Talk:Yiddish/Archive 1

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old comments

regarding 'is jidisch a german dialect?' i followed the links to the boston jewish radio and listened to some audio samples. i am native german. a lot of people called in, all spoke mainly jidisch. there was a clear difference in the spoken jidisch, it ranged from clear german upto some hardly understandable, obvious slavic colored jidisch. i guess that jidisch itself is split into some dialects, depending on the roots of the speaker. in my opinion, a person able to speak jidisch and another, speaking german will have no problem at all to communicate, imho jidisch is much closer to german than dutch or british english. [mop]

From the article:

The word 'Yiddish' is used, however wrongly, to describe all Jewish words and expressions in English.

Really? Who does this?

Well, Wikipedians, clearly, since [[Jewish words and expressions]] redirects to [[Yiddish language]]. --Charles A. L. 01:14, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

Why is the transription used in the 'Orthography' section not SAMPA or IPA? isn't that the regulation? it seems to be YIVO's (www.yivoinstitute.org) transciption, which is alright - but should have it's own section and explaination. The orthographic section should be direct Yiddishe-Oysyes to SAMPA in my view.

I have replaced "decimated" with "largely destroyed" since I am sure that is what the author meant. Decimate means to reduce by one-tenth. The Yiddish-speaking communities were reduced by much more than that. Dr Adam Carr

I think that's being a bit pedantic. If you look at the entry in Dictionary.com, it states in the usage note that "decimate" can be used to mean a "large proportion of a group." Actually, they use the phrase "The Jewish population of Germany was decimated by the war" as an example. It's not worth changing back, but I'm not sure if it was worth changing in the first place. Bamos 03:08, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In the United States, most Yiddish speakers tended not to pass on the language to their children who assimilated and spoke English. The major exception to this can be found in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, especially in Brooklyn

Not so much "the ultra-Orthodox," I think, a vague term at best (he said without actually bothering to read the article on it), but more Chassidim specifically. --Calieber 04:32, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Los Angeles has a vibrant Yiddish community. YBS' Cantor Fox would be sad to see his musical contributions ignored. Plus the mythical Chelm was the fabled Yiddish-speaking ?town of fools? in Poland. It's worth a mention. Sparky 11:33, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)


"Schmuck"

Is it not the case that schmuck literally means 'jewel', and its use to mean 'penis' is metaphorically based on this? (And then the use of schmuck to mean annoying person is metaphorically based on its secondary meaning of 'penis'?) Dominus 01:47, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It is not the case. The root of the confusion is that the German word spelled Schmuck does indeed mean 'jewel'. But this isn't the word that the English schmuck comes from; the English word schmuck comes from the Yiddish shmok, which isn't related to the German word Schmuck. The dictionaries I checked tell me that Yiddish shmok probably comes from Polish. AJD 05:10, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
But szmok doesn't mean anything in Polish. There is a word smok which means "a dragon". Well, I suppose it could be a term for a very big penis :)
--Kpalion 23:54, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The general consensus is that Yid. shmuk < Ger. Schmuck, Slavicist explanations notwithstanding. The word has passed into some Slavic languages, apparently from Yiddish or German. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:38, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The general consensus among whom? The problem, it seems to me, is that (as far as I can tell) the Yiddish word isn't "shmuk", which would be cognate with German Schmuck. The Yiddish word is shmok, which would be cognate with a German word "Schmock" or "Schmake" or something. To make the English word schmuck cognate with the German word Schmuck would require disregarding the regular sound correspondences between German and Yiddish.
A caveat: this work isn't in my Yiddish dictionary. My information that the Yiddish word is shmok and not shmuk comes from the etymologies of schmuck that I find in English dictionaries, which I have no reason to disbelieve (at least to that extent). If you've got a Yiddish dictionary which says that the word in Yiddish is shmuk after all, I'll withdraw this objection. AJD 16:28, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Here's a recent conversation I had with User:Olve. I've lifted it from his Talk: page:

