We never changed our language: attitudes to Yiddish acquisition among Hasidic educators in Britain

• Autores: Lewis Glinert
• Localización: International journal of the sociology of language, ISSN 0165-2516, Nº. 138, 1999, págs. 31-52
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Acquisition of Yiddish by Hasidic youth is a thriving case of ethnic mother-tongue revitalization. Schooling, filling almost every waking hour, appears t o play äs important a r öle äs home in developing proficiency and motivation. Interviews with boys' educators revealed an alternating nonchalance and anxiety, paralleling attitudes to Judaism itself. Girls' educators, while broadly optimistic, see Yiddish in some conflict with English and äs needing intergenerational promotion. In all cases, duty to Yiddish is expressed in terms of Jewish distinctiveness, peoplehood and Hasidic solidarity.

    Paradoxically, cultivation ofwritten or oral norms is eschewed,for both Yiddish and Hebrew, Yiddish being deemed a low-function language and Hebrew linguistic study an allen discipline.