BeforeWorld War II, there were 11–13 million speakers.[18][19] 85% of the approximately 6 million Jews who were murdered in theHolocaust were Yiddish speakers,[20] leading to a massive decline in the use of the language.Assimilation following World War II andaliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting toModern Hebrew in Israel. However, the number of Yiddish speakers is increasing inHaredi communities. In 2014,YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives areHasidim and other Haredim", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million.[21] A 2021 estimate fromRutgers 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]
Modern Yiddish hastwo major dialect groups: 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 Yiddish both by its far greater size and 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 many 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 Hasidicyeshivas.
The term "Yiddish" is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes ofYiddishkeit ('Ashkenazi culture'; for example,Yiddish cooking andmusic).[23]
By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe.[24]: 151 By thehigh medieval period, their area of settlement, centered on theRhineland (Mainz) and thePalatinate (notablyWorms andSpeyer), came to be known asAshkenaz,[25] a term also used forScythia, and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In themedieval Hebrew ofRashi (d. 1105),Ashkenaz becomes a term for Germany, andאשכּנזיAshkenazi for the Jews settling in this area.[24]: Chapter 3, endnote 9 [need quotation to verify][26]Ashkenaz bordered on the area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, theSephardi Jews, who ranged intosouthern France. Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations.[27]
Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have beenAramaic, the vernacular of the Jews inRoman-era Judea and ancient and early medievalMesopotamia. The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-JewishSyrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living inRome andSouthern Italy appear to have beenGreek-speakers, and this is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (such asKalonymos and YiddishTodres). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use.
The established view is that, as with otherJewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers ofZarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties ofMiddle High German, and from these groups the Ashkenazi community took shape.[28][29] Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which theRhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into the region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance.[30]
InMax Weinreich's model, Jewish speakers ofOld French orOld Italian who were literate in either liturgicalHebrew or Aramaic, or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in theRhine Valley in an area known asLotharingia (later known in Yiddish asLoter) extending over parts of Germany and France.[31] There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers ofHigh German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich andSolomon Birnbaum developed this model further in the mid-1950s.[32] In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish.[33] They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language.
Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had the limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing fromGerman,Polish andRussian. Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: fromArabic, fromHebrew, fromAramaic and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, itcontributed toEnglish —American.[sic] Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition.Isaac Bashevis Singer, its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power.
Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to the language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaicadstrata, and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base.[29][14]: 9–15 The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish.Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East.[18] The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article inThe Forward argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on the work of Weinreich and his challengers alike."[35]
Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish,[33] not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as "Judeo-Sorbian" (a proposedWest Slavic language) that had beenrelexified by High German.[29] In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists.[29][33]
The calligraphic segment in theWormsMachzor (a Hebrew prayer book). The Yiddish text is in red.The South-West Yiddish account of the life of Seligmann Brunschwig vonDürmenach describes, among other things, the anti-Semitic events of therevolutionary year 1848. In the collection of theJewish Museum of Switzerland.
Yiddish orthography developed towards the end of the High Medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Wormsmachzor (a Hebrew prayer book).[36][37][15]
gut tak im betage se vaer dis makhazor in beis hakneses trage
Translated
May a good day come to him who carries this prayer book into the synagogue.
This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text.[38] Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words –מַחֲזוֹר,makhzor (prayerbook for theHigh Holy Days) andבֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ, 'synagogue' (read in Yiddish asbeis hakneses) – had been included. Theniqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation.
Over the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, andmacaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in the late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf.[39] During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is theDukus Horant, which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in theCairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains a collection of narrative poems on themes from theHebrew Bible and theHaggadah.
The advent of theprinting press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work wasElia Levita'sBovo-Bukh (בָּבָֿא-בּוך), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the titleBovo d'Antona). Levita, the earliest named Yiddish author, may also have writtenפּאַריז און װיענעPariz un Viene (Paris andVienna). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילטVidvilt (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known asKinig Artus Hof, an adaptation of the Middle High German romanceWigalois byWirnt von Grafenberg.[40] Another significant writer is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on theBook of Job in 1557.
Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as theBovo-Bukh, and religious writing specifically for women, such as theצאנה וראינהTseno Ureno and theתחנותTkhines. One of the best-known early woman authors wasGlückel of Hameln, whose memoirs are still in print.
The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who readמאַמע־לשוןmame-loshn but notלשון־קדשloshn-koydesh, and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctivetypefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish wasווײַבערטײַטש (vaybertaytsh, 'women'staytsh', shown in the heading and fourth column in theShemot Devarim), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set invaybertaytsh (also termedמעשייטmesheyt orמאַשקעטmashket—the construction is uncertain).[41]
An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termedRashi script, from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish,Judeo-Spanish orLadino, is printed in Hebrew script.)
According to a study by the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH), more than 40 printed Yiddish newspapers and magazines were published worldwide in 2024, and the trend is rising.[42]
The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeledMauscheldeutsch,[43] i. e. "Moses German"[44]—declined in the 18th century, as theAge of Enlightenment and theHaskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. The 19th-century Prussian-Jewish historianHeinrich Graetz, for example, wrote that "the language of the Jews [in Poland] ... degenerat[ed] into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit."[45]
AMaskil (one who takes part in theHaskalah) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world.[46] Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish.[46][47]
Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages.
– Osip Aronovich Rabinovich, in an article titled "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air, We Must Speak Its Language" in theOdessan journalРассвет (dawn), 1861[48]
Owing to both assimilation to German and therevival of Hebrew, Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups".[49]
In Eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in asecular culture (see theYiddishist movement). Notable Yiddish writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing asMendele Mocher Sforim; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known asSholem Aleichem, whose stories aboutטבֿיה דער מילכיקער (Tevye der milkhiker, "Tevye the Milkman") inspired the Broadway musical and filmFiddler on the Roof; andIsaac Leib Peretz.