Doesn't the word actually come from the word for jewel, and is used as a euphemism? Jayjg (talk) 19:27, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Roughly yes, I would say. The Yiddish word שמוק means ‘ornament’ — as in piece of jewellery or lace/s. A שמוקלער (m.) or שמוקלערקע (f.) is a lacemaker. I would tend to believe that it started out as sarcasm rather than as an euphemism — but I know my European Yiddish history far better than American usage, so I cannot claim to have the whole story here... -- Olve 22:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What do you think of this posting:
German _Schmuck_ rhymes with English _look_ and means 'jewel'.ÿ Yiddish _shmok_ rhymes with Yiddish _zok_ 'sock', and means 'penis'. It DOES NOT rhyme with the German word and there is no known way in which it can be derived therefrom. The two words are decidedly NOT RELATED, and appeals to a presumed reference to "the family jewels" in Yiddish are misplaced. In other words, Mr. Saphire's reference to "penile and ornamental origins of German-Yiddish _schmuck_" are completely off the mark. There IS NO "German-Yiddish _schmuck_". English _shmuck_ rhymes with English _luck_ and means 'fool'.ÿ It IS derived from the Yiddish word. Our best evidence points to the Slavic origin of Yiddish _shmok_. See, for example, Polish _smok_ 'serpent', 'tail'. [1]
Jayjg (talk) 15:48, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Definitely interesting! But it seems a bit more confident than it needs to be... First, in the world of Yiddish, the word shmuk does exist, albeit maybe not in all dialects. Second, there is no 100%watertight wall between German and Yiddish: Almost anything that is said in some German dialect or other is also said in some Yiddish dialect or other. The two languages may be separate entities as written languages, but as spoken languages, there is about as much of a "sliding scale" between dialects/sociolects of German as there is within any similar "Sprachbund" -- e.g., Scandinavian, Low-German/Dutch/Frisian, etc. Third, the pronunciation of the short/lax /o/ and /u/ vowels in English are often similar, and in New York Yinglish they seem to be particularly so. All that being said, the theory of Polish "smok" as the/an etymology is interesting. I do not know of a Yiddish word "shmok" myself, so I can neither confirm, prove or falsify that hypothesis. The word "shmok" (which should be expected from the English form) or "smok" (which should be expected from the postulated Polish etymon) is not listed in Weinreich's Yiddish-English dictionary. My Yiddish is mostly a literary/linguistical one, so there is definitely a possibility for me to have missed a slang term...All in all, I am not really convinced, but providing of more specific references may convince me if the evidence is compelling enough. -- Olve 03:43, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Keep in mind regular sound correspondences of loanwords, also! Yiddish /u/ shows us as short-oo in English: Yiddish shnuk becomes English shnook. So we would expect the minimally different "shmuk" to show up as "shmook". Yiddish /o/ often shows up as short-u in English: see below on bubkes from Yiddish bobkes. The fact that the English word is shmuck, not shmook, points to shmok as the Yiddish original.
What we really need is someone with a more comprehensive dictionary of Yiddish than Weinreich's. AJD 05:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Other issues

The page says:

* Bubkes (also spelled "bupkis") - nothing, as in He isn't worth bubkes (from Yiddish babke 'babka, a sweet cake')

It was my understanding that the literal meaning of 'bubkes' was simply 'beans'. This is a much more plausible etymology. Dominus 01:50, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You may be right about this one. My Yiddish dictionary doesn't give this word for 'beans', but it does give bobes, which could have a diminutive bobkes. AJD 05:10, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

One funny thing about the loans from Yiddish is that the word nudnik is actually made up from a Polish root nud- (as in nudny, boring) and a Polish suffix -nik. But there is no word like nudnik in Polish! The Polish word for "a bore" is nudziarz.
--Kpalion 23:54, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

which is probably the root of the Yiddish nudge and the Hebrew nudgiz, which are synonymous with nudnik. Danny 23:57, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I had always heard that nudnik came from Russian (or maybe Ukrainian); the verb is nudit'. Any Russian speakers out there who can verify this? --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:40, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please stop vandalizing Yiddish language and Germanic languages in this and other languages, or you may be blocked from editing. Zw 22:00, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Blablabla... If you have a problem with Yiddish language, or its classification, I cannot help you. I do not think many Jews appreciate your vandalism, even if you call it "help", either. But I tell you: Next time you vandalize one of those pages, I will make sure you'll be blocked. Your behaviour is not acceptable, and is causing a lot of work for other people to clean up after you. Zw 23:45, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to comment on this. Zw 00:11, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You shouldn't "clarify" things without any knowledge of the issue. Yiddish is a Germanic language, not a Semitic. Why do you think people have reverted your changes everywhere where you tried to vandalize? If you, unlike the rest of the world, think Yiddish is not a Germanic language, please go here instead of starting massive vandalism campaigns against Wikipedia. Zw 00:21, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You may want to have a look at

http://www.encyclopedia.com/searchpool.asp?target=@DOCTITLE%20Yiddish%20language http://www.bartleby.com/65/yi/Yiddishl.html

Zw 00:25, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ein, Zwei, Drei, Vier...
eins, tsvai, drey, feer....
ekhad, shneyim, shalosh, arba....
♥ «Charles A. L.» 17:09, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
Incidentally, the correct (modern standard) Yiddish is:
Eyns, tsvey, dray, fir... (narrow diphthong in eyns, tsvey; open diphthong in dray) -- Olve 03:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Germanic people" and "Germanic language" are two completely different things. Many African people speak English. It's still a Germanic language, though. Zw 01:05, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Stop de vandalism, please (in the Catalan wikipedia too). Yiddish is clearly a Germanic language that speak a group of people with a Semitic origin. Two concepts very different. My origin is Caucasian but I speak a Latin language, and not a Caucasian language. Two concepts very different. And no type of nationalism can change this. Llull 20:02, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For the record, this rant is utterly ridiculous. Germanic was confirmed as a linguistic subfamily by Indo-Europeanists, including a large proportion of German scholars - look up Jakob Grimm, for one; and the Yiddish language is not only Germanic, it would almost certainly be considered a dialect of German itself if it weren't for social factors. Describing Yiddish as Semitic is as silly as describing English as Romance, or Japanese as Sinitic. Mustafaa 21:28, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Really, I'm curious about this. My question on this is what is the grammatical structure of Yiddish like? For example, English is very German in its structure, and directly draws many basic grammatical elements like prepositions directly from German. Then it adds new vocabulary from other languages. Is Yiddish closer in structure and core grammatical words to German or Hebrew? That should be a clear signal as to what it is. Thanks. PnGrata

To German. Danny 10:49, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Regarding Pacian's recent contribution: I really don't think this article is the place for a complete list of all the entries from Rosten's Joys of Yiddish, or whatever it is he's adding here. We've already got a list of Yiddish loanwords in English, and this isn't actually a list of "common Yiddish words"; those would be words like 'eat' and 'house' and so on. But I didn't want to up and delete Pacian's work without asking for other people's opinions here first. I really don't think what he's putting in is worth the space it takes up. AJD 05:13, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Obviously I strongly disagree. I wonder why you would judge the list I'm compiling as unworthy? I think it's great there's a listing of loanwords, and I added several myself. However, why would those be MORE worthy of listing than some basic Yiddish words that aren't loanwords? Perhaps describing them as "common" isnt' completely accurate, but I didn't know how else to describe them in a NPOV way. "Important Yiddish Words?" "Useful Yiddish Words?" The goal of the listing is not to give someone the ability to carry on a conversation entirely in Yiddish; it's to give a reference to a selection of vital Yiddish terms that are NOT commonly used in the English language. Perhaps it needs to be moved to an entirely different page, but to remove it completely is an act of great disrespect to the language, and to the people who use it. In my opinion, of course. Pacian 05:52, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I'd say the fact that you can't describe them accurately in an NPOV way is a very strong indication that it's not a coherent or purposeful list. They're not "basic Yiddish words"; they're not "vital Yiddish terms"; some of them aren't even Yiddish words at all. It's not a "reference to a selection", which it'd be fine if you gave; it's just a random list. Wikipedia isn't a glossary. AJD 21:06, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Every word I added very much a Yiddish word, so I'm not exactly sure where you get off claiming "some of them aren't even Yiddish words at all." I have to be honest: I understand and appreciate your concern, but you are coming off abraisively, especially since my only intent was to make a positive, well-thought out contribution. The fact of the matter is, the Wikipedia *IS* a reference source: if someone wants information about something, they should be able to come here and get it. It is not unreasonable to suggest that someone who is looking for information about Yiddish may also want to peruse a list of SOME words in the language that are meaningful and may provide further insight on the language, it's usage, and it's origins. I find your suggestion that it is "a random list" extremely offensive, as I have stated on several occasions that I am putting forth a great amount of personal effort to find and accurately define a selection of words that I think may prove useful in the entry. In short, we will have to agree to disagree, and if you feel so very strongly about it, I fully support a decision to take it up with an admin. In either event, in the future, and with all due respect, you may try to be more thoughtful as to the feelings of other Wikipedians when exchanging commentary with them. Pacian 03:01, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Adonai isn't a Yiddish word. Adoshem isn't a Yiddish word. Alrightnik isn't a Yiddish word. Alter kaker is Yiddish, but "AK" isn't. Amain isn't a Yiddish word. Alav ha-sholom and aleha ha-sholom aren't Yiddish the way you've written them. Wikipedia is a reference source, yes, but the kind of reference source it is is an encyclopedia, and what you're writing isn't an encyclopedia entry. (I'm not even convinced that the list of Yiddish loanwords in English belongs in this article.) Again I ask, how are you choosing these words? It looks like you're just copying entries from one of Rosten's books, complete with his amateurish pronunciation spellings. What makes this list of Yiddish and pseudo-Yiddish words more worthy of including in an encyclopedia entry than any other? How exactly do they "provide further insight on the language"? If you want people to be able to peruse a list of words, refer them to a dictionary.
I am sorry that I come off as snarky. But I really don't get what the purpose of this list you're adding is, or even what the nature of it is. And I don't think you've done much of a job defending it, either. I hope someone else adds to this discussion; there probably is a middle ground to be reached here. AJD 04:41, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Unless someone asks me not to in this space in the next day or so, I'm going to go ahead and delete Pacian's word list. This discussion seems to have stalled out. AJD 12:21, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the recently added "cf. German such-and-such" in the Yiddish Words Used in English section adds anything. It's an article about Yiddish, not about German; the article states elsewhere that Yiddish is a Germanic language with a largely Germanic vocabulary (though I think 80% might be an exaggeration); I don't think it's necessary to point out in this word list each time a particular word is of Germanic origin.

You miss the point, about 70-80% of the vocabulary is High German (which of course also means that it is Germanic/of Germanic origin). In fact, this part of the vocabulary is closer to modern High German than some High German dialects. The different spelling system merely obscures that fact. But of course, that may just be the intention of the whole article ;). See Weinreich's dictum, "A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot" (http://www.olestig.dk/scotland/weinreich.html).
First of all, regarding the 70-80% figure: In a highly nonscientific study, I chose five pages at random from a Yiddish dictionary and counted up all the words on those five pages, and I found that less than 60% of those were High German. So I still think the 80% figure is an exaggeration. Secondly: I have no objection to emphasizing in the article that Yiddish is more closely related to High German than anything else is, including some dialects of High German. However, the list of Yiddish Words Used in English isn't the place for it. It's no more appropriate here, than it would be if I went through, for instance, the German grammar article and added the Yiddish equivalents of all the example phrases. It's a list of Yiddish words used in English, not a list of German words used in English; which of them are Germanic and which of them aren't isn't relevant. AJD 00:24, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The problem with dictionary checks is that speakers of a language do not use all words in any given dictionary equally. If one were to carry out the same procedure for English, it would seem that English vocabulary is 60% French and that English is therefore a Romance language. But observations of normal speech, and to a lesser extent written speech, show that a very high percentage of the words used in English -- and in Yiddish for that matter -- are indeed Germanic in origin. Writers and scholars often add Romance/Latin words in English, and Hebrew words in Yiddish to enhance the style of their writing. In any event, Yiddish does seem to be something of a creolized German (although similar arguments could be possible for English as well). One could conclude by saying that every language and dialect is different and reflects a unique history.
Of course. So? English vocabulary is 60% French, but that doesn't make English a Romance language. And the point at issue was not "Is Yiddish a High German language"—of course it is. The point was "Is more than 70% of the vocabulary of Yiddish of High German origin?" And it's not; it's probably only about 60%. AJD 01:24, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yiddish vs. German

Removed this highly modern German-centric POV paragraph:

Yiddish and German share the majority of their respective vocabulary and have almost identical grammars. The pronunciation of Yiddish sounds to a German like a Slavic person speaking German. Trained speakers of Yiddish and German can understand each other. These observations indicate to some linguists that Yiddish is rather an elaborated dialect of German (like Swiss German) than an independent language. However, most Yiddish speakers are opposed to this view since it implies closeness to Germany, the country where most speakers of German live, and which was responsible for the Holocaust.
Nevertheless, many yiddish words entered the modern German language, like die Chuzpe (chutzpah) or meschugge (crazy). Also, some "German" words in American English were imported through Yiddish, like schwitz (to sweat) or Schmuck.
Yes, some Yiddish words have become adopted by other Germanic dialects. The words that have been adopted into American English are Yiddish words, which have cognates in other Germanic languages. Yiddish is no less a modern German language than the language taught in the public schools of Berlin. Jayjg 16:29, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"Sounds like a Slaviv person speaking German"? According to whom? Jayjg 14:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"Trained speakers of Yiddish and German"? Trained in what way? Jayjg 14:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"Elaborated dialect of German [rather] than an independent language"? All versions of German are just "dialects"; the claim that the version spoken by the majority, or those in power, or those with University acceptance, is the "language" while others are simply "dialects" is nonsense that linguists have abandoned decades ago. Jayjg 14:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"Most Yiddish speakers are opposed to this view"? Who says? How was it measured? Jayjg 14:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"since it implies closeness to Germany, the country where most speakers of German live, and which was responsible for the Holocaust"? Again, who says this is the reason of people who oppose this view (whatever it may be; it is not actually clear). Jayjg 14:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hmm I didn't find any of those additions to be POV. I think it would've been better to balance some of those points with opposing views rather than remove them entirely just because there are not references. After all, most statements on Wikipedia don't have references. Caveat: I am not a Yiddish-speaker - just a language buff. — Hippietrail 15:00, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You can't really have "opposing" views to fairly meaningless statements. What is a "trained speaker"? What is the difference between an "elaborated dialect" and an "indepedent language"? The whole insertion was written from the highly POV position that there is one "real" German language, and that all related languages are merely "dialects" (in the early 20th century they would have called it "jargon"). Modern linguists are nearly this prescriptive, and POVs that are unattributed are not of much value, particularly if they seem to be the POV of one individual. Jayjg 16:29, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The way I read it, he was trying to say that German and Yiddish are mutually intelligible to people who know both languages but the choice of wording is not very clear. It's very common when it comes to languages and dialects that there are two viewpoints: "these 2 are separate languages" and "these 2 are dialects of the same language". It's NPOV to include both views even when you don't agree with one. I read "trained speaker" as trying to describe somebody who is fluent in one language and has studied the other. I read "elaborated dialect" and "independent language" as the writer's attempts to make his claim of dialect vs. language less harsh. He's certainly used softer language than you have above. Even though I agree that Yiddish is a separate language I do think the article is more POV now that it only contains the "these 2 are separate languages" opinion. While each contributor may have their own POV, the article as a whole should contain each POV so as to be itself NPOV. — Hippietrail 01:58, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The author of the controversial paragraph in question is not promoting either the "these 2 are separate languages" or the "these 2 are dialects of the same language" viewpoint. Instead, the author is promoting the notion that Modern German is a legitimate language, and Yiddish is a dialect of that. This, of course, is not a position modern linguists take, since the two languages diverged at least 1,000 years ago, with Yiddish (unlike modern German) being in the High German family of languages. Your undestanding of "trained speaker" would apply to Dutch and German as well, yet no-one would claim Dutch as a dialect of German. I'm not sure what you mean by "less harsh". As for whether or not it is an independant language, if there are modern linguists who currently view it as a "dialect", then their views can certainly be quoted. Jayjg 00:38, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Regarding the paragraph in question as it currently stands: (1) Yiddish and German don't actually have almost identical grammars, though they are reasonably similar. "Almost identical" is a very strong claim to make. (2) "The pronunciation of Yiddish sounds to a German like a Slavic person speaking German"—again, according to who? (3) It's meaningless to say that "trained speakers of Yiddish and German can understand each other"—after all, trained speakers of English and Choctaw can understand each other, if the English speaker is trained to understand Choctaw and the Choctaw speaker is trained to understand English. (4) It can't be true that "these observations indicate to some linguists that Yiddish is rather an elaborated dialect of German": "elaborated dialect" doesn't mean anything, and linguists aren't in the business of deciding what constitutes a language and what constitutes a dialect. (5) It is not NPOV to state that some believe that Yiddish is a dialect of German because of its similarities to German, while others believe that it is a separate language because of a particular political agenda: Those who regard it as a separate language because they don't believe the similarities to German are sufficiently thorough are completely ignored.
Having written all that, I'm now going to go back and edit the paragraph to remove the issues I complained about. AJD 05:35, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It is funny how controversial this seems to be. So far, no linguist has ever discovered a way of defining the difference between a language and a dialect. The two standard Norwegian languages, standard Swedish and standard Danish are considered to be different languages, but they are more similar to each other than they are to many of their dialects. The difference is a matter of convention. If for some reason two dialects suddenly begin to be considered to be two languages, they are two languages. It is as simple as that. BTW, I'd really like to see a historical section tracing Yiddish back to the Middle ages.--Wiglaf 21:17, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Just to make my position clear, it is obvious that both modern "standard" German and Yiddish are High German dialects. However, any claim that Yiddish is a dialect of modern "standard" German is absurd, given their significant differences, and how long ago they diverged. Jayjg 14:54, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Actually, if one also takes into account the strongly Alemannian-oriented Yiddish dialect of Alsace, as well as the other Western Yiddish (Judentâtsch) dialects of the past and present; and if one also compares the more easterly Yiddish dialects with the non-Jewish dialects of Bavaria, eastern Austria and the Czech republic; it seems pretty clear that there has been significant interaction between local Jewish and non-Jewish dialects of Middle and High German. There is very little linguistic evidence of Yiddish being isolated or even fully independent of neighbouring, non-Jewish dialects of the Germanic languages. That being said, the written traditions have been separated to a relatively high degree for a very long time — and the presence of separate, distinctive literatures and a different alphabet show that Yiddish passes two important tests for what can be considered a separate language; compare, e.g., Hindi and Urdu — a language cluster which shows many parallel traits to the Yiddish/German language cluster. -- Olve 03:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Grammar affinities

