language as property

Farshteyt ir vos ich shrayb do? Nu, azoy shver iz es nit.

That’s because Yiddish is an Indo-Germanic language. Especially for people who speak Dutch or German, it is a breeze to get started. Just speak the text out loud. My Yiddish teacher, who grew up in Antwerpen’s working-class neighbourhood Seefhoek, used to say that anyone who knows his Antwerps will get used to Yiddish in no time. Besides, Dutch (especially in the Netherlands) is bursting with words that originate directly from Yiddish. Gokken, afgepeigerd, gotspe, gozer, sores, zwans, gabber, habbekrats, halleluja, gesjochten, bolleboos, geintje, mazzel, schlemiel, geteisem, lapzwans, mies, schorem, Mokum, ponem, gis, kinnesinne, smoezen, sjofel, sof, tof, stennis, stiekem, gajes, mesjogge, kapsones, makke, pleite, tinnef, …

I have been learning the language for over three years now. Maybe not obvious for a goy, but not completely off the mark either. Yiddish is a world language, that is, all over the world there are people and communities that use Yiddish in everyday interaction, from Vancouver to Cape Town, from Buenos Aires to Seoul, from Antwerpen to deep into Russia, not far from the Chinese border. If it was initially the language of the diaspora of Orthodox Jews in Eastern and Central Europe, Yiddish is now also a language that people study (lernen zikh) for the sheer pleasure of language. (If you are proficient in a few languages, and you want to learn a new one, why not Yiddish?)

That is why it is so unfortunate that several language institutes consider Yiddish to be a Jewish language. That is, a language of and for Jews; a language that presupposes that its user is familiar with Jewish religion, history, culture and folklore. And since much of that Jewish culture is set in Hebrew, it is apparently assumed that anyone who wants to learn Yiddish is at home in Hebrew language and terminology. Yiddish basically uses the Hebrew alphabet (alef beys), but that’s not the point; writing from right to left with new characters is quickly mastered. Most of all I had to get used to the fact that the back of your book is on the right, so it feels as if you’re going to read from back to front.

The main problem is that Hebrew is a Semitic language, like Arabic, and those languages write virtually no vowels, only consonants. So you regularly come across words that you not only don’t know what they mean, but not even how to pronounce them. Moreover, that pronunciation partly depends on the region and environment in which the words are used. The term ksjr, imported from Hebrew, is pronounced kosher in Dutch , but kusjr in Australian English and kasjèr in French. If you then take, say, a summer course in Advanced Yiddish at The Workers Circle (Arbeterkrayz), you really run into trouble. The course material does explain terms like tog-bleter and di mindste or frank-un-fray , but terms like (in transcription) besojlem (Jewish burial place), tehilim (psalms) and geloech (a Jew with a shaved chin, a non-devout Jew), all written without vowels, are considered common knowledge. Why should anyone have to be acquainted with the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of Hebrew or Jewish religion and folklore to be allowed to study the language?

Unlike Biblical Hebrew (loshn koydesh) and modern Ivrit, contemporary Yiddish is not the language of an unmentionable and cruel god or a ruthless coloniser and mass murderer, but primarily a vehicle for emancipation. Jews active in socialist and anarchist organisations in the 19th and 20th centuries spoke Yiddish. In their vocabulary, they incorporated the modern terms of their time (sobvey or unterban, kompiuter and tenis-raketke). But they also replaced traditional Hebraism by secular terms: mishpokhe becomes family, khaver becomes fraynd, milkhome is replaced by krig, and loshn by shprakh.

Of course, it is useful, even important, that if you speak a language, you are more or less aware of the cultural idiosyncrasies hidden in it. To put it bluntly, what exactly does ‘Christmas’ mean, if you just want to refer to December 25? I remember something I read years ago in a Dutch newspaper. ‘What does Easter mean to many Dutch people? – That the furniture boulevards reopen.’ Yes, you can do it that way, but I still feel that you then miss some of the culture in which Dutch has developed. But it does not mean that learning Dutch should depend on previous knowledge about the birth or the resurrection of Christ.

So, can a group, whether it calls itself a people or not, claim a language as its own? This is ours, and you only get access to it when you become one of us? I don’t think that applies to any language, anyone can basically learn any language and gain access to it. Some, because of their writing or the way sounds are produced, are a bit more difficult than others, but it should be possible. (I don’t know about Breton, Gaelic or Sami, but then I don’t think those are world languages.)

Only for Yiddish you apparently have to participate in being a Jew. While it could actually be so beautiful: a truly diasporic, contemporary, secular language, not tied to any particular region or religion and accessible to all. Yiddish cannot be Jewish property. Languages only become world languages because they have been completely infiltrated by the other languages and by all the minorities they have absorbed. English, French, Spanish for example, even Dutch, have numerous local varieties. Yiddish too. And it should be possible to learn the language without impregnating oneself with Judaism.