73-576: Trakai Peninsula Castle is one of the castles in Trakai , Lithuania . It is located on a peninsula between southern Lake Galvė and Lake Luka . Built around 1350–1377 by Kęstutis , Duke of Trakai , it was an important defensive structure protecting Trakai and Vilnius , capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , against attacks of the Teutonic Knights . Much of the castle was destroyed in
146-668: A Catholic church was built. In 1409, the town was granted with Magdeburg Rights ; it is one of the first towns in Lithuania to get city rights. The village started rapidly developing into a town. Also in 1409 Grand Duke Vytautas the Great made Trakai the capital city of Lithuania and relocated the State Treasury of Lithuania and Lithuanian Metrica to Trakai. In 1413, it became a seat of the Trakai Voivodeship and
219-545: A collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah . The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita 's Bovo-Bukh ( בָּבָֿא-בּוך ), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the title Bovo d'Antona ). Levita,
292-492: A lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries. There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects . The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts. Uvular As in
365-639: A notable center of administration and commerce. After the Grand Duchy of Lithuania joined the Kingdom of Poland to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, the castles remained a royal property, but the town's importance gradually declined, with the nearby Vilnius and the political center of the Commonwealth in Kraków becoming far more important. Nevertheless, it continued to be
438-615: A prison. It was destroyed during the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667) and never rebuilt. The territory was granted to a Dominican cloister in 1678 by Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński , Voivode of Trakai . It was not until the 1770s that the monks eventually built their monastery and church; these buildings are also part of the castle ensemble. 54°38′46″N 24°56′13″E / 54.646°N 24.937°E / 54.646; 24.937 Trakai Trakai ( Trakai ; see names section for alternative and historic names)
511-651: A small Turkic-speaking religious and Jewish ethnic group resettled to Trakai by Grand Duke Vytautas in 1397 and 1398 from Crimea , after one of his successful military campaigns against the Golden Horde . Both Christian and Karaim communities were granted separate self-government in accordance with the Magdeburg rights . Despite ever-increasing Polonisation , Trakai remained a notable center of Karaim cultural and religious life. Scholars who were active in Trakai in
584-407: A variant of tiutsch , the contemporary name for Middle High German . Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון ( mame-loshn , lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש ( loshn koydesh , "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become the most frequently used designation in
657-644: Is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557. Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh , and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה Tseno Ureno and
730-410: Is Vilkokšnis. Trakai is a city built on water. The city is surrounded by the lakes of Luka (Bernardinai), Totoriškės, Galvė, Akmena, Gilušis. There are a number of architectural, cultural and historical monuments in Trakai. The history museum in the castle was established in 1962. Festivals and concerts take place in the island castle in summer. The first settlements in this area appeared as early as
803-573: Is a city and lake resort in Lithuania . It lies 28 kilometres (17 miles) west of Vilnius , the capital of Lithuania or just 7 kilometres (4 miles) from the administrative limits of the Lithuanian capital city. Because of its proximity to Vilnius, Trakai is a popular tourist destination. Trakai is the administrative centre of Trakai district municipality . The city is inhabited by 5,357 people, according to 2007 estimates. A notable feature of Trakai
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#1732780938872876-487: Is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer ). Hebrew Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic Other Jewish diaspora languages Jewish folklore Jewish poetry By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe. By
949-500: Is printed in Hebrew script.) According to a study by the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH), more than 40 printed Yiddish newspapers and magazines were published worldwide in 2024, and the trend is rising. The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch , i. e. "Moses German" —declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and
1022-511: Is pronounced [haɡˈdɔmɜ] . The vowel phonemes of Standard Yiddish are: In addition, the sonorants /l/ and /n/ can function as syllable nuclei : [m] and [ŋ] appear as syllable nuclei as well, but only as allophones of /n/ , after bilabial consonants and dorsal consonants , respectively. The syllabic sonorants are always unstressed. Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in
1095-588: Is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymos and Yiddish Todres ). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages , Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German , and from these groups
1168-545: Is that the city was built and preserved by people of different nationalities. Historically, communities of Karaims , Tatars , Lithuanians , Russians , Jews and Poles lived here. Trakai was the medieval capital city of Lithuania. Historically, the Trakai Island Castle , whose construction was finished by Grand Duke Vytautas , served as a residence of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania . The name of
