Jewish Culture and Languages, two scientific papers

Preface

Dear Readers,

I hope you're as interested in Jewish language and culture as I am because you're (hopefully) about to read one scientific paper and a Bachelor's thesis on this subject. This topic is very dear to my heart and as one of very few people outside of Israel who chose to study Jewish languages I decided to not only write my Bachelor's but also my Master's thesis on it. Despite my family living a secular life and having never been to Israel until last year I started learning Hebrew during my last years of school. My dedication has led me to a point where I will be able to pursue this subject also in form of a PhD.

Who comprises the audience for this little publication? Jewish people who want to know more about the history and social standing of Jewish languages, students of Jewish culture, linguists and sociolinguists interested in an uncommon topic, and students who were assigned a rather obscure topic or want to try for something new.

At the time of the writing of these two papers I was only a Bachelor student and maybe one day I will have time to edit them. You should therefor keep in mind that these papers are not suitable to quote in a scientific paper. They can offer you a start to your own studies, give you an overview over the topic, offer you academic sources to follow up with, or be used if you only want to read up on something new or research something for a school project. While I cannot guarantee that all quotes and sources are always stated to the same academic standard I did my best and no retrieved information is not or insufficiently enough marked for you not to find the original source. This work features graphics and pictures taken from official public domain websites and academic publication which, while they do not belong to me, are part of my academic work and duly credited.

Preceding the actual papers will be a table of content. For convenience they will form an own chapter so you may chose what is of interest to you and what isn't without you having to scan the whole paper.

Content:

Qualification Paper "Yiddish, a Language through the Ages" (2016)

shortened to 13 pages; This paper is concerned with the history of Yiddish, from its roots in shtetl history, theories concerning its point of origin to the question whether it is an own language, a creole or something else.

Bachelor Thesis "Sociolinguistics of Yiddish and Hebrew: Social Prestige and Instrumentalization of Semitic Languages" (2017)

43 pages; My Bachelor thesis deals with the social prestige of the Yiddish and Hebrew languages as well as its speakers during earlier times in Germany and other European states and their social standing in the United States. Furthermore there is a short summary on the importance of the survival of these languages for Jewish people.

How to read:

Numbers within brackets, following a name, are specifying the page on which it is found in the respective academic publication.

Numbers within the text are referring to the footnote accompanying the paragraph. Please refer to the chapters dedicated to commentary/sources to find the applicable note. I am sorry for the inconvenience Wattpad's formatting causes in this regard. Links to PDFs of my works can be found in a planned addendum if you prefer them.

Furthermore some titles had to be shortened to adhere to Wattpad's limitation on characters. The full titles can be found in the table of contents for every paper.

The only thing left to do for me is thank my supervising professor Prof. Dr. Wallmannsberger of the University of Kassel. He accompanied my final module, my Bachelor thesis and will be my supervisor during my Master thesis. His seminars are devoted to obscure topics never touched upon by other lecturers, always taking place at odd hours, but without fault a few students will turn up despite his seminars encompassing weekly assignments, a lot of self-reflection, unconventional thinking and knowledge of modern cultural developments. Everyone who stayed for the whole course was glad they did. His enthusiasm for his chosen topics is contagious, barely contained by his professorial appearance and shining from every gesture. He is supportive as well as inspiring and without him I would never even have considered a PhD.

I hope you find what you are looking for, please post any question you may have here.

Clara Florence Anders