AmericanWorld War I-era poster in Yiddish. Translated caption: "Food will win the war –You came here seeking freedom, now you must help to preserve it – We must supply theAllies with wheat – Let nothing go to waste". Color lithograph, 1917. Digitally restored.1917. 100karbovanets of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Revers. Three languages:Ukrainian,Polish and Yiddish.
In the early 20th century, especially after the SocialistOctober Revolution in Russia, Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever,Yiddish theatre andYiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of theofficial languages of the short-livedGalician Soviet Socialist Republic. Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notablyPoland) afterWorld War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to the 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute,YIVO. InVilnius, there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish.[50]
Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century.Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that the most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms."[51] The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom.[citation needed] This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries.
"Khurbn Yiddish", as discussed by Professor Hannah Pollin-Galay, refers to thesociolect shaped by Yiddish speakers' experience during the Holocaust. Prisoners developed new words and slang, particularly relating to theft, protest, and sexuality.[52]
There is significantphonological variation among the variousYiddish dialects. The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts.
The/l–ʎ/ contrast has collapsed in some speakers.[53]
The palatalized coronals/nʲ,tsʲ,dzʲ,tʃʲ,dʒʲ,sʲ,zʲ/ appear only in Slavic loanwords.[53] The phonemic status of these palatalised consonants, as well as any other affricates, is unclear.
[ŋ] is an allophone of/n/ after/k,ɡ/, and it can only be syllabic[ŋ̍].[53]
[ɣ] is an allophone of/χ/ before/b,d,ɡ,v,z,ʒ/.[54][page needed]
The phonetic realization of/χ/ and/nʲ/ is unclear:
In the case of/χ/,[53] puts it in the "velar" column, but consistently uses a symbol denoting a voicelessuvular fricative ⟨χ⟩ to transcribe it. It is thus safe to assume that/χ/ is phonetically uvular[χ].
In the case of/nʲ/,[53] puts it in the "palatalized" column. This can mean that it is either palatalized alveolar[nʲ] or alveolo-palatal[ɲ̟]./ʎ/ may actually also be alveolo-palatal[ʎ̟], rather than just palatal.
The rhotic/r/ can be either alveolar or uvular, either a trill[r~ʀ] or, more commonly, a flap/tap[ɾ~ʀ̆].[53]
The glottal stop[ʔ] appears only as an intervocalic separator.[53]
As in theSlavic languages with which Yiddish was long incontact (Russian,Belarusian,Polish, andUkrainian), but unlike German,voiceless stops have little to noaspiration; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position.[53] Moreover, Yiddish has regressivevoicingassimilation, so that, for example,זאָגט/zɔɡt/ ('says') is pronounced[zɔkt] andהקדמה/hakˈdɔmɜ/ ('foreword') is pronounced[haɡˈdɔmɜ].
Stressed vowels in theYiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in the Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed byMax Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendentdiaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels.[14]: 28
Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example, Southeasterno11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/.[14]: 28 The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddishquality (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and the second refers toquantity or diphthongization (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25).[14]: 28
Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values inMiddle High German; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with the −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series.[54]: 17
In the vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in thevowels anddiphthongs. All varieties of Yiddish lack the Germanfront rounded vowels/œ,øː/ and/ʏ,yː/, having merged them with/ɛ,e:/ and/ɪ,i:/, respectively. In many respects, particularly with vowels and vowel diphthongs, and even how it forms diminutives, Yiddish is closer toSwabian German than to standard High German.
Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged theMiddle High German diphthongei and long vowelî to/aɪ/, Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German/ɔʏ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthongöu and the long voweliu, which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterpartsei andî, respectively. Lastly, the Standard German/aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthongou and the long vowelû, but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as/ɔɪ/, the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergoGermanic umlaut, such as in forming plurals:
Singular
Plural
English
MHG
Standard German
Standard Yiddish
Standard German
Standard Yiddish
tree
boum
Baum /baʊ̯m/
בױם /bɔɪm/
Bäume /ˈbɔʏ̯mə/
בײמער /bɛɪmɜr/
abdomen
bûch
Bauch /baʊ̯x/
בױך /bɔɪχ/
Bäuche /ˈbɔʏ̯çə/
בײַכער /baɪχɜr/
Thevowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties, the vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged, and so the phonemic distinction has remained.
There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddishdeaffricates the Middle High Germanvoiceless labiodental affricate/pf/ to/f/ initially (as inפֿונטfunt, but this pronunciation is also quasi-standard throughout northern and central Germany); /pf/ surfaces as anunshifted/p/ medially or finally (as inעפּל/ɛpl/ andקאָפּ/kɔp/). Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not in Northern Standard German.
The pronunciation of vowels in Yiddish words ofHebrew origin is similar toAshkenazi Hebrew but not identical. The most prominent difference iskamatz gadol in closed syllables being pronounced the same aspatah in Yiddish but the same as any otherkamatz in Ashkenazi Hebrew. Also, Hebrew features no reduction of unstressed vowels, and so the given nameJochebedיוֹכֶבֶֿד would be/jɔɪˈχɛvɛd/ in Ashkenazi Hebrew but/ˈjɔχvɜd/ in Standard Yiddish.
Patah in open syllable, as well ashataf patah, are unpredictably split between A1 and A2:קַדַּחַת, נַחַת/kaˈdɔχɜs,ˈnaχɜs/;חֲלוֹם, חֲתֻנָּה/ˈχɔlɜm,ˈχasɜnɜ/.
Yiddish grammar can vary slightly depending on the dialect. The main article focuses on standard form of Yiddish grammar while also acknowledging some dialectal differences. Yiddish grammar has similarities to the German grammar system, as well as grammatical elements from Hebrew and Slavic languages.
