MORTKHE VEYNGER

MORTKHE VEYNGER (September 9, 1890-February 4, 1929)

            He was a philologist, born in the city of Poltava, Ukraine.  In the late 1890s, his family moved to Warsaw. He graduated high school in 1911 and entered the faculty of philology of the University of Warsaw with the explicit goal of devoting himself thereafter to studies of Yiddish philology; already in his student years, he published a series of works on Yiddish orthography and dialectology. In 1913 he brought out two pamphlets concerning the reform of Yiddish script and Yiddish spelling. In 1914 he graduated from university, but due to the outbreak of WWI, his linguistic activities were broken off for about ten years, and turned to work as a private tutor—initially in Kharkov and later in Moscow—and he was then drafted and sent to the front in the Vilna region. In November 1916 he was dispatched to Tsaritsyn (now, Volgograd) with the student training battalion for military officers.  After the Revolution, he was sent to Tashkent to officer school and was a Russian war commander in Persia.  In December 1917 he was demobilized and became a teacher in the first Jewish school in Tashkent.  For a short time he belonged to the local group of the Bund, but from March 1919, he was a member of the Communist Party, and he took part in the fighting against the white Cossacks. Over the years 1919-1921, he was secretary of the party and of a string of other high-level governmental agencies in Turkestan.  He traveled around collecting taxes from the Cossacks in the steppes.  He was secretary, 1922-1923, of the Central Asian Communist University in Tashkent.  He later moved to Minsk where he became the manager of the Jewish division of the pedagogical faculty and lecturer in Yiddish dialectology and Germanics at the Byelorussian State University. There he continued his work and published articles and pamphlets concerned with Yiddish linguistics, changes in Yiddish orthography, and collecting dialectological data. He published articles and pamphlets on questions of Yiddish spelling and dialectology. He was one of the most active members of the All-Soviet Orthographic Conference in Kharkov (April 1928).  He later became chairman of the language commission in the Yiddish section and substitute director of the Byelorussian State University, and the initiator and manager of the work on an academic dictionary and language atlas.  He was one of the creators of Soviet Yiddish linguistics.  He then suddenly committed suicide.

Veynger’s colleague Ayzik Zaretski assembled and published a complete bibliography of his works, which was published in a special issue of Yidishe shprakh (Yiddish language) dedicated to his memory. A portion of his books and major articles would include: “Vegn der shprakh un oysleygung fun Seyfer fun reb anshl” (On the language and spelling in Seyfer fun reb anshl [A work by R. Anshl],” Lebn un visnshaft (Life and scholarship) (1912); “Dyalektologishe bamerkungen” (Dialectological remarks), in Zamelbikher far yidishn folklor, filologye un kultur-geshikhte (Anthologies on Jewish folklore, philology, and cultural history), ed. Noyekh Prilucki, vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1912), pp. 126-34; “Yidish anthalt fremde verter, iz yidish a shprakh?” (Yiddish contains foreign words, is Yiddish a language?), Unzer zhurnal (Our journal), ed. Aleksandr Farba, 1 (1913), pp. 15-19 (Warsaw), 2 (1913), pp. 19-22; “Hebreyishe klangen in der yidisher shprakh” (Hebrew sounds in the Yiddish language), Der pinkes (The records), ed. Shmuel Niger (Vilna, 1913), pp. 79-84; Yidisher sintaksis (Yiddish syntax) (Warsaw: n.p., 1913), 88 pp.; Mayn oysleyg (My spelling [plan]) (Warsaw: Nayer farlag, 1913), 21 pp.; Mayn alefbeyz (My alphabet) (Warsaw: Nayer farlag, 1913), 22 pp.; Vos, vi azoy un ba vemen klaybn un farshraybn (What, how, and with whom to select and to record) (Minsk, 1925), 13 pp.; Forshn yidishe dyalektn (Researching Yiddish dialects) (Minsk: Institute of Byelorussian Culture, 1926), 15 pp.;  “Instruktsye farn verter-aroysshayber funem yidishn akademishn verterbukh” (Instructions for the explicator of words in a Yiddish academic dictionary), Tsaytshrift (Periodical), vol. 1 (Minsk, 1926), pp. 269-72; “Vegn der yidishn shprakhatlas” (On the Yiddish language atlas), Di yidishe shprakh (The Yiddish language) 1 (1927), p. 45 (Kiev); “Vegn dem yidishn alef-beys un oysleyg” (On the Yiddish alphabet and spelling), Yidishe ortografye (Yiddish orthography) 1 (Kiev: Kultur-lige, 1928), pp. 34-56; “Lingvistishe kartografye un der yidisher shprakhatlas” (Linguistic cartography and the Yiddish language atlas), Tsaytshrift, vol. 2-3 (Minsk, 1927-1928), pp. 869-72; “Shprakhvisnshaft un oysleyg” (Language scholarship and spelling), Yidishe ortografye 1 (Kiev: Kultur-lige, 1928), pp. 27-34; “Yidishe etimologyes” (Yiddish etymologies), Shriftn far vaysrusishn melukhe-universitet (Writings of Byelorussian State University), vol. 1 (Minsk, 1929), pp. 61-67; “Lingvistishe kveles fun mendeles shprakh” (Linguistic sources of Mendele’s language), Shriftn far vaysrusishn melukhe-universitet, vol. 1 (Minsk, 1929), pp. 68-76; Yidishe dyalektologye (Yiddish dialectology) (Minsk: State Publ., 1929), 156 pp.  There is also: Leyzer Vilenkin, Yidisher shprakhatlas fun sovetfarband (Yiddish language atlas of the Soviet Union), based on materials collected by Mortkhe Veynger (Minsk: Byelorussian Academy of Sciences, 1931), 87 pp., with 75 geographical charts.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; A. Zaretski, “Di biblyografye fun kh. m. veyngers arbetn” (Bibliography of Kh. M. Venger’s works); “Veynger, der lingvist” (Veyner, the linguist); N. Shtif, in Yidishe shprakh (Kiev) (January-February 1929); A. Gurshteyn, “A nayer vendpunkt in der mendele-forshung” (A new landmark in research on Mendele), Visnshaftlekhe yorbikher (Moscow) 1 (1929); L. Vilenkin, in Shtern (Minsk) 3 (1929), pp. 63-67; “Nekrolog” (Obituary), Pinkes amerikaner opteyl fun yivo (Records of the American section of YIVO), 2.1 (New York, 1929); Max Weinreich, reviews in Yivo-bleter 1 (1931), pp. 81-84; Kh[atskl] Nodel, “Oyflebn dos biblyografye-vezn” (Reviving the institution of bibliography), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (July 5, 1947); Y. Mark, “In farteydikung fun shtimen alef” (In defense of the silent alef), Yidishe shprakh (April 1959).

Alexander Pomerants 

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 238; and Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 137-38.]