Course to explore Ukrainian-Yiddish dialect of the theater and the Breslov Hasidim [View all]

In a unique course this spring, Yiddish scholar Leyzer Burko will explore the rich dialect of Ukrainian-Yiddish, once widely spoken not just in Ukraine, but in Romania, Moldova and Poland.

Ukrainian-Yiddish served as the standard dialect in Yiddish theater and film, and was also used by famous writers like Sholem Aleichem. The Hasidic movement, as well as many of today’s Hasidic groups, such as Skver and Breslov, originated in Ukraine.

One reason that Burko decided to teach the course is that Hasidim whose ancestors actually came from Skver and Breslov, no longer speak in their ancestor’s Ukrainian-Yiddish dialect. “Today almost all of them speak Hungarian-Yiddish just like the members of the larger Hasidic groups like Satmar,” he said. “As a result, the specific features of Ukrainian-Yiddish will soon be lost, unfortunately.”

Because many more Jews survived in Ukraine than in Poland and Lithuania, the dialect continues to be spoken throughout the post-Soviet diaspora, including by contemporary writers like Boris Sandler.

The course will focus mainly on the spoken dialect, covering varieties like the so-called tote-mome-lushn, in which the sound of /a/ is pronounced as /o/.

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