1241-904: Is the origin of the surname Trotsky (lit: of Traki), which Leon Trotsky would later adopt as a pseudonym to avoid profiling by the Russian Imperial Police , the Polish variant of the surname is Trocki . The majority of Trakai's inhabitants (66.5%) in 2011 were Lithuanian, although the city also has a substantial Polish minority (19%), as well as Russians (8.87%). According to the census of 2021, there were 5426 inhabitants in Trakai city: 3694 Lithuanians (68.1%), 1020 Poles (18.8%), 395 Russians (7.3%), 62 Belarusians (1.1%). There are other traditional minorities among Trakai inhabitants – Karaites , Tatars (also known as Lipka Tatars ), Jews (also known as Litvaks ), Russians Old Believers and others. There are 200 lakes in
1314-508: Is the traditional Karaim pastry, became a local speciality and are mentioned in tourist guides. Trakai is twinned with: Yiddish Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit. ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit. ' Judeo-German ' ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews . It originated in 9th century Central Europe , and provided
1387-498: Is uncertain). An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script , from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino ,
1460-567: The Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. The 19th century Prussian-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz , for example, wrote that "the language of the Jews [in Poland] ... degenerat[ed] into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit." A Maskil (one who takes part in
1533-542: The First Secretary declared that reconstruction of the castle would be a sign of glorification of Lithuania's feudal past. Restoration work in the lower castle were not resumed until the 1980s and were completed by Lithuanian authorities in the early 1990s. Today the Island Castle serves as the main tourist attraction, hosting various cultural events such as operas and concerts. Karaim (or Karaites) are
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#17327809388721606-660: The Haskalah ) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages. – Osip Aronovich Rabinovich , in an article titled "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air, We Must Speak Its Language" in
1679-632: The High Holy Days ) and בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ , 'synagogue' (read in Yiddish as beis hakneses ) – had been included. The niqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation. Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in
1752-586: The Middle High German diphthong ei and long vowel î to /aɪ/ , Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German /ɔʏ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong öu and the long vowel iu , which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterparts ei and î , respectively. Lastly, the Standard German /aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong ou and
1825-536: The Odessan journal Рассвет (dawn), 1861. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew , Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement ). Notable Yiddish writers of
1898-587: The Old Trakai Castle was built in Senieji Trakai. The name of Trakai was first mentioned in Teutonic Knights' chronicles in 1337. This year is considered to be the official date of city's foundation. When Grand Duke Gediminas finally settled in Vilnius , Senieji Trakai was inherited by his son Kęstutis . The Duchy of Trakai developed and the city entered its best decades. Kęstutis moved
1971-484: The Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian , Polish , and Ukrainian ), but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration ; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation , so that, for example, זאָגט /zɔɡt/ ('says') is pronounced [zɔkt] and הקדמה /hakˈdɔmɜ/ ('foreword')
2044-565: The high medieval period , their area of settlement, centered on the Rhineland ( Mainz ) and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer ), came to be known as Ashkenaz , originally a term used of Scythia , and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In the medieval Hebrew of Rashi (d. 1105), Ashkenaz becomes a term for Germany, and אשכּנזי Ashkenazi for the Jews settling in this area. Ashkenaz bordered on
2117-431: The תחנות Tkhines . One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln , whose memoirs are still in print. The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש loshn-koydesh , and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish
2190-538: The 16th and 17th centuries include Isaac of Troki (c. 1533 – c. 1594), Joseph ben Mordechai Malinowski, Zera ben Nathan of Trakai, Salomon ben Aharon of Trakai, Ezra ben Nissan (died in 1666) and Josiah ben Judah (died after 1658). Some of the Karaims became wealthy and noble. The local Karaim community, which was the backbone of the town's economy, suffered severely during the Khmelnytsky Uprising and
2263-496: The 17th century. Remaining walls and towers are preserved and protected by the Trakai Historical National Park . The castle had seven towers connected by a 10 m (33 ft) high wall. The three largest towers, measuring 15 m × 15 m (49 ft × 49 ft), protected the most vulnerable southwestern flank. A 12–14 m (39–46 ft) wide moat separated the structure from
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2336-655: The 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO . In Vilnius , there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish. Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that
2409-592: The Ashkenazi community took shape. Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the Rhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into
2482-555: The Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels. Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o 11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish quality (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and
2555-574: The Teutonic Knights. Despite the protection, both wooden castles were successfully raided by the Teutonic Knights several times in a row. The town was in the center of a conflict between Grand Duke Jogaila (later to become King of Poland) with his uncle Kęstutis . In 1382 Jogaila's and Kęstutis's armies met near Trakai, but Jogaila tricked Kęstutis and imprisoned him in Kreva . A few weeks later Kęstutis died in captivity and Jogaila transferred
