Yiddish in the land of Raysn
“Jak rejdała, to rejdała, aby dobra mejnała”
Belarus, small Eastern-European country squeezed between Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania, was a birthplace of such phenomenon like “Litvish” Yiddish. In fact, all the territory of modern Belarus (Raysn, or Vaysrusland in Yiddish) was the land of Litvaks — a group of Jews distinguished by the northeast dialect of Yiddish.
The first mention of Jews in Belarus came in the fourteenth century, when Grand Prince Vytautas of Lithuania granted charters to Jews in Brest (1388) and Hrodna (1389). In the sixteenth century Belarus became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Between 1624 and 1764 the majority of Jewish communities in Belarus belonged to the Va‘ad (Jewish Council) of Lithuania. In the mid seventeenth century, 80,000–90,000 Jews lived in the territory that is now Belarus.
During centuries Jews and Belarusians, mostly peasant nation, that also lived in villages and Jewish ‘shtetles’, influenced each other a lot. And best of all we can see this influence in both their languages — Belarusian and Yiddish
Yiddishized Slavic
Let’s see at Belarusian. It’s amazingly to see how much it was influenced by Yiddish, in fact. For example, there is a well-known Belarusian saying “Jak rejdała, to rejdała, aby dobra mejnała” (“No matter what you said, as long as you meant it in a good way”), where we obviously can see two slightly mutilated Yiddish verbs, ריידעלע [reydele] (ריידן ‘to speak’) и מיינעלע [meynele] (מיינען ‘mean, imply’).
According to many sources, in the beginning of the XX century many rural Belarusians could speak Yiddish. Such Belarusian words like hiešeft (interest), hiełd (money), paktar (intermediary, broker), achocham (bribe), šachravać (deceive), šachier-machier (fraud), bałahoł (teamster), bałabos (landlord, home owner), łokšyny (noodle), łapsierdak (frock coat), chaŭrus (union) obviously originated from Yiddish words.
Belarusians also often used Yiddish words that had a negative connotation, like hundzier (scoundrel), łiejba (idler), mišuhin (meathead, crazy), šejhiec (guy), kiepała (idiot), drek (shit), šłiemazł (failure), chałejmes (nonsense), chieŭra (criminal gang) etc.
Borrowings from Yiddish and Hebrew even form Belarusian fixed phrases, like:
«Chału u pału, a kuhiel za pazuchu» (literally, “Put challah under the tail, and kugel in bosom”)
«Kum-hier na kłiecki» (literally, “To come for lumps”, “To visit in order to eat something”)
«Borochotodunaju, kobyłki nie maju» (While I was sleeping, my horse was stolen)
There was a special verb borotodunajić in old Belarusian, which was a corrupted Hebrew “Boruch-ato –A-d-jej-n-o-j” (Thank you, Lord)
And still some yiddishisms are living in a modern Belarusian and used very widely:
varšavt — workshop (וואַרשטאַט)
špacyr — walk (שבאציר)
handłiavać (handal, handłiovy) — to trade, trade, trading (האַנדל)
rachmany — merciful (ראַכמאָנעסדיק)
cybułia — onion (ציבעלע)
farba — paint (פאַרב)
cukar — sugar (צוקער)
bira — beer (ביר)
palac — palace (פּאַלאַזזאָ)
In fact, in XVII century Belarusian base-form lexicon contained more than 1500 borrowings from German (through Yiddish and partially Polish)!
Belarusian (беларуская мова, byelaruskaya mova) is an official language of Belarus, along with Russian, and is spoken abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. Prior to Belarus gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the language was known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian.
Belarusian is one of the East Slavic languages and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. To some extent, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are mutually intelligible. Its predecessor stage is known as Old Belarusian (14th to 17th centuries, was an official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.), in turn descended from Old East Slavic (10th to 13th centuries).
The Belarusian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic script. Prior to this, Belarusian had also been written in the Belarusian Latin alphabet (Łacinka) and the Belarusian Arabic alphabet.