Yiddish is written in theHebrew alphabet, but itsorthography differs significantly fromthat of Hebrew. In Hebrew, many vowels are represented only optionally bydiacritical marks calledniqqud whereas Yiddish uses letters to represent all vowels. Several Yiddish letters consist of another letter combined with a niqqud mark resembling a Hebrew letter–niqqud pair, but each of those combinations is an inseparable unit representing a vowel alone, not a consonant–vowel sequence. The niqqud marks have no phonetic value on their own.
In most varieties of Yiddish, however, words borrowed from Hebrew are written in their native forms without application of Yiddish orthographical conventions.
On the eve ofWorld War II, there were 11 to 13 million Yiddish speakers.[18]The Holocaust, however, led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. Around five million of those killed – 85 percent of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust – were speakers of Yiddish.[20] Although millions of Yiddish speakers survived the war (including nearly all Yiddish speakers in the Americas), further assimilation in countries such as theUnited States and theSoviet Union, in addition to the strictly monolingual stance of theHaskalah[56] and laterZionist movements, led to a decline in the use of Eastern Yiddish.[57] However, the number of speakers within the widely dispersed Haredi (mainly Hasidic) communities is now increasing. Although used in various countries, Yiddish has attained official recognition as aminority language only in theJewish Autonomous Oblast of Russia,Moldova,Bosnia and Herzegovina, theNetherlands,[58] andSweden.
Reports of the number of current Yiddish speakers vary significantly.Ethnologue estimates, based on publications through 1991, that there were at that time 1.5 million speakers of Eastern Yiddish,[59] of which 40% lived in Ukraine, 15% in Israel, and 10% in the United States. TheModern Language Association agrees with fewer than 200,000 in the United States.[60] Western Yiddish is reported byEthnologue to have had an ethnic population of 50,000 in 2000, and an undated speaking population of 5,400, mostly in Germany.[61][62] A 1996 report by theCouncil of Europe estimates a worldwide Yiddish-speaking population of about two million.[63] Furtherdemographic information about the recent status of what is treated as an Eastern–Western dialect continuum is provided in the YIVOLanguage and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry.
In a study in the first half of 2024, the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH) found that the number of Yiddish media is increasing again, due to an increase in the Yiddish-speaking population, especially in the USA. According to IMH estimates, the number of speakers worldwide is approaching two million. In 2024, more than 40 print media were published worldwide in Yiddish - and the trend is rising.[64]
The1922 census of Palestine lists 1,946 Yiddish speakers in Mandatory Palestine (9 in the Southern District, 1,401 in Jerusalem-Jaffa, 4 in Samaria, and 532 in the Northern District), including 1,759 in municipal areas (999 inJerusalem, 356 inJaffa, 332 inHaifa, 5 inGaza, 4 inHebron, 3 inNazareth, 7 inRamleh, 33 inTiberias, and 4 inJenin).[65]
In the Hasidic communities of Israel, boys speak more Yiddish amongst themselves, while girls use Hebrew more often. This is probably due to the tendency of girls to learn more secular subjects, thus increasing their contact with the Hebrew language, while boys are usually taught religious subjects in Yiddish.[66]
Historically, there have been frequent debates about the extent of the linguistic independence of Yiddish from the languages that it absorbed. There has been periodic assertion that Yiddish is a dialect of German, or even "just broken German, more of a linguistic mishmash than a true language".[67] Even when recognized as an autonomous language, it has occasionally been referred to, typically by people foreign to the language, as Judeo-German, along the lines of other Jewish languages likeJudeo-Persian,Judeo-Spanish orJudeo-French. A widely cited summary of attitudes in the 1930s was published byMax Weinreich, quoting a remark by an auditor of one of his lectures:אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט (a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot[68] — "A language is a dialect with an army and navy").
Today's speakers consider Yiddish a separate language, officially recognized as such in the USSR (where it was viewed as "the Jewish language"),post-Soviet Russia and Sweden, thus complying to Max Weinreich's notion of official state recognition. Virtually all specialists working in the field of Yiddish view it as a separate language, including researchers and teachers who study and teach Yiddish in German-speaking countries. For centuries, Yiddish has been developing in countries separated from the German language space and has its own system of dialects. Contemporary debates on this subject are almost exclusively limited to the nature of medieval and early modern texts written in Western Yiddish dialects that seem much closer to varieties of German than today's Eastern Yiddish.[69][70]
An example of graffiti in Yiddish, Tel Aviv, Washington Avenue (און איר זאלט ליב האבן דעם פרעמדען, ווארום פרעמדע זייט איר געווען אין לאנד מצרים—Un ir zolt lib hobn dem fremden, varum fremde zayt ir geven in land mitsraym). "You shall have love for the stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 10:19)
The national language of Israel isModern Hebrew. The debate in Zionist circles over the use of Yiddish in Israel and in the diaspora in preference to Hebrew also reflected the tensions between religious and secular Jewish lifestyles. Many secular Zionists wanted Hebrew as the sole language of Jews, to contribute to a national cohesive identity. Traditionally religious Jews, on the other hand, preferred use of Yiddish, viewing Hebrew as a respected holy language reserved for prayer and religious study. In the early 20th century, Zionist activists in theMandate of Palestine tried to eradicate the use of Yiddish among Jews in preference to Hebrew, and make its use socially unacceptable.[72]
This conflict also reflected the opposing views among secular Jews worldwide, one side seeing Hebrew (and Zionism) and the other Yiddish (andInternationalism) as the means of defining Jewish nationalism. In the 1920s and 1930s,גדוד מגיני השפהgdud maginéi hasafá, "Battalion for the Defence of the Language", whose motto was "עברי, דבר עבריתivri, dabér ivrít", that is, "Hebrew [i.e. Jew], speak Hebrew!", used to tear down signs written in "foreign" languages and disturb Yiddish theatre gatherings with stink bombs.[73] In 1927, a proposal to institute a chair in Yiddish atHebrew University was met with protests.[57] However, according to linguistGhil'ad Zuckermann, the members of this group in particular, and the Hebrew revival in general, did not succeed in uprooting Yiddish patterns (as well as the patterns of other European languages Jewish immigrants spoke) within what he calls "Israeli", i.e.Modern Hebrew. Zuckermann believes that "Israeli does include numerous Hebrew elements resulting from a conscious revival but also numerous pervasive linguistic features deriving from a subconscious survival of the revivalists’ mother tongues, e.g. Yiddish."[74]
After the founding of the State of Israel, a massive wave ofJewish immigrants from Arab countries arrived. In short order, theseMizrahi Jews and their descendants would account for nearly half the Jewish population. While all were at least familiar with Hebrew as a liturgical language, essentially none had any contact with or affinity for Yiddish (some, ofSephardic origin, spoke Judeo-Spanish, others variousJudeo-Arabic varieties). Thus, Hebrew emerged as the dominant linguistic common denominator between the different population groups.
