This blog was formerly known as “Becoming a Byuralistke: or, How to empower people to speak a language I just learned” and I wrote about my experiences as an employee at and board member of Yugntruf – Youth for Yiddish, as well as about my own adventures in learning Yiddish. The blog pretty much died when a) I stopped working at Yugntruf, b) I got a little burnt out from being over-involved and over-invested, and c) Yiddish died.
Just kidding, Yiddish is far from dead. Stop thinking it already and go mourn the decline of an actual endangered language like Dalabon or Kashaya.
Two years later, taped to the computer screen at my no-longer-new-job is the quote: “I can still become the person I might have been.” I had pulled it out of a bear-shaped plastic jar of daily affirmations. My former colleague had included this snippet in the jar because she was inspired by it—it was an adaptation of a quote she read by George Eliot. (Actually, the quote is not George Eliot’s.)
You know that shot at the end of a sitcom’s finale, when the main character looks back at the living room, turns off the light, closes the door, and leaves? I’m right there, right on the threshold. Except I’m not leaving the house—just moving to another room. Most of the entries from “Becoming a Byuralistke” are now private. While I will continue to write about Yiddish and the Yiddish world, I also will expand this blog to include all the possibilities of the person I am in the process of becoming.
I just (re-)read one of your entries from 2008. I know you’re moving away from it, but you talked about the curve of learning Yiddish — did you ever become fluent? I’m just curious, as I’ve always been jealous of you/Rebecca for speaking another language.
I became conversationally fluent–I can speak Yiddish with people with ease, though I do still make pretty big grammar and pronunciation mistakes. My reading and writing is a notch or two below that.
I think, to use the model I described, I probably am on a plateau at the moment. There was a big surge and then when my Yiddish became functional I got lazy.
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