s - Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu

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Michael Hornsby
many baley-tshuves [returnees to Judaism] who do not know it” (Fader 2009:
11). Another point made by other commentators centres on the fact that Yiddish,
like many other endangered languages, is in contact situation with a much
more powerful and prestigious language in the United States (and elsewhere)
and this can lead to mixed linguistic practices, particularly among male speakers
who attend yeshivas (schools of advanced Jewish study), further diminishing
its use as a vernacular: “A new dialect of English sometimes called Yeshivish is
taking over as the vernacular in everyday life in some [ultra-orthodox] circles in
America and elsewhere” (Katz 2004: 384).
The second response to this situation of endangerment is to claim that Yiddish
is very much “alive” (cf. the Polish-based cultural movement “Yidish
Lebt” (jidysz.net) who proclaim in their very title the (imagined) vitality of the
language, “imagined” in a Polish context since there is no significant body of
speakers of the language left anywhere in Poland).
Commentators such as Katz see the future of Yiddish as secure in particular
settings: “Yiddish, as fate would have it, is 100 percent safe for centuries to
come as a virile spoken and written language among the southern Hasidim …
The vast majority speak … Póylish … And this is the majority Yiddish of the
future” (Katz 2004: 385). And indeed, the language, according to this discourse,
will actually increase its demographic base of speakers: “The future millions of
Yiddish speakers … will come from the rapidly expanding Hasidic communities
around the world … while the next major chapter in the unfinished history
of Yiddish is created by the Hasidim, we [secularists] can muster the collective
energy needed for efforts to write our own much smaller chapter” (Katz 2004:
397–398). If the attested 5% annual increase among the Hasidim results in the
doubling of the Hasidic population every 15 years, then there will be, according
to Robert Eisenberg (1995) 10 million Yiddish speakers by 2075.
Assuming that Yiddish is in the state of a “dying” language, it is also a language
which is subjected to predictions of imminent “death”. However, predictions
do not always come true and do not always reflect the current situation of
a language. They can however influence current attitudes towards a language
and end up causing speakers to question the validity of continuing to transmit or
even speak the language in question. In other words, these attitudes can create
a self-fulfilling prophecy. In this context, Jefrrey Shandler (2006: 177–178) lists
a discourse of language “death” in relation to Yiddish, which has been underway
for over a century now and yet Yiddish as a spoken language is still with
us:
1897: “Within twenty-five years … even the best works in this language will only be literary
curiosities” (Rosenfeld).
1899: “In America [Yiddish] is certainly doomed to extinction” (Wiener).