The Linguistic and Literary Contact between East Slavs and Jews in the Middle Ages: Results and Perspectives of the Study

Abstract

This article gathers all the data on the medieval East Slavonic canonical texts – written between the 13 th and 16 th centuries – which evidence direct linguistic and literary contact between East Slavs and Jews. Several linguistic indicators of immediate contact have been extracted from these texts: the transferring of the Hebrew phonemes /s/, /ə/, /h/, / ḥ /, /g/, /b/, and /c/ via corresponding Slavic letters, using a specific grapheme for the Hebrew letter ‘Aleph,’ assimilations by voice, and transferring Hebrew - yy - via ž or dž (which is explained by a Turkic mediation in these contexts).