Yiddish as a vernacular language: teaching a language in obsolescence

Abstract

The task of teaching non-territorial languages such as Yiddish at the university level is a complex undertaking. The teaching of Yiddish has its own particular difficulties due to an ever-diminishing population of native speakers available to students, a lack of contemporary cultural materials, and an abundance of outdated teaching materials. A critique of the two major textbooks used to teach Yiddish underscores the necessity for a new approach. In creating a web-based Yiddish curriculum, contemporary problems that are particular to the Yiddish classroom can be overcome. The defragmentizing nature of multimedia interactive technologies help students develop communicative competence in Yiddish, a language that was once the vernacular of the majority of Jews in the world but, in the aftermath of genocide, has come to be taught as a written – and not spoken – language.