According to Itay Zutra, a teacher of Yiddish at theUniversity of Manitoba, Yiddish was portrayed as a feminine and emasculate language in Israel, sometimes even associated with being a homosexual. One such example of this is in the 1970 movieShablul, where a frail Yiddish speaker, told he needs to be a strong Jewish man, goes to a karate instructor for help. The instructor, also a Yiddish speaker, agrees to teach him. The instructor then tries to grope and have sex with the man during a private session.[75] It has also been argued by Yiddish writer and literary criticShmuel Niger and professorNaomi Seidman that even before Zionism, Yiddish was seen as having an inherent level of femininity, while Hebrew was the opposite and was inherently masculine. Much of this stems from the fact that women were excluded from having formal training in Hebrew, which made Yiddish the only Jewish language women could speak, read and write in. As a consequence, Yiddish texts and the language as a whole inherently took on feminine traits, even when written and spoken by men.[76]
Despite a past of marginalization andanti-Yiddish government policy, in 1996 theKnesset passed a law founding the "National Authority for Yiddish Culture", with the aim of supporting and promoting contemporary Yiddish art andliterature, as well as preservation ofYiddish culture and publication of Yiddish classics, both in Yiddish and in Hebrew translation.[77]
In religious circles, it is AshkenaziHaredi Jews, particularly Hasidic Jews and the Lithuanian yeshiva world, who continue to teach, speak and use Yiddish (which, in Israel, has evolved into theHaredi dialect), making it a language used regularly by hundreds of thousands of Haredi Jews today. The largest of these centers are inBnei Brak andJerusalem.
There is a growing revival of interest in Yiddish culture among secular Israelis, with the flourishing of new proactive cultural organizations like YUNG YiDiSH, as well asYiddish theatre (usually with simultaneous translation to Hebrew and Russian) and young people are taking university courses in Yiddish, some achieving considerable fluency.[67][78]
In the early years of the 20th century Yiddish was classified as a 'Semitic Language'. After much campaigning, in 1906 the South African legislatorMorris Alexander won a parliamentary fight to have Yiddish reclassified as a European language, thereby permitting the immigration of Yiddish-speakers to South Africa.[79] While there used to be a large Yiddish press in South Africa now Yiddish has largely died out in South Africa being replaced with other languages.[80][81]
InMexico, Yiddish was spoken among the Ashkenazi Jewish population and Yiddish poetIsaac Berliner wrote about the life ofMexican Jews. Isaac Berliner's Yiddishism was a way for the Ashkenazi Jews in Mexico to build a secular culture in a Mexico skeptical of religion.[82] Yiddish became a marker of Ashkenazi ethnic identity in Mexico.[83]
The use of Yiddish as the primary spoken language by Jews was heavily encouraged by multiple Jewish political groups at the time. TheEvsketsii, the Jewish Communist Group, and TheBund, the Jewish Socialist Group, both heavily encouraged the use of Yiddish. During the Bolshevik Era these political groups worked alongside the government to encourage the widespread Jewish use of Yiddish. Both the Evsketsii and the Bund supported the Jewish movement towards assimilation and saw Yiddish as a way to encourage it. They saw the use of Yiddish as a step away from the religious aspects of Judaism, instead favoring the cultural aspects of Judaism.[86][page needed]
State emblem of theByelorussian SSR (1927–1937) with the mottoWorkers of the world, unite! in Yiddish (lower left part of the ribbon):״פראָלעטאריער פון אלע לענדער, פאראייניקט זיך!״—Proletarier fun ale lender, fareynikt zikh! The same slogan is written in Belarusian, Russian and Polish.
A public educational system entirely based on the Yiddish language was established and comprised kindergartens, schools, and higher educational institutions (technical schools,rabfaks and other university departments).[87] These were initially created in theRussian Empire to stop Jewish children from taking too many spots in regular Russian schools. Imperial government feared that the Jewish children were both taking spots from non-Jews as well as spreading revolutionary ideas to their non-Jewish peers. As a result, in 1914 laws were passed that guaranteed Jews the right to a Jewish education and as a result the Yiddish education system was established.[88][page needed] After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 even more Yiddish schools were established. These schools thrived with government, specifically Bolshevik, and Jewish support. They were established as part of the effort to revitalize the Soviet Jewish Community. Specifically, the Bolsheviks wanted to encourage Jewish assimilation. While these schools were taught in Yiddish, the content was Soviet. They were created to attract Jews in to getting a Soviet education under the guise of a Jewish institution.[89][page needed]
While schools with curriculums taught in Yiddish existed in some areas until the 1950s, there was a general decline in enrollment due to preference for Russian-speaking institutions and the declining reputation of Yiddish schools among Yiddish speaking Soviets. As the Yiddish schools declined, so did overall Yiddish culture. The two were inherently linked and with the downfall of one, so did the other.[90][89][page needed] General Soviet denationalization programs and secularization policies also led to a further lack of enrollment and funding; the last schools to be closed existed until 1951.[87] It continued to be spoken widely for decades, nonetheless, in areas with compact Jewish populations (primarily in Moldova, Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Belarus).
In the former Soviet states, recently active Yiddish authors includeYoysef Burg (Chernivtsi 1912–2009) andOlexander Beyderman (b. 1949,Odessa). Publication of an earlier Yiddish periodical (דער פֿרײַנד –der fraynd; lit.The Friend), was resumed in 2004 withדער נײַער פֿרײַנד (der nayer fraynd; lit.The New Friend,Saint Petersburg).
According to the2010 census, 1,683 people spoke Yiddish in Russia, approximately 1% of all the Jews of the Russian Federation.[91] According toMikhail Shvydkoy, former Minister of Culture of Russia and himself of Jewish origin, Yiddish culture in Russia is gone, and its revival is unlikely.[92]
From my point of view, Yiddish culture today isn't just fading away, but disappearing. It is stored as memories, as fragments of phrases, as books that have long gone unread. ... Yiddish culture is dying and this should be treated with utmost calm. There is no need to pity that which cannot be resurrected – it has receded into the world of the enchanting past, where it should remain. Any artificial culture, a culture without replenishment, is meaningless. ... Everything that happens with Yiddish culture is transformed into a kind of cabaret—epistolary genre, nice, cute to the ear and the eye, but having nothing to do with high art, because there is no natural, national soil. In Russia, it is the memory of the departed, sometimes sweet memories. But it's the memories of what will never be again. Perhaps that's why these memories are always so sharp.[92]
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was formed in 1934 in theRussian Far East, with its capital city in Birobidzhan and Yiddish as its official language.[93] The intention was for the Soviet Jewish population to settle there. Jewish cultural life was revived in Birobidzhan much earlier than elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Yiddish theaters began opening in the 1970s. The newspaperביראָבידזשאַנער שטערן (Birobidzhaner Shtern; lit:Birobidzhan Star) includes a Yiddish section.[94] In modern Russia, the cultural significance of the language is still recognized and bolstered. The First Birobidzhan International Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Culture was launched in 2007.[95]
As of 2010[update], according to data provided by the Russian Census Bureau, there were 97 speakers of Yiddish in the JAO.[96] A November 2017 article inThe Guardian, titled, "Revival of a Soviet Zion: Birobidzhan celebrates its Jewish heritage", examined the current status of the city and suggested that, even though the Jewish Autonomous Region in Russia's far east is now barely 1% Jewish, officials hope to woo back people who left after Soviet collapse and to revive the Yiddish language in this region.[97] Despite the small number of local speakers, the weekly state-run newspaperBirobidzhaner Shtern contains 2-4 pages in Yiddish, largely written by authors who live in other cities and countries, and its online version attracts international readership. Yiddish often appears in the local TV program Yiddishkeit, also available online.[98]
Yiddish was an official language of theUkrainian People's Republic (1917–1921).[99][100] But due to the holocaust, assimilation, and migration ofUkrainian Jews abroad today only 3,100 of the remaining Jews speak Yiddish as their first language.[101] The Southeast dialect of Yiddish has many Ukrainian loanwords due to the long contact between Yiddish speakers and Ukrainian speakers.[102]
Several countries that ratified the 1992European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages have included Yiddish in the list of their recognized minority languages: the Netherlands (1996), Sweden (2000), Romania (2008), Poland (2009), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2010).[103] In 2005, Ukraine did not mention Yiddish as such, but "the language(s) of the Jewish ethnic minority".[103]
Banner from the first issue of theיודישע פאלקסשטימע—Jidische Folkschtime (Yiddish People's Voice), published in Stockholm, January 12, 1917
In June 1999, the Swedish Parliament enacted legislation giving Yiddish legal status[104] as one of the country'sofficial minority languages (entering into effect in April 2000).
Additional legislation was enacted in June 2006 establishing a new governmental agency, the Swedish National Language Council, whose goal is to "collect, preserve, scientifically research, and spread material about the national minority languages." These languages include Yiddish.
The Swedish government has published documents in Yiddish detailing the national action plan for human rights.[105] An earlier one provides general information about national minority language policies.[106] On September 6, 2007, it became possible to register Internet domains with Yiddish names in the national top-level domain.se.[107]
The first Jews were permitted to reside in Sweden during the late 18th century. The Jewish population in Sweden is estimated at 20,000. According to various reports and surveys, between 2,000 and 6,000 Swedish Jews have at least some knowledge of Yiddish. In 2009, the number of native speakers was estimated by linguist Mikael Parkvall to be 750–1,500. He says that most native speakers of Yiddish in Sweden today are adults, many of them elderly.[108]
After the war Yiddish theater enjoyed great popularity in Sweden and all the great stars performed there. Since the recognition of Yiddish as an official minority language, Swedish schoolchildren have the right to study Yiddish at school as a mother tongue, and there are public radio broadcasts and television shows in Yiddish.[109]
Poster by theCity of New York advertising free English classes for Yiddish speakers, 1930s: "Learn to speak, read and write the language of your children."Women surrounded by posters in English and Yiddish supportingFranklin D. Roosevelt,Herbert H. Lehman, and theAmerican Labor Party teach other women how to vote, 1936.Yiddish distribution in the United States
More than 100,000 speakers
More than 10,000 speakers
More than 5,000 speakers
More than 1,000 speakers
Fewer than 1,000 speakers
In the United States, at first most Jews were ofSephardic origin, and hence did not speak Yiddish. It was not until the mid-to-late 19th century, as first German Jews, then Central and Eastern European Jews, arrived in the nation, that Yiddish became dominant within the immigrant community. This helped to bond Jews from many countries.פֿאָרווערטס (Forverts –The Forward) was one of seven Yiddish daily newspapers in New York City, and other Yiddish newspapers served as a forum for Jews of all European backgrounds. In 1915, the circulation of the daily Yiddish newspapers was half a million in New York City alone, and 600,000 nationally. In addition, thousands more subscribed to the numerous weekly papers and the many magazines.[110]
The typical circulation in the 21st century is a few thousand. TheForward still appears weekly and is also available in an online edition.[111] It remains in wide distribution, together withדער אַלגעמיינער זשורנאַל (der algemeyner zhurnal –Algemeyner Journal;algemeyner = general), aChabad newspaper which is also published weekly and appears online.[112] The widest-circulation Yiddish newspapers are probably the weekly issuesDer Yid (דער איד "The Jew"),Der Blatt (דער בלאַט;blat 'paper') andDi Tzeitung (די צייטונג 'the newspaper'). Several additional newspapers and magazines are in regular production, such as the weeklyאידישער טריביוןYiddish Tribune and the monthly publicationsדער שטערן (Der ShternThe Star) andדער בליק (Der BlikThe View). (The romanized titles cited in this paragraph are in the form given on the masthead of each publication and may be at some variance both with the literal Yiddish title and thetransliteration rules otherwise applied in this article.) Thriving Yiddish theater, especially in the New York CityYiddish Theatre District, kept the language vital. Interest inklezmer music provided another bonding mechanism.
Most of the Jewish immigrants to the New York metropolitan area during the years ofEllis Island considered Yiddish their native language; however, native Yiddish speakers tended not to pass the language on to their children, who assimilated and spoke English. For example,Isaac Asimov states in his autobiographyIn Memory Yet Green that Yiddish was his first and sole spoken language, and remained so for about two years after he emigrated to the United States as a small child. By contrast, Asimov's younger siblings, born in the United States, never developed any degree of fluency in Yiddish.
In 1975, the filmHester Street, much of which is in Yiddish, was released. It was later chosen to be on the Library of CongressNational Film Registry for being considered a "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" film.[114]
In 1976, the Canadian-born American authorSaul Bellow received theNobel Prize in Literature. He was fluent in Yiddish, and translated several Yiddish poems and stories into English, includingIsaac Bashevis Singer's "Gimpel the Fool". In 1978, Singer, a writer in the Yiddish language, who was born inPoland and lived in the United States, received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In the2000 United States census, 178,945 people in the United States reported speaking Yiddish at home. Of these speakers, 113,515 lived inNew York (63.43% of American Yiddish speakers); 18,220 inFlorida (10.18%); 9,145 inNew Jersey (5.11%); and 8,950 inCalifornia (5.00%). The remaining states with speaker populations larger than 1,000 arePennsylvania (5,445),Ohio (1,925),Michigan (1,945),Massachusetts (2,380),Maryland (2,125),Illinois (3,510),Connecticut (1,710), andArizona (1,055). The population is largely elderly: 72,885 of the speakers were older than 65, 66,815 were between 18 and 64, and only 39,245 were age 17 or lower.[117]
In the six years since the 2000 census, the 2006American Community Survey reflected an estimated 15 percent decline of people speaking Yiddish at home in the U.S. to 152,515.[118] In 2011, the number of persons in the United States above the age of five speaking Yiddish at home was 160,968.[119] 88% of them were living in fourmetropolitan areas – New York City and another metropolitan areajust north of it, Miami, and Los Angeles.[120]
There are a few predominantlyHasidic communities in the United States in which Yiddish remains the majority language including concentrations in theCrown Heights,Borough Park, andWilliamsburg neighborhoods of Brooklyn. InKiryas Joel inOrange County, New York, in the 2000 census, nearly 90% of residents of Kiryas Joel reported speaking Yiddish at home.[121][122]
There are well over 30,000 Yiddish speakers in the United Kingdom, and several thousand children now have Yiddish as a first language. The largest group of Yiddish speakers in Britain reside in theStamford Hill district of North London, but there are sizable communities in northwest London,Leeds, Manchester andGateshead.[123] The Yiddish readership in the UK is mainly reliant upon imported material from the United States and Israel for newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. However, the London-based weeklyJewish Tribune has a small section in Yiddish calledאידישע טריבונעYidishe Tribune. From the 1910s to the 1950s, London had a daily Yiddish newspaper calledדי צײַט (Di Tsayt,Yiddish pronunciation:[dɪtsaɪt]; in English,The Time), founded, and edited from offices inWhitechapel Road, by Romanian-born Morris Myer, who was succeeded on his death in 1943 by his son Harry. There were also from time to time Yiddish newspapers in Manchester,Liverpool,Glasgow and Leeds. The bilingual Yiddish and English caféPink Peacock opened in Glasgow in 2021 but closed down in 2023.
Montreal had, and to some extent still has, one of the most thriving Yiddish communities in North America. Yiddish was Montreal's third language (after French and English) for the entire first half of the twentieth century.DerKeneder Adler (The Canadian Eagle, founded byHirsch Wolofsky), Montreal's daily Yiddish newspaper, appeared from 1907 to 1988.[124] TheMonument-National was the center of Yiddish theater from 1896 until the construction of the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts (now theSegal Centre for Performing Arts), inaugurated on September 24, 1967, where the established resident theater, theDora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre, remains the only permanent Yiddish theatre in North America. The theatre group also tours Canada, US, Israel, and Europe.[125]
Even though Yiddish has receded, it is the immediate ancestral language of Montrealers likeMordecai Richler andLeonard Cohen, as well as former interim city mayorMichael Applebaum. Besides Yiddish-speaking activists, it remains today the native everyday language of 15,000 Montreal Hasidim.
A typical poster-hung wall in a Jewish section ofBrooklyn, New York
Major exceptions to the decline of spoken Yiddish are found inHaredi communities all over the world. In some of the more closely knit such communities, Yiddish is spoken as a home and schooling language, especially in Hasidic,Litvish, or Yeshivish communities, such asBrooklyn'sBorough Park,Williamsburg, andCrown Heights, and in the communities ofMonsey,Kiryas Joel, andNew Square in New York (over 88% of the population of Kiryas Joel is reported to speak Yiddish at home.[126]) Also inNew Jersey, Yiddish is widely spoken mostly inLakewood Township, but also in smaller towns withyeshivas, such asPassaic,Teaneck, and elsewhere. Yiddish is also widely spoken in the Jewish community inAntwerp, and in Haredi communities such as the ones inLondon,Manchester, andMontreal. Yiddish is also spoken in many Haredi communities throughout Israel. Among most Ashkenazi Haredim, Hebrew is generally reserved for prayer, while Yiddish is used for religious studies, as well as a home and business language. In Israel, however, Haredim commonly speakmodern Hebrew, with the notable exception of many Hasidic communities. However, many Haredim who use Modern Hebrew also understand Yiddish. There are some who send their children to schools in which the primary language of instruction is Yiddish. Members of anti-Zionist Haredi groups such as theSatmar Hasidim, who view the commonplace use of Hebrew as a form of Zionism, use Yiddish almost exclusively.
Hundreds of thousands of young children around the globe have been, and are still, taught to translate the texts of theTorah into Yiddish. This process is calledטײַטשן (taytshn) – 'translating'. Many Ashkenazi yeshivas' highest level lectures in Talmud andHalakha are delivered in Yiddish by therosh yeshivas as well as ethical talks of theMusar movement. Hasidicrebbes generally use only Yiddish to converse with their followers and to deliver their various Torah talks, classes, and lectures. The linguistic style and vocabulary of Yiddish have influenced the manner in which manyOrthodox Jews who attend yeshivas speak English. This usage is distinctive enough that it has been dubbed "Yeshivish".
While Hebrew remains the exclusive language ofJewish prayer, the Hasidim have mixed some Yiddish into their Hebrew, and are also responsible for a significant secondary religious literature written in Yiddish. For example, the tales about theBaal Shem Tov were written largely in Yiddish. The Torah Talks of the late Chabad leaders are published in their original form, Yiddish. In addition, some prayers, such as "God of Abraham", were composed and are recited in Yiddish.
A road sign in Yiddish (except for the word "sidewalk") at an official construction site in theMonsey hamlet, a community with thousands of Yiddish speakers, inRamapo, New York
There has been a resurgence in Yiddish learning in recent times among many from around the world with Jewish ancestry. The language which had lost many of its native speakers during the Holocaust has been making something of a comeback.[127] In Poland, which traditionally had Yiddish speaking communities, a museum has begun to revive Yiddish education and culture.[128] Located in Kraków, theGalicia Jewish Museum offers classes in Yiddish Language Instruction and workshops on Yiddish Songs. The museum has taken steps to revive the culture through concerts and events held on site.[129]There are various universities worldwide which now offer Yiddish programs based on theYIVO Yiddish standard. Many of these programs are held during the summer and are attended by Yiddish enthusiasts from around the world. One such school located withinVilnius University (Vilnius Yiddish Institute) was the first Yiddish center of higher learning to be established in post-Holocaust Eastern Europe. Vilnius Yiddish Institute is an integral part of the four-century-old Vilnius University. Published Yiddish scholar and researcher Dovid Katz is among the Faculty.[130]
Despite this growing popularity among manyAmerican Jews,[131] finding opportunities for practical use of Yiddish is becoming increasingly difficult, and thus many students have trouble learning to speak the language.[132] One solution has been the establishment of a farm inGoshen, New York, for Yiddishists.[133]
Yiddish is the medium of instruction in many Hasidicחדריםkhadorim, Jewish boys' schools, and some Hasidic girls' schools.
Some American Jewish day schools and high schools offer Yiddish education.
An organization calledYiddishkayt (יידישקייט) promotes Yiddish-language education in schools.[134]
Sholem Aleichem College, a secular Jewish primary school inMelbourne teaches Yiddish as a second language to all its students. The school was founded in 1975 by theBund movement in Australia, and still maintains daily Yiddish instruction today, and includes student theater and music in Yiddish.
Google Translate includes Yiddish as one of its languages,[135][136] as doesWikipedia. Hebrew-alphabet keyboards are available, and right-to-left writing is recognized.Google Search accepts queries in Yiddish.
Over eleven thousand Yiddish texts,[137] estimated as between a sixth and a quarter of all the published works in Yiddish,[138] are now online, based on the work of theYiddish Book Center, volunteers, and theInternet Archive.[139]
There are many websites on the Internet in Yiddish. In January 2013,The Forward announced the launch of the new daily version of its newspaper's website, which has been active since 1999 as an online weekly, supplied with radio and video programs, a literary section for fiction writers and a special blog written in local contemporary Hasidic dialects.[140]
Many Jewishethnolects influenced by Yiddish are available via online resources such asYouTube.[141]
Paul Wexler proposed thatEsperanto was not an arbitrary pastiche of major European languages but a Latinaterelexification of Yiddish, a native language of itsfounder.[146] This model is generally unsupported by mainstream linguists.[147]
A 2008 election poster in front of a store inVillage of New Square, Town of Ramapo, New York, entirely in Yiddish. The candidates' names are transliterated into Hebrew letters.
