This is a marriage certificate from Kiev dated 1930:
This was right before Stalin started to Russianize aggressively. Which is funny given that Stalin himself spoke Russian with a heavy accent and used to be a Georgian nationalist in his youth.
5 responses to “Kiev, 1930”
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Is the lettering on the right-hand side Hebrew? Looks like it.
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It’s the Hebrew alphabet, but I’m assuming the language is Yiddish.
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Yes, it’s supposed to be Yiddish. I understand it if I hear it and know some words that I use on a daily basis but I have no idea what people did for the written version.
My great-grandparents (in Ukraine) were Yiddish-speakers and obviously nobody knew Hebrew.
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Written Yiddish is a German dialect with some Hebrew vocabulary written in Hebrew letters.
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Should have expected that for the time, I suppose. Hebrew as a commonly-spoken language seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon, whether only within Israel or without. I think I was referring to the script rather than the language, though.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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