Linguae Europaeae

by Sophia Ebel Sophia Ebel is a senior in Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois. Her future plans include applying to graduate programs abroad in language education and education policy. She wrote this blog post in 418 'Language and Minorities in Europe' in Fall 2021. It is not uncommon for tensions to exist between linguistic groups, but in few cases is the relationship as strained as between Yiddish and German. Yiddish is a Germanic language that was previously spoken by Ashkenazi Jewish communities throughout Europe. For sociopolitical reasons Yiddish was historically viewed as a lesser dialect or distorted form of German, despite its lengthy history and unique influences from Hebrew, Aramaic, and the Romance and Slavic language families. Still, prior to the Second World War there were approximately 13 million Yiddish speakers living in Europe (Walfish).  The Holocaust, however, more than decimated this population and many of the surviving...

Is Yiddish on a Path to Extinction? By Juliana Ramirez Juliana Ramirez recently graduated with an Accounting degree and French minor from the University of Illinois. In the Spring of 2016, Juliana took French 418 to learn about the minority languages in Europe and finish her French minor. In the near future, she will start a summer internship at an Accounting firm in Chicago and come back to Champaign in the Fall of 2016 to pursue a Masters in Accounting. One of the most predominant languages of the Jews up until a century ago is on a path to extinction. Yiddish, which originated as early as the 9th century, provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with an extensive Germanic based vernacular fused with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as from Slavic and Romance languages (Jewish Generation) of the particular linguistic environment. The language is primarily native to Central, Western, and Eastern Europe, Israel, and regions with high Jewish populations. As part o...