LCAAJ project
The Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ) project is an extraordinary resource for researching Yiddish and the culture of Ashkenazi Judaism . It consists of 5755 hours of tape recordings of interviews with Yiddish-speaking informants recorded between 1959 and 1972, as well as about 100,000 pages of transcripts of the language material. The archive does not contain any transcriptions of the interviews.
The interviewees, emigrants and Holocaust survivors living in Israel , Alsace , the United States , Canada and Mexico , were carefully selected as former residents of 603 communities in Central and Eastern Europe to assess the distribution of the Yiddish-speaking population on the eve of World War II to be able to reflect. In a series of interviews lasting between 2.5 and 16 hours, respondents responded to questions on a variety of topics about the Yiddish language and culture. The project was founded by Uriel Weinreich , later head of the department of linguistics at Columbia University , and continued after his death in 1967 under the direction of Marvin Herzog , professor emeritus of Yiddish studies at Columbia University, who ran the archive 1995 donated to Columbia University Libraries .
Project reasons
Uriel Weinreich saw it as a matter of the highest urgency to reconstruct the geography of Ashkenazi folk culture and European Yiddish, since after the extensive annihilation of European Jewry during the Second World War, the number of emigrants and survivors dwindled, of whom reliable statements about the Spoken Yiddish and Eastern European Jewish Folk Culture could be collected:
"What is common in one year can be pushed to the brink of oblivion the next year .... What was too natural for studying yesterday is suddenly becoming precious .... What we will not collect in the next decade or so, is lost forever. "
The resulting collection of around 6000 hours of interviews with Yiddish-speaking emigrants and 100,000 pages of transcript forms the Archive for Language and Culture of Ashkenazi Judaism (LCAAJ). The archive is located in the Butler Library at Columbia University New York .
The Atlas for the Language and Culture of Ashkenazi Judaism
From the beginning, the research project was aimed at creating a multi-volume language atlas. This consists of books with maps, which are based on the material of the archive and reflect the distribution of language and cultural variants that characterized the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe before the Second World War.
The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry ( Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, LCAAJ) is issued by a college, chief editors are Marvin Herzog and Andrew Sunshine in New York and Ulrike Kiefer, Robert Neumann, and Wolfgang Putschke in Germany. It is published by Max Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen, Germany, and by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Volumes I, II and III of the atlas designed as an eleven-volume edition have already been published.
The LCAAJ is the first language atlas based on structural dialectology . This method was prepared by Uriel Weinreich in his programmatic essay Is an structural dialectology possible (1954).
Meaning of the LCAAJ
The material from the Archive and Atlas of the Language and Culture of Ashkenazi Judaism is a treasure trove for linguists and dialectologists in the field of Yiddish , Hebrew and Aramaic as well as Germanic, Slavic and other European languages, for ethnologists, folklorists, ethnomusicologists and historians for Central and Eastern Europe. and Eastern Europe. Since many of the audio recordings are from Holocaust survivors, some of the recorded biographical material may be relevant to the history of the Holocaust.
Since Yiddish was the appropriate “language-in-contact” anywhere in a territorial community with another European language, the LCAAJ material provides a good opportunity for the study of bilingual dialectology, the comparative study of the variants of languages that are in the same geographic area Area and has a high value for language contact research .
For the linguistics of Semitic languages, the material of the LCAAJ is of interest because it shows Yiddish as the linguistic vehicle that transferred a considerable amount of Hebrew and Aramaic material into the everyday language of Ashkenazi Jews and through them into the everyday languages around them. The special importance of the LCAAJ for German studies results from the fact that Yiddish is the only Germanic language that shares the medieval forerunners of German and has developed its differences over centuries of territorial and linguistic contact with German. In addition, Yiddish formed a bridge between the German and Slavic language areas for centuries. The material is therefore equally interesting for Germanists and Slavists and also for the controversy over the status of Yiddish as a Slavic or Germanic language.
For laypeople, scholars, teachers and students, the LCAAJ shows the surprising diversity of regional pronunciation, little-known words, unexpected differences in the meaning of frequently used words, differences in cuisine, in ritual and festive customs, beliefs and practices, songs and games.
The LCAAJ on the Internet
The LCAAJ is represented with two offers on the Internet.
Columbia University project website
Columbia University presents texts on the history and use of the LCAAJ on its project website and offers a web-based option for ordering copies of audio media using the five-digit interview ID. It is also possible to listen to selected audio samples directly.
EYDES - The Yiddish Language Atlas on the Internet
The EYDES project offers a web-based, interactive Flash -based voice map that enables audio samples to be heard and selected isoglosses to be viewed on the map. (see also below )
outlook
Problems with the preservation of the inventory
The extensive sound carrier material is recorded on tape material, the shelf life of which is around 20 years. That is why Columbia University is taking measures to preserve and digitize the data.
Digitization and database acquisition
With the collaboration of Ulrike Kiefer, co-editor of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, the EYDES project at the Ruhr University Bochum began with an extensive undertaking between 1996 and 2000. The transcription, digitization and indexing of the material of the LCAAJ through a web-based database interface was carried out. The project of an electronic archive of the data of the LCAAJ, freely accessible via the Internet, is being carried out by the Friends of Yiddish Language and Culture V. Düsseldorf continued. The Libraries of Columbia University and the Association for the Promotion of Yiddish Language and Culture are working together on the digitization and indexing of the archive.
Web links
- Columbia University LCAAJ project page, accessed January 21, 2009.
- EYDES project website of the Association for the Promotion of Yiddish Language and Culture, accessed on January 21, 2010.
Individual evidence
- ^ [1] , Columbia University project page, accessed January 21, 2010
- ^ [2] Marvin Herzog: The History of the Yiddish Atlas Project at Columbia University . Website of the LCAAJ project, accessed on January 21, 2010
- ^ Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry . Edited by Marvin Herzog, Ulrike Kiefer u. a., Tübingen. - Vol. 1: Historical and theoretical foundations (1992) DNB 551954000 . Vol. 2: Research tools (1995) DNB 944423701 . Vol. 3: The eastern Yiddish - western Yiddish continuum (2000) DNB 958747024 . Volumes IV – XI are in preparation.
- ↑ Uriel Weinreich: Is an structural dialectology possible . In: Word 10, 1954, pp. 388-400. see Heinrich Löffler: Dialektologie: an introduction . Narr-Verlag, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3823349988 , p. 31f.
- ^ [3] Columbia University project page, accessed January 21, 2010
- ↑ EYDES ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the web.
- ^ [4] Columbia University project page, accessed January 21, 2010
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from November 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. EYDES website, accessed January 21, 2010
