brill). It is partly based on Paul Wexler’s notions of a variety of Jewish languages in Europe and the building of a language’s history on a handful of words for which (sometimes) fanciful etymologies are assumed. According to Katz, the revisionists’ model abandons solid comparative methodology (with its empirical checks) that is the backbone of historical linguistics in favor of the atomism of curious single words that can ultimately be used to try to prove a myriad of things. For the history of Yiddish, Katz rejects the proposal that Western Yiddish derives from “Jews’ French” while Eastern Yiddish from “Jews’ East Slavic”, “Jews’ Czech” along with some “Jews’ French”. Katz defends the classic model of Western and Eastern Yiddish descending in large part from an earlier Proto Yiddish, and offers both consistent correspondences as well as congruous anomalies to make the point. The paper takes issue with the painful personal attacks against Solomon A. Birnbaum and Max Weinreich (and in particular Brill’s editors for leaving such a tone unchallenged). These most gifted and accomplished cofounders of the modern field and their colleagues and students are called “Judeo-centric” and it is alleged that their theories of the history of Yiddish were impacted by the Holocaust (nonsense, as the cited ideas were expressed by them many years before the war, and by their own precursors, Ber Borokhov and Matisyohu Mieses, before even the First World War). Weinreich’s arguments are called “subterfuges to ward off legitimate criticism” and some of Birnbaum’s proposed linguistic criteria are called “false” and “linguistically inappropriate”. Rejecting these claims, the paper argues that Borokhov, Birnbaum and Weinreich are in fact “linguistics-centric” in their methodology, practicing careful, classic linguistics rather than constructing fanciful edifices of ever more “interrelated Jewish languages” whose very existence has yet to be proven empirically. Finally, concerning the field of Yiddish linguistics today, the author challenges the contention that the Birnbaum-Weinreich model “dominates,” given that it no longer has a viableacademic base anywhere and its input is occasionally disallowed from even some of the most prestigious journals.