The Similarities Between German And Yiddish

No..

No, since Yiddish is a Germanic language, it isn't amazing. Also, be careful. Some words have dangerously different meanings.

Not all Jews speak Yiddish, and no it's not surprising because German Jews are the ones who speak it. I hate you GGG.

"German Jews" arrived in other lands speaking standard German NOT Yiddish!

Hip and modern Israeli stud soldiers probably never learn Yiddish and I love that they insist on speaking Hebrew when dealing with the blackcoated-ones

An Israeli friend told me almost no one in Israel speaks Yiddish. If anything it'd be Russian or English at home.

Shouldn't there be more Jewish gays on this board if most of DL is from NYC?

The Yiddish speakers in NYC are skewed towards Hassidic Orthodox Jews! Few other American Jews could carry on a conversation in Yiddish; you'd have a far better chance of finding German speaking ones.

My Jewish girlfriend moved to Israel in 1999. She never learned Hebrew and doesn't speak it at home. She gets attitude when she's in public with her kids she says. Her husband is Iraqi but speaks English too.

There was actually a much publicized photo OP of the Yiddish-Hebrew dictionary that IDF soldiers were given last year when they went into Haredi neighborhoods to enforce Covid lockdowns.

Secular Israelis do not speak Yiddish and in the early days of the state immigrants were actively discouraged from speaking what was called "jargon" or "ghetto language"-- the idea being that Yiddish was the language of the wimpy shtetl-dwelling European Jews who did not stand up for themselves while Hebrew was the language of the new, strong, free Jews of Israel.

Similarly, Western and Central European Jews did not speak Yiddish as they were assimilated into their nation-states starting in the 1840s. So French, Dutch, Belgian, German, Austrian and Hungarian Jews all spoke French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, etc. They looked down on Yiddish and Yiddish-speakers who were not Westernized and holdovers from earlier days.

The German Jews in the US looked down on the Yiddish speaking immigrants who showed up 125 years ago for the same reason. Most Yiddish speakers have died off in the US, save the Hasidim for whom it is a first language.

As for OP, Yiddish is based on and older dialect of German, so it's not surprising Germans can understand it.

There is a similar dialect called Ladino that is based on Spanish and is spoken mostly by Greek and Turkish Jews (Sephardim) who are descended from Jews banished from Spain in 1492.

Ladino and Spanish are mutually intelligible. A friend and I had tours of two Istanbul synagogues by a fellow who spoke little English.

Thanks for your brief lecture, r10. I always appreciate when posters share some expertise about topics that aren't usually general interest. Those are the posts that compensate me for the typical bitching and trolling here.

My grandmother was German (her parents were from Germany) she wasn't Jewish, but she grew up in New York and she spoke Yiddish.

Is Yiddish a German dialect then?

No, it's a Germanic language on its own.

Didn’t Isaac Singer write in Yiddish. I read a collection of his stories long ago. Astoundingly good.

[quote]There is a similar dialect called Ladino that is based on Spanish and is spoken mostly by Greek and Turkish Jews (Sephardim) who are descended from Jews banished from Spain in 1492.

Eydie Gormé grew up speaking Ladino and fluent Spanish. Her albums with Los Panchos were huge sellers in Mexico and South America.

It is my dream to go to NYC and open up a Bavarian-Jewish bakery with a fellow Jewish gay and bake lovely treats, kuchen and delicacies to fatten up those American fat whores :-)

Years ago, I worked on a wonderful Broadway show called THOSE WERE THE DAYS. It was performed in half Yiddish, half English, and featured several performers who were popular in the still-existing Yiddish Theater in the US. One of the actors was even nominated for a Tony Award for the show.

I don't speak Yiddish or German, but the songs and skits were easy to understand, the performers were really good, and the Klezmer music was excellent.

I'm always surprised I can generally understand spoken Yiddish from my 3 years of long-dormant college German.

We Irish and Italian baby boomers in the New York area learned a smattering of Yiddish from our Jewish friends, many of whose grandparents used it when they didn't want their children (my friends' parents) to know what they were talking about. I don't know if that tradition survives today in New Jersey or not.

I always loved stories about people who save things that are about to be lost through neglect, ignorance or prejudice. "Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. tells the story of Aaron Lansky and his friends who saved thousands of rare Yiddish publications from destruction and helped establish a Yiddish book organization. The stories about his searching in old New York neighborhoods and encounters with suspicious elders is very funny and enlightening.

Yiddish is a variety of High German, like Central German, Upper German, and High Franconian, hence the similarities between Yiddish and standard German.

Historically, Ashkenazi households, women were largely excluded from religious life, so their knowledge of Hebrew was rudimentary, just enough to recite daily prayers. They were more conversant in Yiddish and so many Yiddish prayers center on women's issues as they were largely written by women.

*In Ashkenazi households...

I've dated Jewish men and I always loved it when they tossed out some expression in Yiddish. So many of them are fucking funny.

R10 I’m not sure Yiddish-speakers and Ladino-speakers could communicate with each other very well. My Yiddish (only)-speaking great-aunt would not let her Yiddish- and English-speaking daughter date a Ladino- and English-speaking Jewish man because the mother couldn’t communicate with the young man.

Is Yiddish like Jewish Ebonics?

R21, I love stuff like that but probably some know-it-all Twitter user of a completely different background would shame them for 'cultural appropriation' these days.

OP, Bahador Alast does some really fun videos in that series, comparing languages. My favourite was an Israeli girl and an Arabic girl discussing how similar their languages are. And the Israeli girl says at one point: "I think Arabic should be compulsory study in Israel" or similar, and the Arab girl clutches her heart and smiles this big beautiful smile. It was really sweet.

American singer Sophie Tucker does a spoken interlude in Yiddish in this song, starting at 2:50.