2628-771: The Trakai Island Castle. The works in the Upper castle were almost complete in 1939, when the Invasion of Poland started and the area was soon annexed by the Soviet Union , then by Nazi Germany during Operation Barbarossa . During the war, more than 5,000 Jews from the Trakai region were murdered by the Nazis. In 1944, during Operation Tempest , the town was liberated by joint forces of the underground Polish Home Army and Soviet partisans . After World War II it
2701-694: The approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However, the number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim ", whose population
2774-598: The area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews , who ranged into southern France . Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations. Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been Aramaic ,
2847-761: The castles to his brother Skirgaila , who became the governor of Lithuania Proper. However, his rule was briefly interrupted when in 1,383 joint forces of Kęstutis's son Vytautas and the Teutonic Knights captured the town. In 1392, Vytautas and Jogaila signed the Astrava Agreement ending their quarrel. Vytautas became the Grand Duke of Lithuania while Jogaila technically remained his superior. Vytautas also regained his father's lands, including Trakai. Despite his official capital being in Vilnius, Vytautas spent more time in Trakai. In early 15th century he replaced
2920-559: The city was first recorded in chronicles from 1337 in German as Tracken (later also spelt Traken ) and is derived from the Lithuanian word trakai (singular: trakas meaning " glade "). Since the time of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , the city has been known as Troki in Polish . Its other alternate names include Тро́кі (Tróki, historic)/Трака́й (Trakáj , modern Belarusian ), Trok ( Yiddish ), Troky, and Traki. The name
2993-556: The earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written פּאַריז און װיענע Pariz un Viene ( Paris and Vienna ). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט Vidvilt (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as Kinig Artus Hof , an adaptation of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Grafenberg . Another significant writer
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3066-532: The end of the high medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Worms machzor (a Hebrew prayer book). This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר , makhazor (prayerbook for
3139-445: The extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas . The term "Yiddish"
3212-406: The first millennium A.D. The city, as well as its surroundings, started developing in the 13th century in the place of Senieji Trakai (Old Trakai). According to a legend after a successful hunting party, Grand Duke Gediminas discovered a beautiful lake-surrounded place not far from Kernavė , then capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , and decided to build a castle in the location. This was how
3285-431: The language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata , and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base. The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in
3358-590: The late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant , which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains
3431-738: The late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim ; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem , whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער ( Tevye der milkhiker , " Tevye the Dairyman") inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof ; and Isaac Leib Peretz . In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish
3504-522: The limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing from German , Polish and Russian . Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic , from Hebrew , from Aramaic and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, it contributed to English – American . [sic] Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It
3577-546: The literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today. Modern Yiddish has two major forms : Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by
3650-518: The long vowel û , but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as /ɔɪ/ , the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut , such as in forming plurals: The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties,
3723-439: The massacres of 1648. By 1680, only 30 Karaim families were left in the town. Their traditions, including not accepting neophytes , prevented the community from regaining its strength. Early in the 18th century war, famine, and plague reduced the Karaims to three families. By 1765 Karaim community increased to 300 . Trakai's Karaim kenesa is a rare example of a surviving wooden synagogue with an interior dome. Kibinai , which
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#17327809388723796-484: The mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language. Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had
3869-596: The most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms." The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to
3942-504: The nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic ) and to some extent Aramaic . Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages . Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet . Prior to World War II , there were 11–13 million speakers. Eighty-five percent of
4015-513: The older, wooden fortress with a stone-built castle. Some design elements were borrowed from the castles of the Teutonic Knights as Vytautas spent some time with the Teutons forming an alliance against Jogaila in earlier years. Trakai became a political and an administrative centre of the Duchy, sometimes named a de facto capital of Lithuania. The construction of the brick castles was finished and
