Yiddish (ייִדיש, יידיש or אידיש,
yidish/idish, lit. "Jewish", pronounced [ˈjɪdɪʃ]
[ˈɪdɪʃ]; in older sources ייִדיש-טײַטש
Yidish-Taitsh, lit. Judaeo-German) is the
historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews.
It originated during the 9th century in Central
Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community
with a High German-based vernacular fused
with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic
as well as from Slavic languages and traces
of Romance languages. Yiddish is written with
a fully vocalized version of the Hebrew alphabet.
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־קדש‎
(loshn koydesh, "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew
and Aramaic. 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 more common designation today.
Modern Yiddish has two major forms. 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 and many Lithuanian
yeshivas.
The term "Yiddish" is also used in the adjectival
sense, synonymously with "Jewish", to designate
attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture";
for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish
music": klezmer).Prior to the Holocaust, there
were 11–13 million speakers of Yiddish among
17 million Jews worldwide. 85% of the approximately
6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust were
Yiddish speakers, 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 both
among survivors and among Yiddish-speakers
from other countries (such as in the Americas).
However, the number of speakers is increasing
in Hasidic communities.
== Origins ==
The established view is that, as with other
Jewish 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
of Zarphatic and other Judeo-Romance languages
began to acquire varieties of Middle High
German, and from these groups the Ashkenazi
community took shape. Exactly what German
base lies behind the earliest form of Yiddish
is disputed.
In Weinreich's model, Jewish speakers of Old
French or Old Italian who were literate in
either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic, or both,
migrated through Southern Europe to settle
in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia
(later known in Yiddish as Loter) extending
over parts of Germany and France; There, they
encountered and were influenced by Jewish
speakers of High German languages and several
other German dialects. Both Weinreich and
Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further
in the mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this
Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into
two distinct versions of the language, Western
and Eastern Yiddish. 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.
Later linguistic research has finessed 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/Aramaic
adstrata, and the means that and location
where this fusion occurred. Some theorists
argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian
dialect base. 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. The lines of development
proposed by the different theories do not
necessarily rule out the others (at least
not entirely); an article in The 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."Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991
that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily
eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded
in a Germanic language at all, but rather
as "Judeo-Sorbian" (a proposed West Slavic
language) that had been relexified by High
German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued
that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically
to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has met
with little academic support, and strong critical
challenges, especially among historical linguists.
== History ==
By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish
culture had formed in Central Europe which
came to be called אַשכּנזי‎ Ashkenazi,
"Ashkenazi Jews, from Hebrew: אַשכּנז‎
Ashkenaz (Genesis 10:3), the medieval Hebrew
name for northern Europe and Germany. Ashkenaz
was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate
(notably Worms and Speyer), in what is now
the westernmost part of Germany. Its geographic
extent did not coincide with the German principalities
of the time, and it included northern France.
Ashkenaz bordered on the area inhabited by
another distinctive Jewish cultural group,
the Sephardi Jews, who ranged into southern
France. Ashkenazi culture later spread into
Eastern Europe with large-scale population
migrations.Nothing is known with certainty
about the vernacular of the earliest Jews
in Germany, but several theories have been
put forward. The first language of the Ashkenazim
may, as noted above, have been the Aramaic
language, the vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era
Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia.
The widespread use of Aramaic among the large
non-Jewish Syrian 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 in Rome and Southern Italy
appear to have been Greek-speakers, and this
is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names
(e.g., Kalonymos and Yiddish Todres). Hebrew,
on the other hand, was regarded as a holy
language reserved for ritual and spiritual
purposes and not for common use. Much work
needs to be done, though, to fully analyze
the contributions of those languages to Yiddish.It
is generally accepted that early Yiddish was
likely to have contained elements from other
languages of the Near East and Europe, absorbed
through migrations. Since some settlers may
have come via France and Italy, it is also
likely that the Romance-based Jewish languages
of those regions were represented. Traces
remain in the contemporary Yiddish vocabulary:
for example, בענטשן‎ (bentshn, "to
bless"), ultimately from the Latin benedicere;
לייענען‎ (leyenen, "to read"), from
the Old French lei(e)re; and the personal
names בונים‎ Bunim (related to French
bon nom, good name) and Yentl (Old French
gentil, "noble"). Western Yiddish includes
additional words of ultimate Latin derivation
(but still very few): for example, אָרן‎
orn (to pray), cf. Old French "orer".The Jewish
community in the Rhineland would have encountered
the many dialects from which Standard German
would emerge a few centuries later. In time,
Jewish communities would have been speaking
their own versions of these German dialects,
mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves
brought into the region. Although not reflected
in the spoken language, a main point of difference
was the use of the Hebrew alphabet for the
recording of the Germanic vernacular, which
may have been adopted either because of the
community's familiarity with the alphabet
or to prevent the non-Jewish population from
understanding the correspondence. In addition,
there was probably widespread illiteracy in
the non-Hebrew script, with the level of illiteracy
in the non-Jewish communities being even higher.