[Quote]Sophie Tucker was a Russian-born American singer, comedian, actress, and radio personality. Known for her powerful delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the more popular entertainers in the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century. She was known by the nickname "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas". Wikipedia

Yet another thread full of ignorant morons posting their complete stupidity about Jews, their languages, history and culture.

Yiddish is a mix of Middle German and Hebrew spoken by Jews in Europe and Russia. There are some loan words to Yiddish from Russian, Romania, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Polish picked up by Jews who sojourned in those countries. Just as Yiddish-speaking Jews in America incorporated English words into their Yiddish.

Ladino is a mix of Hebrew and Spanish, spoken by Jews in Spain and Portugal. The Jews of those countries took it with them to Greece, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire after their expulsion from the Iberian peninsula in the 15th century.

There is also Judeo-French, Judeo-Italian and Judeo-Veneziano, languages spoken by Jews in France, Italy and Venice’s ghetto. Again a mix of Hebrew and the local language.

[quote] There was actually a much publicized photo OP of the Yiddish-Hebrew dictionary that IDF soldiers were given last year when they went into Haredi neighborhoods to enforce Covid lockdowns.

And it was total horseshit, an agendaed story for gullible Westerners. There isn’t a Haredi in Israel who doesn’t speak Hebrew. The vast majority of Haredim in Israel, in the US and in Europe don’t even know Yiddish and the Yiddish that they do know is so filled with words from the local language that can barely be called Yiddish.

Yiddish is all but dead because it was the language of the ghetto where Jews were locked up for 1,200 years, the language of discrimination and persecution. After the Emancipation, Jews began to assimilate into various European cultures, annihilating their 1,000 year old culture and history, believing that assimilation would decrease discrimination and persecution. How very wrong they were and remain.

[quote] Didn’t Isaac Singer write in Yiddish.

Yes, Singer was one of the pre-eminent writers in Yiddish. There were many others, mostly lost to history. A tragedy because Yiddish is one of the most descriptive languages, a wealth of nuance. But to really understand Yiddish in its totality, you have to have full knowledge and understanding of the 1,000 year history and daily lives of Jews of Europe.

[quote] They were more conversant in Yiddish and so many Yiddish prayers center on women's issues as they were largely written by women.

There is no such thing as “Yiddish prayers”. All prayers are in Hebrew. What Jewish women in European ghettoes did have is Tz'enah Ur'enah, a compendium in Yiddish of Jewish learning whose structure parallels the weekly Torah portions and Haftarahs used in Jewish prayer services. Women used to read Tz’enah Ur’enah to small children on Shabbat to teach them about their history and laws.

[quote] I’m not sure Yiddish-speakers and Ladino-speakers could communicate with each other very well.

No they can’t. Yiddish is German-based, Ladino is Spanish based. The only commonality are the Hebrew words, which would be more or less comprehensible.

Yiddish is my first language, the language my Father, Mother and Grandfather spoke to me. When I began traveling, Yiddish gave me access to communities in countries whose language I did not speak.

I find that German-speakers understand far more of my Yiddish than I do of their German.

My parents are dead, the people with whom I spoke Yiddish are all dead. And a vibrant cultural and national treasure that defined a people, its culture and history will be dead in another 20 years as well.

אַ שאנדע און אַ טראַגעדיע

Yes, Yiddish is essentially a German dialect. It's closest to the German spoken in Austria and areas around there..

This thread confirms GGG is Defarto. There has never much doubt but this is his coming out thread. The twitter account about Defarto has some strange shit including account names, forums where he is a member, etc. He's a twisted fuck.

[quote]Yiddish is essentially a German dialect.

Uh, no, it isn't. Especially since approximately 40% of Yiddish is Hebrew. Especially since Yiddish incorporates many loan words which replaced the German and its pronunciation changed as Jews sojourned into Eastern Europe and Russia. One of the most common differences in words and their pronunciation is the Yiddish word for synagogue: In the Yiddish of Germany and Poland it's shul (shool). In the Yiddish of Lithuania, it's shil (sheel).

It would be far more correct to characterize Yiddish as the language of the dispersed/exiled Jewish nation and not a subset of an Indo-European language.

R30 OMG, we can converse in Yiddish and German together! You can write something in Yiddish! One of my favourite yiddish words is meschugge!

R34 Yiddish is written in Hebrew characters, like the Yiddish at the end of R30.

Meshuggeh is from Hebrew. משוגה (crazy) from the verb להשתגע (to go or get crazy)

My great grandmother who came to NYC from Eastern Europe in the early part of the 20th Century only spoke yiddish. My grandmother, her daughter, obviously knew yiddish but was primarily an english speaker. My great grandmother lived in the house with my grandparents when my father was born and she lived a long life, so he was a around her a lot. He has a fairly fluent understanding of yiddish, but could not speak it fluently. He is 80 now. The point of all of this is that yiddish speaking people in NY are few and far between these days.

There's nothing remarkable about the resemblance, considering that both modern German and Yiddish descend from medieval high German. Pronunciation has diverged, and Yiddish has a lot of vocabulary from Hebrew and Slavic languages, but they're more closely related than Italian and Spanish, or even German and Dutch.

R18, careful, your little bakery will be replaced by a Duane Reade store in less than 6 months.

Yiddish is like medieval German ebonics. Isaac Bashevis Singer did write in Yiddish but I'm not sure if the original versions of his work were published as stand-alone books, I think the Yiddish text was just serialized in the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper.

R30, how was Sophie Tucker's Yiddish at r29? Was it natural-sounding to native ears like yours, or was it, perhaps, Americanized or otherwise odd?

OP, can you understand Sophie's Yiddish? I think she recorded that song almost one hundred years ago.