{"id":447,"date":"2009-10-07T09:57:26","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T09:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=447"},"modified":"2009-10-16T16:06:36","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T16:06:36","slug":"the-survival-of-yiddish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/07\/the-survival-of-yiddish\/","title":{"rendered":"The survival of Yiddish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend has brought to my notice an interesting programme on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/worldservice\/\">BBC World Service<\/a> (also available on the BBC website) about the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yiddish_language\">Yiddish language<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Once a German dialect, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/writing\/yiddish.htm\">Yiddish<\/a> (literal translation \u201cJewish\u201d) developed into a full language over the course of a millennium. Whilst the early history of the language is uncertain, it\u2019s thought that it grew from a distinct Jewish culture called <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ashkenazi_Jews\">Ashkenazi<\/a> in Germany in the 10th Century.  At its height, more than ten million people spoke or understood the language. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ushmm.org\/wlc\/article.php?lang=en&#038;ModuleId=10005143\">Events<\/a> in the 20th Century meant that many Yiddish speakers were killed and those remaining assimilated in to different cultures and languages. Today it\u2019s estimated there are 3 million speakers worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>In the first part of the programme:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dennis Marks travels to New York to discover what has become of Yiddish and how much of the language survives today.<\/p>\n<p>On the Lower East Side, where many Jewish migrants first came to live, he finds a musical and theatrical tradition which once supported a dozen Yiddish theatres on 2nd Avenue.<\/p>\n<p>He hears from the publisher of The Forward, once the world&#8217;s most popular Yiddish newspaper, but which is now in seemingly terminal decline. <\/p>\n<p>And he explores the enormous influence of Yiddish culture on American life, its literature and its comedic tradition. (Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/worldservice\/documentaries\/2009\/03\/090313_yiddish_pt1.shtml\">BBC World Service<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend has brought to my notice an interesting programme on the BBC World Service (also available on the BBC website) about the Yiddish language. Once a German dialect, Yiddish (literal translation \u201cJewish\u201d) developed into a full language over the course of a millennium. Whilst the early history of the language is uncertain, it\u2019s thought [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,5,337],"tags":[353,354,350,349,352,351,355,356,337,348,357],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-german","category-yiddish","tag-ashkenazi-jews","tag-bbc-world-service","tag-german-dialect","tag-jewish","tag-jewish-culture","tag-middle-german","tag-new-york","tag-the-forward","tag-yiddish","tag-yiddish-language","tag-yiddish-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}