Another point of difference was the use of
Hebrew and Aramaic words. These words and
terms were used because of their familiarity,
but more so because in most cases there were
no equivalent terms in the vernacular which
could express the Jewish concepts or describe
the objects of cultural significance.
=== Written evidence ===
It is not known when Yiddish orthography first
developed. The oldest surviving literary document
using it is a blessing in the Worms machzor,
a Hebrew prayer book from 1272. There is a
scalable image online at the indicated reference.
The Worms machzor is discussed in Frakes,
2004, and Baumgarten, ed. Frakes, 2005 – see
the Bibliography at the foot of this article.
This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded
in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. 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, makhazor
(prayerbook for the High Holy Days) and בֵּיתֿ
הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ‎, "synagogue" (read
in Yiddish as beis hakneses) – had been
included. The niqqud 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 course of the 14th and 15th centuries,
songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic
pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear.
These were collected in the late 15th century
by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. 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 the Dukus Horant, which survives in the
famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This
14th-century manuscript was discovered in
the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains
a collection of narrative poems on themes
from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah.
=== Printing ===
The advent of the printing 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
was Elia Levita's Bovo-Bukh (בָּבָֿא-בּוך),
composed around 1507–08 and printed several
times, beginning in 1541 (Isny) (under the
title: Bovo d'Antona). Levita, the earliest
named Yiddish author, may also have written
פּאַריז און װיענע‎ Pariz
un Viene (Paris and Vienna). Another Yiddish
retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט
Vidvilt (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 as Kinig
Artus Hof, an adaptation of the Middle High
German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Gravenberg.
Another significant writer is Avroham ben
Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase
on the Book 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 the Bovo-Bukh,
and religious writing specifically for women,
such as the צאנה וראינה‎ Tseno
Ureno and the תחנות‎ Tkhines. One of
the best-known early woman authors was Glückel
of Hameln, whose memoirs are still in print.
The segmentation of the Yiddish readership,
between women who read מאַמע־לשון‎
mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש‎ loshn-koydesh,
and men who read both, was significant enough
that distinctive typefaces were used for each.
The name commonly given to the semicursive
form used exclusively for Yiddish was ווײַבערטײַטש‎
(vaybertaytsh = "women's taytsh," shown in
the heading and fourth column in the adjacent
illustration), 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 in vaybertaytsh
(also termed מעשייט‎ mesheyt or מאַשקעט‎
mashket—the construction is uncertain).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
termed Rashi 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, Judaeo-Spanish
or Ladino, is printed in Hebrew script.)
=== Secularization ===
The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively
labeled Mauscheldeutsch, i. e. "Moses German"—declined
in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment
and the Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish
as a corrupt dialect. A Maskil (from the same
root word as Haskalah) would write about and
promote acclimatization to the outside world.
Jewish children began attending secular schools
where the primary language spoken and taught
was German, not Yiddish. Owing to both assimilation
to German and the revival of Hebrew, Western
Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate
family circles or of closely knit trade groups".
(Liptzin 1972).
In eastern Europe, the response to these forces
took the opposite direction, with Yiddish
becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture
(see the Yiddishist movement). Notable Yiddish
writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as
Mendele Mocher Sforim; Sholem Rabinovitsh,
widely known as Sholem Aleichem, whose stories
about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער‎
(Tevye der milkhiker, "Tevye the Dairyman")
inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler
on the Roof; and Isaac Leib Peretz.