I disagree with the statement "much of the grammar of Yiddish differs substantially from that of German, having been acquired from contact with other (mostly Slavic) languages".

Well, the only substantial difference is the formation of plural along Hebrew lines for some words of Semitic origin. No other radical difference comes to mind, really.

Not trusting my memory, I took a Yiddish book and tried to find some Slavic grammar influences, in vain. Even Russian loan-words I found formed their plural by adding a (non-Slavic) -s ending.

Maybe there are some subtle influences, especially in syntax, but they are by no means obvious.

The words I quoted earlier give a completely wrong impression that Yiddish grammar is mostly Slavic. In fact just the opposite is the case - it is mostly (overwhelmingly) Germanic.


According to one website:
  1. A Slavic-type rule of anticipatory (regressive) voicing assimilation, as in fus + benkl => fu[zb]enkl;
  2. A system of verbal aspect highly influenced by the semantics of Slavic aspect, as in the prefix tse-;
  3. A number of borrowed derivational morphemes, such as the agentive -nik (as in nudnik 'bore' from nudne 'boring') and the diminutives -tshik and -ke;

Jayjg 19:59, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. The last two examples are interesting. The first example has nothing to do with grammar, though. All in all I still cannot see how "much of the grammar of Yiddish differs substantially from that of German". Borrowed derivational morphemes or semantics of this or that prefix do not really constitute much difference. Do you see any substantial difference in grammar paradigms? There is the case of loaned Hebrew plural forms I mentioned earlier, but that is all. Please take into account I am well acquainted with both German and Yiddish, and I'm a native speaker of Russian. For what my personal opinion is worth, I see practically no Slavic influence in grammar.
You may not, but others do; both viewpoints are expressed. I'll add in a link for sourcing, which I had thought was in there earlier. Jayjg 02:05, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The voicing assimilation of point 1 above can be found in English "cupboard" as well as frequently in trad. Sephardic pronunciation of yitgaddal as yidgadál. The verbal aspect referred to in point 2 is likely to have a Slavonic connection. Borrowing of derivational morphemes as referred to in point 3 is not unusual between languages. -- Olve 03:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Whether to count the first depends on whether you count phonology as part of "grammar", which is just a question of the definition of "grammar". Anyway, I don't know anything about Slavic grammar, but the main way Yiddish grammar differs from German grammar is in clausal word order. In German, nonfinite verbs appear at the end of their clauses, and in subordinate clauses even finite verbs appear at the end. In Yiddish, neither of these is the case. So consider the German sentence (I don't speak German, so I got this from babelfish) 'I would have seen the man if he had been jumping': Ich würde den Mann gesehen haben, wenn er gesprungen war. The verbs gesehen haben and war are at the ends of their clauses. In Yiddish, that doesn't happen: Ikh volt gezen dem man, ven er volt geshprungen. That is a very substantial difference between German and Yiddish grammar. There are other grammatical differences as well: Yiddish has no genitive case but rather a possessive marker -s similar to the one in English, for instance, and the accusative case is never used for the object of prepositions. Also, Yiddish has no inflected past tense or subjunctive; only auxiliaries are used. AJD 02:23, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The Wikipedia article on phonology states that it is a sub-field of grammar. Jayjg 19:54, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
OK, I agree that certain differences do exist. The problem is I do not consider them substantial in grammar (will a German-speaking person as much as stumble for a second over Yiddish verb conjugation?) and most important, I cannot attribute most of the differences in grammar (even a small part, frankly) 'to the influence of Slavic languages'. Yiddish has no inflected past tense or subjunctive? Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish) do have. As well as genitive case... And finite verbs can appear at the end... But enough said. These two problematic words in the article ('much' and 'mostly') are not worth our efforts, really. If there is no consensus, no problem for me. Let people be deceived :) Try to read the 'problematic' passage as if you knew nothing about Yiddish - you will probably get the impression that large chunks of Slavic-type grammar were borrowed. And that is not correct, I'm afraid. But who cares :(
As I said, I don't know anything about Slavic languages: I was just answering the question "how much of the grammar of Yiddish differs substantially from that of German?" The answer is, more than you'd expect for such closely related languages. That a German speaker would not stumble over Yiddish conjugations is beside the point; the point is the more basic issue that German has inflected verb tense and Yiddish doesn't. That's at least as significant as the fact that the inflections that both languages do have are similar in the two. But anyway, I've got no idea if some or any of these grammar differences are due to Slavic influence; all I mean to point out is that they're there and they're significant. AJD 23:14, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
"(I don't speak German, so I got this from babelfish) 'I would have seen the man if he had been jumping': Ich würde den Mann gesehen haben, wenn er gesprungen war. The verbs gesehen haben and war are at the ends of their clauses. In Yiddish, that doesn't happen: Ikh volt gezen dem man, ven er volt geshprungen. " Ok, you shouldn't rely too heavily on automatic translations, but anyway. Although the grammar is different from High German, it looks similar to other germanic languages, mostly english and scandinavian.
As a native German speaker this discussion is quite amusing to me. First of all the babelfish translation is somewhat incorrect, at least regarding the conjunctive cause at the end. Ich würde den Mann gesehen haben, wenn er gesprungen wäre . But the important fact is that I can easily replace the verbs to form Ich würde gesehen haben den Mann, wenn er wäre gesprungen. Every German speaker can understand that, although this is not the common way to build the sentence. Just to demonstrate how ease it is for a German speaker to understand Ikh volt gezen dem man, ven er volt geshprungen. 80.139.30.53 22:41, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"*Unlike the original Hebrew letter, pey does not change shape at the end of a word."

true, _pey_ does not change shape at the end of a word - however - this is _not_ unlike hebrew - in both - _pey_ (with dagesh) does not change shape, and _phey_/fey (no dagesh/with rafe) does.


tatysch or dyatsch?

Ajd and Olve, you seem to disagree on this, which is it? Also, the second "yod" in Yiddish looked like question marks for me before, but Olve's edit fixed that. Was there a reason you changed it back, Ajd? Jayjg | (Talk) 22:27, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Yiddish word for 'German' is daytsh, not taytsh—that's why I changed that back (though if I can be convinced that it was taytsh at the time in question, I'll accept it). The yod was a mistake; I'll fix that. AJD 22:58, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, you missed the same problem in the word "daytsch". Jayjg | (Talk) 23:14, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The traditional form used in connection with Yiddish is the T form. In connection with (mainly non-Jewish) German, D is often used, but then normally in the form daytshish (-er, -e). In older Western Yiddish, the pronunciation would often be tâtsch (with un-rounding, opening, first-component lengthening and subsequent monophthongisation of the historic diphthong), and the word would often be written as טאטש. Yiddish "tsu taytshn" (also with a Tet rather than Daled) comes from the same root and means to translate into Yiddish.

The reason I changed the ay digraph into two Yods was that the explicit ay digraph is a de facto deprecated form which is not displayed properly in most generally available Hebrew fonts.

(By the way: My qualifications for writing about Yiddish include a university degree in linguistics (including dialectography) and ethnomusicology in addition to years of studying comparative linguistics (with an emphasis on Germanic languages) on my own. An example of my work with Yiddish may be seen here: http://utne.nvg.org/j/jiddisch/ ) – Olve 23:08, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Taitsh is the definite traditional form in Yiddish — and glyphs above the normal range for Hebrew are not supported by most Hebrew fonts. I am going to wait a little bit for additional input, and then go ahead with my edits unless someone can show compelling evidence countering those of my contributions which were removed by Ajd. – Olve 23:26, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK — I have checked Weinreich's Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English dictionary, and here is a summary of what it says:

  • דיַיטשיש = דיַיטש German
  • טיַיטש־חומש a Yiddish version of the Pentateuch
  • טיַיטשן interpret

