AH Challenge: Yiddish the language of wider communication

Tielhard

Banned
No centralised Roman or Orthodox churches would go a long way towards this. The language of trade would then have to become some thing like Hebrew or Armenian or Arabic BUT if no centralised church maybe no Islam to reject the trinity? So no general use of Arabic. However how to get from Hebrew to Yiddish? I'm stuck.
 
Well the only idea I can come up with is a community of German Jews moving to the New World at some early point, and forming what eventually grows into TTL's equivalent of the USA, only Yiddish-speaking.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Justin Pickard said:
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have Yiddish accepted internationally as a Language of Wider Communication by the end of the twentieth century.
Primo Levi makes reference to Yiddish as a language of wider communication in his Se questo è un uomo; he mentions that the other Jews at Auschwitz, who had been brought together from all over Europe, had some knowledge of Yiddish and were able to communicate with one another, but he was the odd man out.

How to make it an international language? I imagine that it would involve no Holocaust, a new Zion somewhere outside of Israel settled primarily by Ashkenazic Jews, a rise in the popularity of klezmer and the Yiddish theatre, or some combination of the above?
 
Perhaps if Yiddish become more popular in the US, a fashionable thing, and that some merchands start to use it as a lingua franca with europeans and south americans?
 
First off, no holocaust. That event killed most Yiddish speakers.

The problem with this timeline is that most major international languages (e.g. French, English, and Spanish) are languages of empires. There was never a Yiddish empire. IT is either that happen or get lost of people speaking Yiddish. When I say lots I mean at least 200 milllion people. This a little absurd.
 
I heard that it have killed the western dialect, specially, but the eastern dialect are in a better shape. Or I may be wrong...

Perhaps if it become a lingua franca for some groups...
 

Alcuin

Banned
Justin Pickard said:
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have Yiddish accepted internationally as a Language of Wider Communication by the end of the twentieth century.

How you do this is up to you, but make it realistic, and make it interesting.

It'd be a lot easier for Ladino (which is to Spanish what Yiddish is to German).

For Yiddish to work, I think the Roman Empire has to fall sometime around 150 AD, so that the infrastructure is not there when the Germanic tribes fall on the Mediterranean World (so that there is no widespread Latinisation and Germanic languages begin to spread through Europe and North Africa.)

The Region is reduced to warring microstates until the point where trade is conducted only by Jewish Merchants (since Jews, as outsiders everywhere, are not viewed with the same suspicion as everyone else). During this time, a tradetalk develops as a lingua franca for Merchants throughout Europe and North Africa. It is Germanic but, because it is invented by Jews, contains many items of Aramaic and Hebrew vocabulary, showing the language's origins. This tradetalk is known universally as Yiddish.

Later on, the tradetalk develops into a true language as Europe begins to integrate in the late Middle Ages.
 
Well, okay. It doesn't have to necessarily be the only or the predominant Language of Wider Communication. Not the English of OTL by any means. But perhaps something that many people would understand, but not speak as their first language.
 
Justin Pickard said:
Well, okay. It doesn't have to necessarily be the only or the predominant Language of Wider Communication. Not the English of OTL by any means. But perhaps something that many people would understand, but not speak as their first language.

That's easy. No holocaust, a different end to WWI (maybe a Central Powers victory). Yiddish was a widespread languiage of interregional and international coimmunication throughout Central and Eastern Europe before the 40s. There was a thriving Yiddish literature market and cultural scene, and movies were made in it. And that was in the hostile atmosphere of ethnic-defined nation states with strong antisemitic traditions. Imagine what it could habe been like in a German-Austrian-dominated Eastern Europe where Berlin regards itself as the protector of Jews from primitive Slavic antisemitism (yes, that was a German propaganda line in WWI, and not entirely unbased in reality either)
 
I would say that the best way to do it would be to create a more xenophobic world, where few people can travel or trade. If jews become the only group free to wander the world, yiddish can become the language of international trade.
 
carlton_bach said:
That's easy. No holocaust, a different end to WWI (maybe a Central Powers victory). Yiddish was a widespread languiage of interregional and international coimmunication throughout Central and Eastern Europe before the 40s. There was a thriving Yiddish literature market and cultural scene, and movies were made in it. And that was in the hostile atmosphere of ethnic-defined nation states with strong antisemitic traditions. Imagine what it could habe been like in a German-Austrian-dominated Eastern Europe where Berlin regards itself as the protector of Jews from primitive Slavic antisemitism (yes, that was a German propaganda line in WWI, and not entirely unbased in reality either)

The word 'pogrom' come, after all, from a slavic language...
 
My Zionist Uganda timeline has Yiddish far more widespread....although its Esperanto that becomes a true international language.....as it's the language that binds Africa and the Middle East together......
 