Rosh Hashanah greeting card,Montevideo, 1932. The inscription includes text in Hebrew (לשנה טובה תכתבו—LeShoyno Toyvo Tikoseyvu) and Yiddish (מאנטעווידעא—Montevideo).
Examples of Yiddish usage in Birobidzhan public space
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
yeder mentsh vert geboyrn fray un glaykh in koved un rekht. yeder vert bashonkn mit farshtand un gevisn; yeder zol zikh firn mit a tsveytn in a gemit fun brudershaft.
German with wording and word order as close to the Yiddish version as possible
Jeder Mensch wird geboren, frei und gleich in Ehre und Recht. Jeder wird beschenkt, mit Verstand und Gewissen; Jeder soll sich führen, miteinander im Gemüt von Bruderschaft.
Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren. Sie sind mit Vernunft und Gewissen begabt und sollen einander im Geist der Brüderlichkeit begegnen.
^In particular,L. L. Zamenhof, a Litvak Jew fromCongress Poland and the initiator ofEsperanto, often mentioned his fondness for what he called hismama-loshen (it had not yet been calledYiddish but usuallyjargon at that time and place) in his correspondence.
^Die verkümmerten und verdrückten Jargons, deren wir uns jetzt bedienen, diese Ghettosprachen werden wir uns abgewöhnen. Es waren die verstohlenen Sprachen von Gefangenen.
^ab"Yiddish FAQs". Rutgers University. Archived fromthe original on February 15, 2021. RetrievedFebruary 9, 2021.
^Edited by Ekkehard König and Johan van der Auwera:The Germanic Languages. Routledge: London & New York, 1994, p. 388 (chapter12 Yiddish)
^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
^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 chapter4. 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
^Matras, Yaron."Archive of Endangered and Smaller Languages: Yiddish".humanities.manchester.ac.uk. University of Manchester.As a result of the expulsion of Jews from Germany around the twelfth century and their emigration eastwards, into Slavic-speaking areas of central Europe, Yiddish gradually became isolated from majority varieties of German and took on an independent development path, absorbing much vocabulary and some structural characteristics from surrounding Slavic languages. 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').
^abcdeJacobs, Neil G. (2005).Yiddish: a Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-521-77215-X.
^"Thus in Rashi's (1040–1105) commentary on the Talmud, German expressions appear asleshon Ashkenaz. Similarly, when Rashi writes: "But in Ashkenaz I saw [...]" he no doubt meant the communities of Mainz and Worms in which he had dwelt."Berenbaum, Michael;Skolnik, Fred, eds. (2007). "Ashkenaz".Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 2 (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. pp. 569–571.ISBN978-0-02-866097-4.
^Traces remain in the contemporary Yiddish vocabulary: for example,בענטשן (bentshn, "to bless"), ultimately from the Latinbenedicere;לייענען (leyenen, "to read"), from the Old Frenchlei(e)re; and the personal namesבונים Bunim (related to Frenchbon nom, good name) and Yentl (Old Frenchgentil, "noble"). Western Yiddish includes additional words of ultimate Latin derivation (but still very few): for example,אָרןorn (to pray), cf. Old Frenchorer. Beider, Alexander (2015). Origins of Yiddish Dialects.ISBN978-0-19-873931-9, pp. 382–402.
^Weinreich, Max (2008). Glasser, Paul (ed.).History of the Yiddish Language. Yale University Press/ YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. p. 336.
^Weinreich, Uriel, ed. (1954).The Field of Yiddish. Linguistic Circle of New York. pp. 63–101.
^Weinreich, Max (1973).געשיכטע פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך [History of the Yiddish language]. Vol. 1. New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. p. 280. with explanation of symbol on p. xiv.
^Bechtel, Delphine (2010). "Yiddish Theatre and Its Impact on the German and Austrian Stage". In Malkin, Jeanette R.; Rokem, Freddie (eds.).Jews and the making of modern German theatre. Studies in theatre history and culture. University of Iowa Press. p. 304.ISBN978-1-58729-868-4. RetrievedOctober 28, 2011.[...] audiences heard on the stage a continuum of hybrid language-levels between Yiddish and German that was sometimes combined with the traditional use of Mauscheldeutsch (surviving forms of Western Yiddish).
^Applegate, Celia; Potter, Pamela Maxine (2001).Music and German national identity. University of Chicago Press. p. 310.ISBN978-0-226-02131-7. RetrievedOctober 28, 2011.[...] in 1787, over 10 percent of the Prague population was Jewish [...] which spoke German and, probably,Mauscheldeutsch, a local Jewish-German dialect distinct from Yiddish (Mauscheldeutsch = Moischele-Deutsch = 'Moses German').
^Graetz, Heinrich; Löwy, Bella (1891).History of the Jews, vol. 6. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. p. 641. RetrievedDecember 3, 2023.
^Zamenhof, whosefather was overtly assimilationist, expressed in his correspondence both a great fondness for hismama-loshen and (apart fromEsperanto, of course) a preference forRussian overPolish as a culture language.
^Rabinovich, O.A. (1861). "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air We Must Speak Its Language".Рассвет.16: 220. As cited on thewebsite of theJewish Virtual Library.
^Katz, Dovid (2007).Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish. London: Basic Books.ISBN978-0-465-03730-8.
^abHalperin, Liora R. (2015).Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920-1948. London: Yale University Press. p. 9.ISBN978-0-300-19748-8.
^Emanuelis Zingeris,Yiddish cultureArchived March 30, 2012, at theWayback Machine, Council of Europe Committee on Culture and Education Doc. 7489, February 12, 1996. Retrieved October 17, 2006.
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