Max Weinreich


Max Weinreich was a Russian Jewish linguist, specializing in sociolinguistics and Yiddish, and the father of the linguist Uriel Weinreich, who edited the Modern Yiddish-English English-Yiddish Dictionary.

Biography

Weinreich began his studies in a German school in Goldingen, transferring to the gymnasium in Libau after four years. He then lived in Daugavpils and Łódź. Between 1909 and 1912, he resided in Saint Petersburg, where he attended I. G. Eizenbet's private Jewish gymnasium for boys. He was raised in a German-speaking family but became fascinated with Yiddish.
In the early 1920s, Weinreich lived in Germany and pursued studies in linguistics at the universities of Berlin and Marburg. In 1923, under the direction of German linguist in Marburg, he completed his dissertation, entitled "Studien zur Geschichte und dialektischen Gliederung der jiddischen Sprache". The dissertation was published in 1993 under the title Geschichte der jiddischen Sprachforschung.
In 1925, Weinreich was the cofounder, along with Nochum Shtif, Elias Tcherikower, and Zalman Reisen, of YIVO. Although the institute was officially founded during a conference in Berlin in August 1925, the centre of its activities was in Wilno, which eventually became its official headquarters as well. YIVO's first office in Wilno was in a room in Weinreich's apartment. Remembered as the guiding force of the institute, Weinreich directed its linguistic, or philological section in the period before the Second World War.
Weinreich was in Denmark with his wife, Regina Shabad Weinreich, the daughter of a notable doctor and Jewish leader of Wilno Zemach Shabad, and his older son, Uriel, when World War II broke out in 1939. Regina returned to Vilnius, but Max and Uriel stayed abroad, moving to New York City in March 1940. His wife and younger son, Gabriel, joined them there during the brief period when Vilnius was in independent Lithuania. Weinreich became a professor of Yiddish at City College of New York and re-established YIVO in New York.

Publications

Weinreich translated Sigmund Freud and Ernst Toller into Yiddish.
Weinreich is often cited as the author of a facetious quip distinguishing between languages and dialects: "A language is a dialect with an army and navy", but he was then explicitly quoting an auditor at one of his lectures.
Publications in English:
In Yiddish and German: