Language shift revisited:linguistic repertoires of Jews in Low German-speaking Germany in the Early Twentieth Century. Insights from the LCAAJ Archive

Abstract

This paper analyzes the linguistic repertoires of Jews in the Low German-speaking areas in the first decades of the twentieth century, as a contribution to historical sociolinguistics. Based on fieldwork questionnaires held in the archives of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ), it addresses the question of whether the Jewish minorities spoke a supralectal form of standard German or Koiné forms of dialects, relating this to issues of language shift from Western Yiddish. The study shows that many Jews living in northern Germany during the 1920s and 1930s still had access to a multilingual repertoire containing remnants of Western Yiddish; that a majority of the LCAAJ interviewees from this area emphasized their excellent command of standard German; and that their competence in Low German varied widely, from first language to no competence at all, depending on the region where they lived.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1470542717000083
Divisions: ?? 3980600Jl ??
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Language Research at Aston (CLaRA)
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Critical Inquiry into Society and Culture (CCISC)
Additional Information: The final publication is available via Cambridge Journals Online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1470542717000083
Uncontrolled Keywords: Western Yiddish,Low German,linguistic repertoires,language shift,successor lects
Publication ISSN: 1475-3014
Last Modified: 18 Mar 2024 08:19
Date Deposited: 20 Jan 2017 08:04
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.cam ... 1EDA291314954C6 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2018-06-01
Published Online Date: 2018-04-18
Accepted Date: 2016-12-06
Authors: Reershemius, Gertrud (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-0906-6199)

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