=== 20th century ===
In the early 20th century, especially after
the Socialist October Revolution in Russia,
Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European
language. Its rich literature was more widely
published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish
cinema were booming, and it for a time achieved
status as one of the official languages of
the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Byelorussian
Soviet Socialist Republic and the short-lived
Galician Soviet Socialist Republic, and the
Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Educational autonomy
for Jews in several countries (notably Poland)
after World 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. In Vilnius, there was debate
over which language should take primacy, Hebrew
or Yiddish.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." 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. This has
resulted in some difficulty in communication
between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those
from other countries.
== Phonology ==
Yiddish phonology is similar to that of Standard
German. However, it does not have final-obstruent
devoicing and fortis (voiceless) stop consonants
are unaspirated, and the /χ/ phoneme is invariably
uvular, unlike the German phoneme /x/, which
is palatal, velar, or uvular.
Yiddish has a smaller inventory of vowels
than Standard German and no vowel length distinction.
== Numbers of speakers ==
On the eve of World War II, there were 11
to 13 million Yiddish speakers. 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 who
died in the Holocaust — were speakers of
Yiddish. Although millions of Yiddish speakers
survived the war (including nearly all Yiddish
speakers in the Americas), further assimilation
in countries such as the United States and
the Soviet Union, along with the strictly
monolingual stance of the Zionist movement,
led to a decline in the use of Eastern Yiddish.
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 a minority language only in Moldova, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
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, of which 40% lived in Ukraine,
15% in Israel, and 10% in the United States.
The Modern Language Association agrees with
fewer than 200,000 in the United States. Western
Yiddish is reported by Ethnologue to have
had an ethnic population of 50,000 in 2000,
and an undated speaking population of 5,000,
mostly in Germany. A 1996 report by the Council
of Europe estimates a worldwide Yiddish-speaking
population of about two million. Further demographic
information about the recent status of what
is treated as an Eastern–Western dialect
continuum is provided in the YIVO Language
and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (Language
and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry).
== Status as a language ==
There has been frequent debate 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". Even when recognized as
an autonomous language, it has sometimes been
referred to as Judeo-German, along the lines
of other Jewish languages like Judeo-Persian,
Judaeo-Spanish or Zarphatic. A widely cited
summary of attitudes in the 1930s was published
by Max 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 — "A language
is a dialect with an army and navy").
=== Israel and Zionism ===
The national language of Israel is 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 Palestine tried to eradicate
the use of Yiddish among Jews in preference
to Hebrew, and make its use socially unacceptable.This
conflict also reflected the opposing views
among secular Jews worldwide, one side seeing
Hebrew (and Zionism) and the other Yiddish
(and Internationalism) as the means of defining
Jewish nationalism. In the 1920s and 1930s,
גדוד מגיני השפה‬ gdud maginéi
hasafá, "the language defendants regiment",
whose motto was "עברי, דבר עברית‬
ivri, dabér ivrít," that is, "Hebrew [i.e.
Jew], speak Hebrew!", used to tear down signs
written in "foreign" languages and disturb
Yiddish theatre gatherings. However, according
to linguist Ghil'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."After the founding
of the State of Israel, a massive wave of
Jewish immigrants from Arab countries arrived.
In short order, these Mizrahi 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, of Sephardic origin, spoke
Judaeo-Spanish, others various Judeo-Arabic
languages). Thus, Hebrew emerged as the dominant
linguistic common denominator between the
different population groups.
In religious circles, it is the Ashkenazi
Haredi Jews, particularly the Hasidic Jews
and the Lithuanian yeshiva world (see Lithuanian
Jews), who continue to teach, speak and use
Yiddish, making it a language used regularly
by hundreds of thousands of Haredi Jews today.
The largest of these centers are in Bnei Brak
and Jerusalem.
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 as
Yiddish theatre (usually with simultaneous
translation to Hebrew and Russian) and young
people are taking university courses in Yiddish,
some achieving considerable fluency.
=== Former Soviet Union ===
In the Soviet Union during the 1920s, Yiddish
was promoted as the language of the Jewish
proletariat.
It was one of the official languages of the
Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Until
1938, the Emblem of the Byelorussian Soviet
Socialist Republic included the motto Workers
of the world, unite! in Yiddish. Yiddish was
also official language in several agricultural
districts of the Galician Soviet Socialist
Republic.