It is clear from this that the distinction between daytsh- meaning German and taytsh- meaning Yiddish is still valid. I will therefore change the Yiddish back to yidish-taytsh. – Olve 00:06, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't make anything clear at all. If daytsh means 'German', why shouldn't the form meaning 'Jewish German' be yidish daytsh? That is, daytsh means the language, and taytsh is a related word that means 'translation' or something like that. So shouldn't yidish taytsh be 'Jewish translation', not 'Jewish German'?
Also, if most Hebrew fonts can't show a pasekh-tsvey-yudn, I'd say the fault is with them, not with us for using it, but.... AJD 03:38, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I do not think it should be that unclear: The inherited Yiddish form is taytsh. The newer concept of German nationality is denoted by the loanword daytsh — a lightly Yiddishised form of German Deutsch. This word is also frequently found in the form daytshish. That taytsh and daytsh have different meanings is not any different from hotel and hospital having different meanings. The fact that Yiddish daytsh means specifically German as opposed to Yiddish can be illustrated by the word דייַטשמעריש daytshmerish — a word which means 'too much like German (said of modern words or phrases sporadically used in Yid. but not accepted by cultivated stylists'. (Weinreich 1968, p. 657) You ask: "If daytsh means 'German', why shouldn't the form meaning 'Jewish German' be yidish daytsh?" The answer to that is: It isn't – and part of the reason is that "Jewish German" is not exactly what the term means... It would be great if someone could come up with a better translation. As for the form "Yidish Daytsh" with a "Daled", part of its problem is in fact that it is to daytshmerish...
Coming to think of it, Ladino is an interesting parallel: Ladino in its classical Judeo-Spanish, Spanish and Portuguese form denotes the translation of Hebrew and Aramaic into a Romance language — and thus means something quite different from "Latin". I guess one could say that "taytsh" denotes "Germanic as opposed to Semitic" rather than "of the German language or culture/nation" the same way that "ladino" denotes "Romance" (particularly Iberian) as opposed to Semitic" rather than "of the Latin language or culture/nation".
The cognate "*theud-" is widely used in the Germanic languages with other meanings than "German". Thus, the English term Dutch means "from the Netherlands"; the Old Norse <thorn>jó<eth> means 'people'; the Norwegian dialect otjø and standard Norwegian utyske (lit. "un-folk" or "un-person") means monster; the Norwegian tyde, German deuten and Yiddish daytn means 'make understandable to people', etc. – Olve 06:16, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The right word is DAJTSCH. German: DEUTSCH. Simon Mayer

Scandinavian language closer than Yiddish/German?

First of all, the bit about Danish and Swedish being closer than German and Yiddish must clearly be a mistake. My first language is Swedish, and I've studied German for almost seven years. When I watch a movie with Yiddish spoken (like the tenth episode of season four of The West Wing), I can understand everything except a few words with the help of the German I speak. When I watch a Danish movie (like Idioterne), I can hardly understand anything but a few words here and there.

But even having just "Swedish and Norwegian are far more closely related to each other than Yiddish and German" sounds very POV in my mind. Is there a reliable linguistic source on this statement first made by Jayjg? As far as I can tell, in lexical correspondence, grammar and orthography, I would say that it's the other way aroound. —Gabbe 20:02, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

