Language
The Haskalah marked the end of the use of Yiddish, the revival of Hebrew and an adoption of European languages. At the end of the 17th century, wealthy Jews in Germany taught their children German and French to facilitate business and social contacts with non-Jews. By the 1790s, French had become the language of the Jewish elite while German was the spoken language of the middle class.
German writers had previously claimed that Jews deceived non-Jews by using Yiddish in business transactions and a negative attitude toward Yiddish developed. Mendelssohn thought that Yiddish was "ridiculous, ungrammatical, and a cause of moral corruption."2 Some reformers called for the removal of Yiddish from Jewish schools and others suggested that Jews refrain from using Yiddish or Hebrew in bookkeeping and business contracts.
In the Netherlands, Jews gave up Yiddish in favor of Dutch. A Jewish weekly published in Dutch began in 1806. In 1808, a Jewish society in Amsterdam translated the Bible and prayer book into Dutch and printed textbooks in both Dutch and Hebrew. In 1809, King Louis Bonaparte of the Netherlands issued a decree prohibiting the use of Yiddish in documents. Sermons were to be given in Dutch and Dutch became the language of instruction for youth. In France, French had been spoken even before the Haskalah. In Hungary, maskilim substituted Hungarian for Yiddish in Jewish schools and synagogue sermons.
The Haskalah led to the revival of Hebrew, particularly biblical Hebrew. Mendelssohn wrote a Hebrew commentary on the Bible called the Biur to accompany a German translation. Ha-Me’assef (meaning "The Gatherer") was the first Hebrew publication of the Haskalah. It was founded in Konigsberg, Prussia, by students of Mendelssohn and appeared quarterly between 1783 and 1790 and irregularly until 1811. Doreshei Leshon Ever ("Friends of the Hebrew Language") published Ha-Me’assef with the goals of promoting increased use of the Hebrew language and preparing the Jews for emancipation. Hebrew became a vehicle for secular and professional scientific expression. The writers of Ha-Me’assef rejected Rabbinic Hebrew in favor of classical Biblical Hebrew. Ha-Me’assef printed poetry, fables, biblical exegesis, studies on Hebrew linguistics, essays on Jewish history and news about the Jewish people.
By the 1820s, the focus of the Haskalah shifted to the Austrian empire. A new journal, Bikkurei ha-Ittim ("First Fruits of the Times") was published annually in Vienna between 1821 and 1832. It included poetry, literature, biographies and satire of aspects of traditional Judaism that the maskilim opposed. The first Hebrew journal devoted to modern Jewish scholarship was the Kerem Hemed ("Vineyard of Delight") published in Vienna, Prague and Berlin between 1833 and 1856.
In Russia, a Jewish press helped spread Haskalah ideas. Newspapers were founded in the 1860s in both Hebrew and Yiddish that called for an alliance between the Jews and the Russian government. Most maskilim, however, saw Yiddish and even Hebrew as only temporary instruments for spreading ideas, and sought to promote Russian as the dominant language.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Judaism/Haskalah.html