Examining Jewish Sociolinguistic Influence in the Russian Language: «От Талмуда до тюрьмы»
Date
2024
Authors
Gunn, Emily
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Publisher
University of Victoria
Abstract
Throughout the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Jews in Russia adopted the use of the Russian language more and more. As a result, a subtle but distinct ethnolect with influence from the native Yiddish spoken by many Jews began to emerge within the Russian Jewish community. Exemplified both by the integration of Yiddish vocabulary into Russian speech, and a tendency to use Yiddish intonation and word-for-word renditions of Yiddish idioms and sentence structure translated into otherwise “Russian” speech, this ethnolect was culturally insular at first. However, Judeo-Russian’s unique vocabulary did not remain an isolated linguistic phenomenon for very long: contact with ethnic Russians meant linguistic cross-pollination for not just one, but both populations. Via avenues such as the Russian criminal underground, the Gulag system, and simple inter-group mixing in cities with significant Jewish populations, qualities of Judeo-Russian found its way into non-standard varieties of the language spoken by ethnic Russians themselves. Largely, words of Yiddish origin became incredibly commonplace within «Феня» (fenya), a Russian criminal vernacular (also referred to as a sociolect). From Fenya, such words spread into the wider Russian consciousness and remain familiar to most Russians today, as common elements of slang vernacular.
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Keywords
Russian, Yiddish, Jewish, linguistics, Slavic