Yiddish, an official language? (Philological Room) Language Learning Forum

Yiddish, an official language?
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15 messages over 2 pages: 1 2 Next >>

Captain Haddock
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Message 1 of 15

28 May 2007 at 8:49am | IP Logged

I discovered an odd geographical note today. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Far East is a republic in the Russian Federation originally set up by Stalin as a region where Jews could pursue cultural autonomy. Although the remaining Jewish population today is a very small percentage, Yiddish is still co-official with Russian and taught in schools.
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alexptrans
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Message 2 of 15

29 May 2007 at 7:38am | IP Logged

That's very interesting, Captain Haddock.

Here's a Wikipedia article about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast
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delectric
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Message 3 of 15

29 May 2007 at 8:17pm | IP Logged

Can you paste the article here? I'm in China and the government block this web site!
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Captain Haddock
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Message 4 of 15

30 May 2007 at 2:23am | IP Logged

The article is pretty long. Check this mirror site and see if you can get through.
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delectric
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Message 5 of 15

30 May 2007 at 3:21am | IP Logged

Great I got through. Does that mean I can surf this site in China?

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Captain Haddock
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Message 6 of 15

30 May 2007 at 3:56am | IP Logged

It appears that way. I found it by searching for "wikipedia" and "mirror"; it seems to have most English articles mirrored, at least. I've no idea how often it's updated.
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daristani
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Message 7 of 15

31 May 2007 at 2:33pm | IP Logged

Here's an article on Birobidzhan from today's Washington Post. It seems that the Jewish population is only a tiny minority, but that the numbers are gradually growing, in part due to people having moved back from Israel.

Washington Post article
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zhiguli
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Message 8 of 15

04 June 2007 at 7:37am | IP Logged

On a side-note, here's a little bit of trivia about "Frayland", a little Yiddish-speaking country that never was:

http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/vol07/vol07.032

Quote:

Most people don't seem to recall one sad piece of Holocaust history. In
1945 as the survivors were being liberated, an organization was founded
called The Frayland League whose goal was to establish a Yiddish speaking
state, to be called Frayland. They negotiated with the Dutch government to
obtain Surinam as a haven for the Yiddish speaking survivors who were
being brutally detained by the British in new camps, to prevent them from
entering Palestine.

The Zionist, who were exceedingly hostile to Yiddish, were desparate to
prevent the Dutch government from ceding the land, since they felt that
the pressure would then have abated for the establishment of a Hebrew
speaking state in Israel. Informal poles taken in the camps seem to
indicate that the majority of the newly liberated preferred having a
Yiddish state, since Yiddish was their native language.

On the eve of the Dutch vote, in 1946, Golda Mayerson, among others,
rushed to Holland to politic forcefully against Frayland, using her Second
International connections in the Dutch Social Democratic Party. When the
vote was finally taken Frayland lost by one vote. The Hebrew state that
ultimately resulted, maintained a vendetta against Yiddish for these many
generations.

Yes, there almost was a Yiddish nation where the little traveler's guide
would have been a useful and valuable accessory. But a miss is as good as
a mile. And as long as Israel no longer feels threatened by Yiddish and
lets it live its precarious existance we gladly transfer our affections to
it. To quote an old Yiddish song "Ver mir zaynen zaynen mir, Ober Yidn
zaynen mir."

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