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).
At the same time, Hebrew was considered a
bourgeois language and its use was generally
discouraged. The vast majority of the Yiddish-language
cultural institutions were closed in the late
1930s, along with cultural institutions of
other ethnic minorities lacking administrative
entities of their own. The last Yiddish-language
schools, theaters and publications were closed
by the end of the 1940s. 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 include Yoysef Burg (Chernivtsi
1912–2009) and Olexander Beyderman (b. 1949,
Odessa). Publication of an earlier Yiddish
periodical (דער פֿרײַנד‎ - der
fraynd; lit. "The Friend"), was resumed in
2004 with דער נײַער פֿרײַנד‎
(der nayer fraynd; lit. "The New Friend",
Saint Petersburg).
==== Russia ====
According to the 2010 census, 1,683 people
spoke Yiddish in Russia, approximately 1%
of all the Jews of the Russian Federation.
According to Mikhail Shvydkoy, former Minister
of Culture of Russia and himself of Jewish
origin, Yiddish culture in Russia is gone,
and its revival is unlikely.
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.
===== Jewish Autonomous Oblast =====
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was formed in
1934 in the Russian Far East, with its capital
city in Birobidzhan and Yiddish as its official
language. 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 newspaper דער ביראָבידזשאַנער
שטערן‎ (Der Birobidzhaner Shtern; lit:
"The Birobidzhan Star") includes a Yiddish
section. Although the official status of the
language was not retained by the Russian Federation,
its cultural significance is still recognized
and bolstered. The First Birobidzhan International
Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Culture
was launched in 2007.As of 2010, according
to data provided by the Russian Census Bureau,
there were 97 speakers of Yiddish in the JAO.
==== Ukraine ====
Yiddish was an official language of the Ukrainian
People's Republic (1917–1921).
=== Council of Europe ===
Several countries that ratified the 1992 European
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). In
2005, Ukraine did not mention Yiddish as such,
but "the language(s) of the Jewish ethnic
minority".
=== Sweden ===
In June 1999, the Swedish Parliament enacted
legislation giving Yiddish legal status as
one of the country's official minority languages
(entering into effect in April 2000). The
rights thereby conferred are not detailed,
but additional legislation was enacted in
June 2006 establishing a new governmental
agency, The Swedish National Language Council,
the mandate of which instructs it to "collect,
preserve, scientifically research, and spread
material about the national minority languages",
naming them all explicitly, including Yiddish.
When announcing this action, the government
made an additional statement about "simultaneously
commencing completely new initiatives for...
Yiddish [and the other minority languages]".
The Swedish government publishes documents
in Yiddish, of which the most recent details
the national action plan for human rights.
An earlier one provides general information
about national minority language policies.On
6 September 2007, it became possible to register
Internet domains with Yiddish names in the
national top-level domain .SE.The first Jews
were permitted to reside in Sweden during
the late 18th century. The Jewish population
in Sweden is estimated at around 20,000. Of
these, according to various reports and surveys,
between 2,000 and 6,000 claim to have at least
some knowledge of Yiddish. In 2009, the number
of native speakers among these was estimated
by linguist Mikael Parkvall to be 750–1,500.
It is believed that virtually all native speakers
of Yiddish in Sweden today are adults, and
most of them elderly.
=== United States ===
In the United States, at first most Jews were
of Sephardic origin, and hence did not speak
Yiddish. It was not until the mid-to-late
19th century, as first German, then 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.The typical circulation
in the 21st century is a few thousand. The
Forward still appears weekly and is also available
in an online edition. It remains in wide distribution,
together with דער אַלגעמיינער
זשורנאַל‎ (der algemeyner zhurnal
– Algemeiner Journal; algemeyner = general),
a Chabad newspaper which is also published
weekly and appears online. The widest-circulation
Yiddish newspapers are probably the weekly
issues Der Yid (דער איד‎ "The Jew"),
Der Blatt (דער בלאַט‎; blat "paper")
and Di Tzeitung (די צייטונג‎ "the
newspaper"). Several additional newspapers
and magazines are in regular production, such
as the weekly אידישער טריביון
Yiddish Tribune and the monthly publications
דער שטערן‎ (Der Shtern "The Star")
and דער בליק‎ (Der Blik "The 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 the transliteration
rules otherwise applied in this article.)
