Re: yiddish language decline?

[Marvin <physchem...>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Dichter" <dbrian (at) enteract(dot)com>
To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 3:47 PM
Subject: yiddish language decline?


> Hi. Yesterday afternoon I heard a story on NPR (an introduction before the
> Yiddish Radio Project that starts broadcasting today) about the decline of
> Yiddish. A linguist (I forgot his name) stated that even though many
> students are studying the language at universities around the planet (even
> in Germany and Poland) and that there is additional interest attributed to
> the growing popularity of klezmer music there is still such a decline in
> yiddish usage that it's considered a dying language.
>
> Does that sound about right?
>
> I'm a bit surpised that it would be considered "dying" because there seems
> to be so much conscientious effort towards preservation.
>
> brian

Latin is widely studied, but it is thought of as a dead language.  Perhaps a
language dies when it is no longer used in daily conversation?  If that is
the case, Hebrew was dead, and was ressurected, with a significant number of
vocabulary additions.

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