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<sup>th</sup> and 16<sup>th</sup> 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 /š/, /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 -<em>yy</em>- via <em>ž</em> or <em>dž</em> (which is explained by a Turkic mediation in these contexts).