Thriving Yiddish theater, especially in the
New York City Yiddish Theatre District, kept
the language vital. Interest in klezmer music
provided another bonding mechanism.
Most of the Jewish immigrants to the New York
metropolitan area during the years of Ellis
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 autobiography In
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.
Many "Yiddishisms", like "Italianisms" and
"Spanishisms", entered New York City English,
often used by Jews and non-Jews alike, unaware
of the linguistic origin of the phrases. Yiddish
words used in English were documented extensively
by Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish; see
also the list of English words of Yiddish
origin.
In 1975, the film Hester Street, much of which
is in Yiddish, was released. It was later
chosen to be on the Library of Congress National
Film Registry for being considered a "culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant"
film.In 1976, the Canadian-born American author
Saul Bellow received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was fluent in Yiddish, and translated several
Yiddish poems and stories into English, including
Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Gimpel the Fool".
In 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer, a writer in
the Yiddish language, who was born in Poland
and lived in the United States, received the
Nobel Prize in Literature.
Legal scholars Eugene Volokh and Alex Kozinski
argue that Yiddish is "supplanting Latin as
the spice in American legal argot".
==== Present U.S. speaker population ====
In the 2000 United States Census, 178,945
people in the United States reported speaking
Yiddish at home. Of these speakers, 113,515
lived in New York (63.43% of American Yiddish
speakers); 18,220 in Florida (10.18%); 9,145
in New Jersey (5.11%); and 8,950 in California
(5.00%). The remaining states with speaker
populations larger than 1,000 are Pennsylvania
(5,445), Ohio (1,925), Michigan (1,945), Massachusetts
(2,380), Maryland (2,125), Illinois (3,510),
Connecticut (1,710), and Arizona (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.
In the six years since the 2000 census, the
2006 American Community Survey reflected an
estimated 15 percent decline of people speaking
Yiddish at home in the U.S. to 152,515. In
2011, the number of persons in the United
States above the age of 5 speaking Yiddish
at home was 160,968.There are a few predominantly
Hasidic communities in the United States in
which Yiddish remains the majority language
including concentrations in the Crown Heights,
Borough Park, and Williamsburg neighborhoods
of Brooklyn. In Kiryas Joel in Orange County,
New York, in the 2000 census, nearly 90% of
residents of Kiryas Joel reported speaking
Yiddish at home.
=== United Kingdom ===
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 the Stamford Hill district of North
London, but there are sizable communities
in northwest London, Leeds, Manchester and
Gateshead. 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 weekly Jewish Tribune has
a small section in Yiddish called אידישע
טריבונע‎ Yidishe Tribune. From the
1910s to the 1950s, London had a daily Yiddish
newspaper called די צײַט (Di Tsayt,
Yiddish pronunciation: [dɪ tsaɪt]; in English,
The Time), founded, and edited from offices
in Whitechapel Road, by Roumanian-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.
=== Canada ===
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.
Der Keneder Adler ("The Canadian Eagle", founded
by Hirsch Wolofsky), Montreal’s daily Yiddish
newspaper, appeared from 1907 to 1988. The
Monument-National was the center of Yiddish
theater from 1896 until the construction of
the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts (now
the Segal Centre for Performing Arts), inaugurated
on September 24, 1967, where the established
resident theater, the Dora Wasserman Yiddish
Theatre, remains the only permanent Yiddish
theatre in North America. The theatre group
also tours Canada, US, Israel, and Europe.Even
though Yiddish has receded, it is the immediate
ancestral language of Montrealers like Mordecai
Richler, Leonard Cohen as well as former interim
city mayor Michael Applebaum. Besides Yiddish-speaking
activists, it remains today the native everyday
language of 15,000 Montreal Hassidim.
=== Religious communities ===
The major exception to the decline of spoken
Yiddish can be found in Haredi 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 as Brooklyn's Borough Park, Williamsburg,
and Crown Heights, and in the communities
of Monsey, Kiryas Joel, and New Square in
New York (over 88% of the population of Kiryas
Joel is reported to speak Yiddish at home.)
