Like many others of his time, Kafka called Yiddish 'jargon'. This was one of various names for the language, and Kafka, who knew several, could have used another had he so wished. But 'jargon' was an exact name for the unsettled and unsettling thing he took the language of the Eastern European Jews to be. 'Jargon,' he wrote, 'is the youngest European language - barely four hundred years old and actually even younger. It has not yet developed forms of speech of such clarity as the ones we use. It is expressed curtly and rapidly . . . It has no grammars. Those who love it try to write grammars, but jargon is still spoken. It does not come to rest.'

LRB 2 November 2006 | PDF Download