Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe

Maintaining the flow of a conversation is a complex and delicate matter. At some point or other, most of us have experienced irritation at getting cut off mid-sentence or embarrassment at unintentionally interrupting our conversation partner. On the flip side, we may start to feel uneasy if a pause goes on for too long. We might make use of various strategies to avoid these uncomfortable situations without even realizing what we’re doing. In larger groups, methods like hand-raising or a preset speaking order may make sense, but one-to-one conversations tend to rely on the exchange of more subtle non-verbal cues — facial, postural, etc. — and/or verbal discourse markers that help to establish whose turn it is.¹ For example, an English speaker who ends their story with “so… yeah” or “you know?” could be letting their interlocutor know that it’s time for them to speak. We can refer to such verbal elements that “yield the floor” in conversation as turn-yielding cues.²

Given the specific role of these kinds of words and phrases in a conversational context, they would be quite difficult, and maybe impossible, to elicit reliably in a formal questionnaire. Most of us probably aren’t aware of what exactly we tend to say to keep the conversation moving. Observing a lengthy series of back-and-forth interactions is vital for getting at these kinds of important yet forgettable little utterances. Luckily, the CSYE provides us with just that. The fact that interviews are highly asymmetrical in nature — the interviewer’s role is to ask questions and the interviewee’s is to answer them — means that it is generally the survivor who may find it necessary to signal to the interviewer that they have finished speaking and are ready for the next question. This, of course, depends on the interviewer as well; an interviewer who tends to speak as soon as (or perhaps even before) the survivor finishes speaking may not need an invitation to begin their turn.

In this post, I want to share some preliminary observations of turn-yielding discourse markers used by speakers in the CSYE. Based on a limited sample of interviews that I have transcribed so far, there seems to be considerable variability between speakers in terms of the words and phrases they use, and plenty of speakers don’t use any at all during their interviews. However, some individual speakers may have a go-to turn-yielding cue that they repeat on multiple occasions throughout their testimony. I’ve found it interesting to notice how these utterances give someone’s speech a distinctive character that might also, as I discuss below, reveal or suggest something about their regional, multilingual, or even professional identities. Perhaps future research in discourse analysis, carried out systematically and with a larger dataset drawn from the CSYE, can reveal trends regarding which words or phrases people tend to use, how often, and in what specific contexts.

Lee Shuldman (b. 1926), like fellow Vilner Fania Brantsovskaya, uses the affirmative יע ye, as opposed to יאָ yo or יאַ ya, to mean ‘yes.’ However, Shuldman also employs ye for several purposes that don’t seem to involve expressing agreement. Of relevance to the discussion here, she uses ye to signal that she has completed a thought and/or that she has finished answering a question and is ready for the next one, as in this segment:

Rahel Gutman (b. 1917), a speaker of Southeastern Yiddish from the town of Libevne (now in northwestern Ukraine), similarly uses יאָ yo, the form of the affirmative common in many Yiddish dialects and taught in Standard Yiddish, to indicate that she has finished expressing a thought. Her use of this word as a discourse marker is much less frequent than Shuldman’s, however.

Ely Litsky (b. 1910), born and raised in Byalistok, uses the phrase דאָס אָ dos o as a turn-yielding cue, often at a markedly lower volume than his preceding speech. An English equivalent might be something like ‘that’s that.’

Genia Gertslikh (b. 1927) was born and raised in Bershed, Ukraine, and continued living in Ukraine until 1995, when she immigrated with her family to Germany. Her Yiddish includes an extensive vocabulary of Russian loanwords, which she integrates into her speech through the addition of appropriate Yiddish inflectional endings. For instance, she often uses Russian-origin verbs with Yiddish suffixes, including принимать prinimat’ ‘to receive, take, accept’ (zey hobn nokh PRINIMAet… ‘they took in…’); собирать sobirat’ ‘to gather’ (…az me zol SOBIRAen dem UROZHAY ‘…for us to gather the harvest’); and соображать soobrazhat’ ‘to understand, grasp’ (ikh hob nit SOOBRAZHAet far vos… ‘I did not understand why…’). A number of such Russian-influenced verbs are included in Standard Yiddish dictionaries, but a great many are not.

It comes as no surprise, then, that Gertslikh also uses a borrowing from Russian, вот VOT ‘this, here,’ to mark the completion of a conversational turn, apparently with a similar meaning to Litsky’s dos o. In the following clip, you can observe how she finishes a thought, pauses for a moment, and then adds VOT at a quieter volume, which her interviewer, Majer Szanckower, takes as a signal to ask the next question:

A speaker may also opt for a more direct approach to moving the conversation forward; rather than indicating that they are finished speaking, they might explicitly request that their interlocutor begin their next turn. In the clip below, Israel Fingurt (b. 1922) from Skortsen (today in Moldova) waits a moment after answering a question before prompting his interviewer: נו, װײַטער? nu, vayter? (‘Alright, next?’). It’s interesting to note that Fingurt’s post-war career in journalism included a period of time working as a radio reporter. It seems plausible to me that his willingness to take a more active role than some in directing the flow of conversation was something he could have developed through his work in this field.

Sometimes, an apparent indication of the end of a turn can be misleading. In the following clip, Sara Shvartsbort (b. 1914), from Yaneve, Lithuania, poses the question נו, װאָס דערציילן נאָך דעם? nu, vos dertseyln nokh dem? (‘Alright, what should I tell next?’). Her interviewer, Roza Bieliauskienė,³ initially interprets this as a signal that her turn as a questioner has begun and she begins to stand up. (Shvartsbort is hard of hearing, so Bieliauskienė moves closer to her each time she asks a question.) It appears, however, that Shvartsbort, a skillful and engaging storyteller, was simply using this phrase as a rhetorical device, and she immediately moves on to begin her next anecdote. Bieliauskienė quickly sits back down when she realizes this, and the flow of conversation continues uninterrupted.

While turn-yielding cues may not be the most memorable part of a conversation, a closer look reveals the fascinating variety of words and phrases used for this purpose by the diverse speakers included in the CSYE.

Notes and References