Alcuin

Banned
<quote>My Zionist Uganda timeline has Yiddish far more widespread....although its Esperanto that becomes a true international language.....as it's the language that binds Africa and the Middle East together......</quote>

Surely kiSwahili would work better as a language to bind together Africa and the Middle East...? It's a creole with a great deal of Arabic vocabulary but with a simplified Bantu grammar.
 
One possibility would be to have Yiddish accepted as a language of commerce.

WI, during the Middle Ages European Jews initiate the modern banking industry, and lend money across national borders, from Germany to North Africa, and England to Turkey and Russia. Although the local banking people know the local language, in order to make themselves understood between nations, they use Yiddish (which is a actually a sort of creolized German dialect). Eventually the language becomes institutionalized, and like Latin in the RC Church fro church documents, all banking records and loan documents are written in Yiddish.

At the same time, it ceases to be solely identified with the Jewish People as more ethnic and religious groups enter banking and finance as a profession.

Then, because the balance of powers is more 'balanced' than in our world, with the beginnings of modern financial systems, the use of Yiddish as the language of commerce rather than French, English or German, because it has the advantage of not being closely identified with any one language and already has words in it for many of the terms used in modern finances.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
That role was, in fact, held by Italian in the Mediterranean for many centuries, which is why Italian was the lingua franca used by the Ottoman interpretors (the Levantines). There are all kinds of official documents from the Levant answering to varying standards of Italian from that period.

Something similar could happen in Central and Eastern Europe. Slavs, Germans, Hungarians, and the rest could communicate with one another by means of Jewish intermediaries. All official treaties would appear in triplicate: in the languages of the two signatories and one document in the language of the Jewish interpretors.
 

ninebucks

Banned
How about an earlier, and more populous Germanic migration to the south in the 1st Century BC, so that during the height of the Roman Empire there is a loyal Gothic Kingdom in the Carpathians. When Judaea starts revolting, the Empire decides that instead of dispersing the Jews, inserting loyal Roman citizens into the province would be a better way to keep order, among the people encouraged to migrate to Judaea are a fair few Germans, this sets about a subtle linguistic revolution in the Jewish homelands.

Eventually, the Empire is split into the North-Western Roman Empire, and the South-Eastern Roman Empire, with the latter's capital based in Alexandria.

Some time after that another grand migration of Germans takes place, this time, the Vandals. Instead of heading into Hispania, which has been kept secure by North-West Rome, instead they travel across the relatively unprotected Bosphorous and eventually settle in the Syria and Judaea. Although in this world Arianus has been butterflied away, the Vandals still follow a dangerously unorthodox version of Christianity. Alexandria views the Vandals in Judaea as a threat, and struggles to keep them under wraps.

By about the 9th Century, the constant Turkish invasions to the north of Alexandria eventually cause the Empire to give up its Asian territories, and concentrate instead on North Africa. Without their mutual Alexandrian enemy, there is a power struggle between the Jewish and Vandalic leaders, which often resorts to all out war. However, as both sides appear to be evenly matched, the appetite for conflict is soon lost after a century or so. And after that, the two communities generally coexist peacefully. Their new land begins to be known as Juhdlond, and their language as Juhdische (close enough, eh?). The tongue is shared by Jew and Vandal alike, and is much like OTL Yiddish, but with a bit more Hebrew and a lot more Greek influence.

Although, no formal constitution is ever considered, a lot of conventions gradually make it into law. Firstly, all inhabitants of Juhdlond (who have inhabited Juhdlond since the ATL 'hetrarchy', are to be considered Jews, however, this concentrates more on Jewishness as a national identity, and not as a religion, as such, there is no contradiction between being a Jew, and being a Christian of any sect (that does not owe allegiance to Rome or Alexandria). The head of state is the 'Koenig von der Juhden', and below him is a culturally Germanic feudal system.

In TTL, Islam is butterflied away, and thus Juhdland has a much easier time expanding eastward, and manages to secure a significant Arab slave population. Without Islamic influence, the Persian Empire converts to Christianity, of a cohabitationary form more closely ressembling that of Juhdlond's Christians than that of either of the Romes. Juhdland and Persia remain friends for most of their history.

As Alexandria's North African bread basket desertifies, and Rome's provinces become increasingly ladden with disloyal immigrants, both Empires begin to decline, and Juhdland fills that gap. The Juhdische Kaisarreich expands south down to Yemen, and north into Anatolia and the Ionian shores. The Kaisarreich's jovial relations with Persia make it an essential player in the trans-Eurasian trade network. This, combined with Juhdlond's much more liberal approach to usury quickly make it a very rich nation, and by the 14th Century, Juhdische has replaced Latin and Greek as the linguae franci of the Mediterranean.
 
Top