Judah Achilles Joffe (April 19, 1873 – September 16, 1966;
yi, יאפע, יהודה) was a Yiddish philologist.
Joffe was born in
Yekaterinoslav,
Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine). He immigrated to the United States in 1891 and enrolled at
Columbia College Columbia College may refer to one of several institutions of higher education in North America:
Canada
* Columbia College (Alberta), in Calgary
* Columbia College (British Columbia), a two-year liberal arts institution in Vancouver
* Columbia In ...
, where he studied general philology with
Harry Thurston Peck and graduated with a B.A. in 1893.
Among Joffe's noted works is his 1949 critical edition of the ''
Bovo-Bukh'', the most popular chivalric romance in the Yiddish language.
He was also a co-editor, with
Yudel Mark, of the ''Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language'' (''Groyser ṿerṭerbukh fun der Yidisher shprakh'', גרויסער ווערטערבוך פון דער יידישער שפראך). In addition, he researched the Slavic component in Yiddish, published musicological work about Russian composers, translated Yiddish, English, and French, and proposed regularized spelling for Yiddish.
[ Joffe was a co-founder of the American branch of YIVO, and active in its linguistics section together with other scholars of Yiddish including Max Weinreich and Shmuel Niger.
He died in New York City in 1966.
]
External links
Bovo Bukh
Joffe's critical edition at Open Library
Yehudah Yofe papers
at Columbia University, NY
Judah Achilles Joffe papers
at YIVO
* https://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2016/12/judah-joffe.html
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Joffe, Judah
1873 births
1966 deaths
American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
Linguists of Yiddish
History of YIVO
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
People from Yekaterinoslav Governorate
Jews from the Russian Empire
Columbia College (New York) alumni