Also in New Jersey, Yiddish is widely spoken
mostly in Lakewood Township, but also in smaller
towns with yeshivas, such as Passaic, Teaneck,
and elsewhere. Yiddish is also widely spoken
in the Jewish community in Antwerp, and in
Haredi communities such as the ones in London,
Manchester, and Montreal. 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 speak 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 the Satmar 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 the Torah into Yiddish.
This process is called טײַטשן‎ (taytshn)
– "translating". Most Ashkenazi yeshivas'
highest level lectures in Talmud and Halakha
are delivered in Yiddish by the rosh yeshivas
as well as ethical talks of the Musar movement.
Hasidic rebbes 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 many Orthodox
Jews who attend yeshivas speak English. This
usage is distinctive enough that it has been
dubbed "Yeshivish".
While Hebrew remains the exclusive language
of Jewish 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 the Baal 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.
=== Modern Yiddish education ===
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
WWII has been making somewhat of a comeback.
In Poland, which traditionally had Yiddish
speaking communities, a museum has begun to
revive Yiddish education and culture. Located
in Kraków, the Galicia 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.
There are various Universities worldwide which
now offer Yiddish programs based on the YIVO
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 within Vilnius 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.Despite this growing
popularity among many American Jews, finding
opportunities for practical use of Yiddish
is becoming increasingly difficult, and thus
many students have trouble learning to speak
the language. One solution has been the establishment
of a farm in Goshen, New York for Yiddishists.
=== Internet ===
Google Translate includes Yiddish as one of
its languages, as does Wikipedia. Hebrew alphabet
keyboards are available and right-to-left
writing recognised. Google search accepts
queries in Yiddish.
Over ten thousand Yiddish texts, estimated
as over half of all the published works in
Yiddish, are now online based on the work
of the Yiddish Book Center, volunteers, and
the Internet Archive.Many websites on the
Internet are in Yiddish. In January 2013,
The Forward announced the launch of the new
daily version of their 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.Computer scientist Raphael
Finkel maintains a hub of Yiddish-language
resources, including a searchable dictionary
and spell checker.In late 2016, Motorola,
Inc. released its smartphones with keyboard
access for the Yiddish language in its foreign
language option.
== Language examples ==
Here is a short example of the Yiddish language
with standard German as a comparison.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights )
English
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.
Yiddish
יעדער מענטש װערט געבױרן
פֿרײַ און גלײַך אין כּבֿוד
און רעכט. יעדער װערט באַשאָנקן
מיט פֿאַרשטאַנד און געװיסן;
יעדער זאָל זיך פֿירן מיט
אַ צװײטן אין אַ געמיט פֿון
ברודערשאַפֿט.
(Yiddish phonetic version)
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
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.
== See also ==
List of English words of Yiddish origin
List of Yiddish-language poets
List of Yiddish newspapers and periodicals
The Yiddish King Lear
Yiddish Book Center
Yiddish dialects—as spoken in different
regions of Europe.
Yiddish grammar—the structural detail of
the language.
Yiddish literature
Yiddish orthography—the written representation
of the language.
Yiddishist movement
Yiddish words used in English—definitions
of Yiddish words used in a primarily English
context.
Yinglish
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
== Further reading ==
YIVO Bleter, pub. YIVO Institute for Jewish
Research, NYC, initial series from 1931, new
series since 1991.
Afn Shvel, pub. League for Yiddish, NYC, since
1940; אויפן שוועל, sample article
אונדזער פרץ – Our Peretz
Lebns-fragn, by-monthly for social issues,
current affairs, and culture, Tel Aviv, since
1951; לעבנס-פראגן, current issue
Yerusholaymer Almanakh, periodical collection
of Yiddish literature and culture, Jerusalem,
since 1973; ירושלימער אלמאנאך,
new volume, contents and downloads
Der Yiddisher Tam-Tam, pub. Maison de la Culture
Yiddish, Paris, since 1994, also available
in electronic format.
Yidishe Heftn, pub. Le Cercle Bernard Lazare,
Paris, since 1996, יידישע העפטן
sample cover, subscription info.
Gilgulim, naye shafungen, new literary magazine,
Paris, since 2008; גילגולים, נייע
שאפונגען
== External links ==
Yiddish Book Center
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research: Yiddish
Dictionaries
