Languages of the Jews
Subtitle: A Sociolinguistic History
Publisher: University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9781107055445
Subjects: Jews, languages; Sociolinguistics; Jews, history
Description: Historical sociolinguistics is a comparatively new area of research, investigating difficult questions about language varieties and choices in speech and writing. Jewish historical sociolinguistics is rich in unanswered questions: when does a language become 'Jewish'? What was the origin of Yiddish? How much Hebrew did the average Jew know over the centuries? How was Hebrew re-established as a vernacular and a dominant language? This book explores these and other questions, and shows the extent of scholarly disagreement over the answers.