This is the first systematic attempt to trace the beginnings of Modern Literary Yiddish, beginning in the eighteenth century. Kerler examines hitherto neglected Yiddish books from the period in order to analyze the linguistic changes manifest in both the transition and shift from old to nascent Modern Literary Yiddish within the broader context of genre and literary traditions and in the framework of Yiddish dialectology, grammar, and sociolinguistics. A major work of linguistic scholarship, The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish is an important contribution to the study of the crystallization process of literary languages.