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Yiddish

Yiddish
Judaeo-German
ייִדיש‎, יידיש‎, אידיש‎ or יודישע‎, yidish / idish
Pronunciation[ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ]
Native toCentral, Eastern, and Western Europe
RegionEurope, Israel, North America, South America, other regions with Jewish populations[1]
EthnicityAshkenazi Jews
Native speakers
≤ 600,000 (2021)[2]
Early form
Dialects
  • Eastern Yiddish
  • Western Yiddish
Hebrew alphabet (Yiddish orthography)
occasionally Latin alphabet[5]
Official status
Official language in
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated byNo formal bodies
YIVO de facto
Language codes
ISO 639-1yi
ISO 639-2yid
ISO 639-3yid – inclusive code
Individual codes:
ydd – Eastern Yiddish
yih – Western Yiddish
Glottologeast2295  Eastern Yiddish
west2361  Western Yiddish
Linguasphere52-ACB-g = 52-ACB-ga (West) + 52-ACB-gb (East); totalling 11 varieties
Yiddish is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2023)[9]
The opening page of the 1828 Yiddish-written Jewish holiday of Purim play Esther, oder die belohnte Tugend from Fürth (by Nürnberg), Bavaria.
שָׁלוֹם
This article contains Hebrew text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hebrew letters.

Yiddish (ייִדיש‎, יידיש‎ or אידיש‎, yidish or idish, pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ], lit. 'Jewish'; ייִדיש-טײַטש‎, historically also Yidish-Taytsh, lit. 'Judeo-German')[10] is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th century[11]: 2  Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages.[12][13][14] Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet.

Prior to World War II, there were 11–13 million speakers.[15][16] Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers,[17] leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However, the number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million.[18] A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of the world (for a total of 600,000).[2]

The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז‎ (loshn-ashknaz, "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש‎ (taytsh), a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון‎ (mame-loshn, lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש‎ (loshn koydesh, "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic.[19] The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today.[20][18]

Modern Yiddish has two major forms: Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas.

The term "Yiddish" is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer).[21]

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  • Other aspects
  1. ^ Yiddish at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ a b "Yiddish FAQs". Rutgers University. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  3. ^ Edited by Ekkehard König and Johan van der Auwera: The Germanic Languages. Routledge: London & New York, 1994, p. 388 (chapter 12 Yiddish)
  4. ^ Sten Vikner: Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax: Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages. Oxford University Press: New York & Oxford, 1995, p. 7
  5. ^ Matthias Mieses: Die Gesetze der Schriftgeschichte: Konfession und Schrift im Leben der Völker. 1919, p. 323.
    Also cp. the following works, where certain works in Yiddish language with Latin script are mentioned:
    • Carmen Reichert: Poetische Selbstbilder: Deutsch-jüdische und Jiddische Lyrikanthologien 1900–1938. (Jüdische Religion, Geschichte und Kultur. Band 29). 2019, p. 223 (in chapter 4. 10 Ein radikaler Schritt:eine jiddische Anthologie in lateinischen Buchstaben)
    • Illa Meisels: Erinnerung der Herzen. Wien: Czernin Verlag, 2004, p. 74: "Chaja Raismann, Nit in Golus un nit in der Heem, Amsterdam 1931, ein in lateinischen Buchstaben geschriebenes jiddisches Büchlein."
    • Desanka Schwara: Humor und Toleranz. Ostjüdische Anekdoten als historische Quelle. 2001, p. 42
    • Edited by Manfred Treml and Josef Kirmeier with assistance by Evamaria Brockhoff: Geschichte und Kultur der Juden in Bayern: Aufsätze. 1988, p. 522
  6. ^ a b "Устав Еврейской автономной области от 8 октября 1997 г. N 40-ОЗ (с изменениями и дополнениями) Глава I. Общие положения. Статья 6.2 [Charter of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast N 40-ОЗ (with the Amendments and Additions of 8 October 1997): Chapter I. General situation. Article 6.2]". Сайт Конституции Российской Федерации [Site of the Constitution of the Russian Federation]. Garant. Archived from the original on February 21, 2015. Retrieved June 16, 2023. В области создаются условия для сохранения, изучения и развития языков еврейского народа и других народов, проживающих на территории области. [In the oblast the conditions will be created for the protection, stidy and growth of the languages of the Jewish peoples and other peoples living on the territory of the oblast.]
  7. ^ What languages does the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages apply to?
  8. ^ "Про затвердження переліку мов національних меншин (спільнот) та корінних народів України, яким загрожує зникнення". Official webportal of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. June 7, 2024.
  9. ^ "World Atlas of Languages: Eastern Yiddish". en.wal.unesco.org. Retrieved April 23, 2023.
  10. ^ Matras, Yaron. "Archive of Endangered and Smaller Languages: Yiddish". University of Manchester. humanities.manchester.ac.uk. Matres explains that with the emigration of Jews eastward into Slavic-speaking areas of Central Europe, from around the twelfth century onward, Yiddish "took on an independent development path", adding: "It was only in this context that Jews began to refer to their language as 'Yiddish' (= 'Jewish'), while earlier, it had been referred to as 'Yiddish-Taitsh' (='Judeo-German')."
  11. ^ Jacobs, Neil G. (2005). Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-77215-X.
  12. ^ Baumgarten, Jean; Frakes, Jerold C. (June 1, 2005). Introduction to Old Yiddish literature. Oxford University Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-19-927633-2.
  13. ^ "Development of Yiddish over the ages". jewishgen.org.
  14. ^ Aram Yardumian, "A Tale of Two Hypotheses: Genetics and the Ethnogenesis of Ashkenazi Jewry". University of Pennsylvania. 2013.
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference yivoyiddish was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ "Yiddish Language". Center for Applied Linguistics. 2012.
  17. ^ Solomon Birnbaum, Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache (4., erg. Aufl., Hamburg: Buske, 1984), p. 3.
  18. ^ a b "Basic Facts about Yiddish" (PDF). YIVO. 2014. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  19. ^ In particular, Zamenhof, the initiator of Esperanto and a Litvak Jew from Congress Poland, often mentioned his fondness for what he called his mama-loshen (it was not yet called Yiddish but usually jargon at that time and place) in his correspondence.
  20. ^ "Yiddish". Jewish Languages. Retrieved December 25, 2023.
  21. ^ Oscar Levant described Cole Porter's 'My Heart Belongs to Daddy" as "one of the most Yiddish tunes ever written", despite the fact that "Cole Porter's genetic background was completely alien to any Jewishness". Oscar Levant, The Unimportance of Being Oscar, Pocket Books 1969 (reprint of G.P. Putnam 1968), p. 32. ISBN 0-671-77104-3.

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