The Jewish advance., 1881-09-09

while the lightning was only flashing at
the extreme border of the horizon?
ITO be continued)
The Judaeo-German Dialect.
This dialect generally known by the
name Juedisch- Deutsch in a mixture of
an archaic German basis with a, great
many Hebrew roots, Germanized as to
their form; and many corruptions from
Sclavonic and other idioms. Until about
fifty years ago it was the common YER
nacular of all the German Jews in Ger
many, the eastern provinces of France,
the Low Countries, the German congre-
cations in London, in Denmark and in
Sweden in the whole of Russian Poland
and New Russia, in Moldavia and Wal
lachia, Servia and Bosnia. in Hungary,
in Northern Italy and Switzerland. AL
though the languages of the different
among the Jews, yet this idlom has not
altogether disappeared. The German
element in it has undergone so many
distortions and been so disfgured,
principally through foreign influences,
partly owing to the seclusion of the
Jews, partly to vivacity and haste in
enunciation, and also in order that those
who speak it may not always be under
stood by everybody, that this may be
looked upon as language by itself.
The pronunciation, modulation, and con-
struction of the sentences, the signifca-
tions of the words differ materially from
the German, whilst at the same time
numerous abbreviations have been in
troduced, so that the original language
has become much cbscured The idiom
Itself consists of several sub-dialects
by which Jews, whose mother tongue is
the ju1geo-t1erman may easily ne DIS
oiugaisled an influence which is eAer.
eis2d upon he translation Of the'u
prsS s. SO nat, f0Y Instance. the Ser
! yiano anu Dosnians cannot easily make
use of those of their Western coreligion-
lists. A strong distinction exists be-
tween the dialects of the Alsatian, the
South German, the Polish and the East
ern Jews in Christian Europe. Several
expressions in English undoubtedly owe
their origin to the use of this dialect
became the prevailing language and
medium of conversation throughout a
great many countries. most Of the Eu-
ropean Jews having spread from the
Allemanic provinces of France and
South Germany. This refers particu-
larly to the emigration from France, be-
tween 1880 and 1906 and again in the
fourteenth century. as also to the dis
persions from Germany since the ff-
teenth century. The language of the
Jews is High German, with hardly any
trace of pIdtt, and as little of old high
German, whilst few remnants of medi-
aval high German are yet discernible
Grammar there is none and can be none
all grammatical forms are disregarded or
utterly confused There are several
manuals for the use of students, as also
some vocabularies, all of them published
during the last century, none OF which,
however, are either adequate or compre-
hensive.
But the Juda- German language offers
a very rich field for German philology,
containing, as it does, much that has
otherwise entirely died out of the
language. Abraham Tendlau, the we'll
known author of the Jewish Legends, p"
has contributed greatly to the elucida-
tion of many obscure points in this di-
rection. On the other hand this idiom
furnishes a clue to several entirely nom
German expressions and phrases that
are currently used in South Germany,
such as uaen Ito banter), meshugqe
(crazy), schote GooD, schlin1moSSe1 (ilI-
luck), schlemiM (an awkward person.,
&c. But of a much greater importance,
as we'll for the history of the Jews as in
regard to the development Of culture, is
the Jewish-German literature, which is
very considerable and almost indispens-
able even now in Polish countries From
the middle of the sixteenth century it
has spread more and more, and reached
it's eliminating point during the second
half of the seventeenth century through
the dispersion of the Jews, who were
terribly prosecuted in Poland from lo48
| to 1854, whilst in the succeeding ages