4088-405: The park's authentic nature. The park covers 82 km , 34 km of which are covered by forests, and 130 km of which are covered by lakes. Aukštadvaris Regional Park was founded in 1992 to preserve the valuable landscapes in the upper reaches of Verknė and Strėva . The area of the park is 153.5 km , most of which is covered by forests. There are 72 lakes here, the biggest of which
4161-665: The region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance. In Max Weinreich 's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic , or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia (later known in Yiddish as Loter ) extending over parts of Germany and France. There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in
4234-416: The region, the deepest being Galvė with its 21 islands . Galvė covers an area of 3.88 km , Vilkokšnis lake – 3.37 km , the lake of Skaistis – 2.96 km . There are Trakai Historical National Park and Aukštadvaris Regional Park founded in the territory of the region. Trakai Historical National Park was founded on 23 April 1991 to preserve Trakai as a centre of Lithuanian statehood as well as
4307-482: The seat of the local Sejmik . In Polish sources, the town name was started to be referred to as Troki . In 1477, the castle on the lake was a meeting place of King Casimir IV with Venetian envoys. After that, the castle became a luxurious prison for political prisoners. Sigismund I the Old imprisoned the members of Goštautai family, believed to be conspiring with Michael Glinski . Also Helena, widow of King Alexander
4380-415: The second refers to quantity or diphthongization (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25). Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German ; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with
4453-488: The town from Senieji Trakai to its current location, which is sometimes known as Naujieji Trakai. The new location was a place of intensive construction: a new castle was built in the strait between lakes Galvė and Luka and known as the Peninsula Castle , and another one, known as the Island Castle , on an island in Lake Galvė. A village grew around the castles. Vicinity of Trakai was protected by Senieji Trakai , Strėva, Bražuolė, Daniliškės and other hillforts from attacks of
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#17327809388724526-433: The town's prosperity ended. The castle ruins remained a historical landmark. During the Great Northern War (1700–1721) Trakai was plundered again, as famine and plague swept the country. After the Partitions of Poland in 1795, the area was annexed by the Russian Empire . After World War I , the area became part of the restored Republic of Poland . In 1929, the Polish authorities ordered reconstruction and restoration of
4599-399: The town. The castle was attacked in 1382 and 1383 (during the civil war of 1381–1384 ) and in 1390 (during the civil war of 1389–1392 ). After the 1422 Treaty of Melno , the castle lost its significance as a defensive structure. It is known that Grand Dukes used it as a residence. Sigismund Kęstutaitis was murdered in the castle on 20 March 1440. In the 16th century the castle was used as
4672-463: The two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East. The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in The Forward argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on
4745-417: The vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia . The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek -speakers, and this
4818-608: The work of Weinreich and his challengers alike." Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as " Judeo-Sorbian " (a proposed West Slavic language ) that had been relexified by High German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Yiddish orthography developed towards
4891-461: The −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series. In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs . All varieties of Yiddish lack the German front rounded vowels /œ, øː/ and /ʏ, yː/ , having merged them with /ɛ, e:/ and /ɪ, i:/ , respectively. Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged
4964-458: Was ווײַבערטײַטש ( vaybertaytsh , 'women's taytsh ' , shown in the heading and fourth column in the Shemot Devarim ), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט mesheyt or מאַשקעט mashket —the construction
5037-438: Was again annexed by the Soviet Union and made part of the Lithuanian SSR in the Soviet Union; subsequently many of the city's and area's ethnic Polish inhabitants left for the recovered Territories of the Polish People's Republic . In 1961, the reconstruction of the upper castle and a high tower construction were completed; however, the works came to a halt as a result of Nikita Khrushchev 's speech of 21 December 1960, where
5110-470: Was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of the official languages of the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic . Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland ) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to
5183-424: Was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of the world (for a total of 600,000). The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז ( loshn-ashknaz , "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש ( taytsh ),
5256-506: Was kept there in order to prevent her escape to the Grand Duchy of Moscow . The castle was refurbished by King Sigismund I the Old , who set up his summer residence there; however, after his death in 1548, the castle gradually fell into disrepair. During the wars between Russia and Poland between 1654 and 1667, the town was plundered and burnt. In the aftermath of the war with the Tsardom of Russia in 1655, both castles were demolished and
5329-503: Was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer , its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power. – Paul Johnson , A History of the Jews (1988) Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to
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