"Swedish is closely related to, and usually mutually intelligible with, Danish and Norwegian." according to Swedish language. "Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are linguistically very closely related and are generally mutually intelligible. This is due to the way the national boundaries have been in flux throughout Scandinavian history. Norway and Denmark were a single country for four centuries, until 1814. And after they split apart, Norway was under the rule of the Swedish crown until 1905. The movement for the recognition of a Norwegian language separate from Danish and Swedish led to the consequent formation of nynorsk." [2] As for the specific statement, it is "Languages like Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are far more closely related to each other than Yiddish and German." This is clearly the case, since Yiddish and German separated over 1,000 years ago, and 30% of Yiddish's vocabularly comes from two completely unrelated language groups, the Semitic and Slavic groups. On the other hand, Norwegian formed as recently 200 years ago, after a conscious effort to separate it from Danish. How much Yiddish was spoken in those movies and television episodes? Jayjg | (Talk) 20:18, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Hej Gabbe, It is true that spoken Danish and spoken non-Skåne Swedish are significantly different from each other phonologically and to a smaller degree also grammatically. It is also true that Swedes have a tendency to understand less of the other Scandinavian languages than the other way around for mostly sociological reasons. However, Swedish and Norwegian are close enough that I can say (as a linguist who write and speak Norwegian (Nynorsk, Bokmål), Swedish, German and Yiddish reasonably well) that the differences between Norwegian and Swedish are smaller than those between German (Bühnesprache) and most forms of Yiddish. If you are talking about dialects of German and dialects of Yidish, this may of course vary a great deal – just like it does between dialects of Norwegian and Swedish (and, to a smaller degree, Danish). As Jay points out, the significant component of loan words from Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavonic languages in Yiddish makes communication beyond the very basic level difficult between Yiddish and German. But what Jay writes about Norwegian is not quite precise: Norwegian was of course around for several centuries before the two Norwegian written languages developed as official norms in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Shabbat shalom / God hälg! – Olve 22:34, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Alright, I might be mistaken. The examples I cited aren't really scholarly "proofs" of anything, I agree. It might very well be that Norwegian and Swedish are closer than Yiddish and German. But regardless, there's just something about "Danish, Swedish and Norwegian [...] are almost completely mutually intelligible" that really strikes me. I cannot accept that statement as an undeniable fact. And saying that they are "far more closely related to each other than [...]" is a needless peacock word. I think the pro-Yiddish-is-a-language part of the "A German dialect?"-section deserves more easily-verifiable statements of fact in its favour, such as for example:
While it might still be argued that the European Union and the United States are wrong from a linguistical standpoint, to me these two examples "throws more weight around" so to speak. It is easy to verify the objective truth of the two statements above, but it is hard to look up in a chart or table of language groupings and compare the values for Norwegian/Swedish versus Yiddish/German and see which pair is closer. It's a bit like trying to measure which of Goethe or Schopenhauer had most impact on 19th century Germany, isn't it? I know it might strike a nerve with some to remove the mention of the Scandianvian languages entirely, and there's certainly a point in mentioning them, but the analogy is too murky and subjective to really convince anyone. Am I making sense? What I'm trying to say is that the analogy currently in the article has an inconspicuous veracity, it might almost be called POV.
Oh, and by the way, a trevlig helg to you too. :) —Gabbe 22:26, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)
I must say that the mutual intelligibility between Danish and Swedish is obvious. However, it also depends on what dialect the Swedes and the Danes speak. A Swedish speaker from Finland or a North Swede finds Danish incomprehensible. I come from south central Sweden and I find Copenhagen Danish comprehensible. However, I would probably not understand Jutland Danish very well. So, I think it is better to state that the languages are mutually intelligible but that it comes in degrees depending on the language varieties of the speakers.--Wiglaf 20:00, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

My 2 cents:

Whether you understand Yiddish depends on where in Germany/German speaking countries you come from. I would argue that Southern/South Western and Western Germans (i.e. Rhineland) tend to understand Yiddish, since our dialects have a lot in common with spoken Yiddish, in structure, pronounciation and word choice. My hometown is Stuttgart in the South Western German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and my "First" native language is not Standard German (which I didn't learn until I attended school) but Schwaebisch. My grandmother is Alsatian, so I am rather familiar with that German (Alemmanic)dialect too. Yiddish sounds a lot like Alsatian with quite a few words/expressions of Hebrew, Slavic etc. origin added (25 -30%). I also listened to the Yiddish Boston Radio and understood about 90%, without ever having studied Yiddish formally. I had a North German friend listen to the same programm and she barely understood what they were talking about. There is not "one" German - but many German dialects and a national standard, that functions as a lingua franca throughout the German speaking world.

IMHO Yiddish is clearly a Germanic language in its structure and the majority of its terminology. Whether you want to call it a dialect or a language doesn t matter. The line between language and dialect is blurred i.e. the issue of Standard Dutch/Dutch and German dialects in the German/Netherlands border region, Standard German or the question whether the different versions of Chinese are dialects or languages.

Luke Pacific Grove, CA

I agree Yiddish should be considered Germanic... unfortunatly :'( (anon, 2 May 2005)

Political baggage and linguistic method

Reading all of the above (I come to this for ths first time) makes my hair stand on end. I think we need to come clean here and say outright: the relationship between Germans and Jews is so heavily weighed down by the baggage of 20th century history that the idea of German linguistic origins is upsetting for some Jews. I have a lot of sympathy for that, but we can't let that affect the results of linguistic science. Read the article on comparative method if you want to know how we judge what languages are related. In the case of Yiddish, though, there is not a lot of hypothetical comparative methodology necessary, because the whole history is documented. We have a continuous tradition of Jewish writings going back to the 13th century. If you read the early texts (14th-century Dukus Horant, for example) you will see that this is Middle High German in Hebrew characters with a slight vowel shift (possibly, depending on how you interpret the Hebrew characters), with about one Hebrew lexem per page (see the statistical analysis by Jim Marchand) and no significant unique grammatical features. That is why we call it Judeo-German in this early phase: it is German with a Jewish colouring. In the next two centuries, Judeo-German becomes Yiddish, i.e. the dialect develops into a language in its own right. It borrows a lot from Slavic (but of COURSE it does not become a Slavic language) and develops a rich tradition of idiom all of its own. Modern Yiddish is not longer a German dialect because communication across this boundary is difficult (not impossible) and it has its own institutions (newspapers etc.) using its own norms. Yiddish is a language in its own right, and like English it is a Germanic language with a large proportion of borrowed non-Germanic lexemes. I am not a German. I am not a Jew. I have no axe to grind here. Bit I am a trained linguist who has studied and written about this, and that's just the way it is. The above arguments are mostly just silly. For this reason I would propose deleting the unnecessary paragraph "A German dialect?" (which is accurate enough but sounds more like special pleading than lingusitic scholarship) and instead opening the history paragraph with a note about late-mediaeval Judeo-German and what happened after that. I'll be glad to do it if no-one else does, but not without a consensus on this discussion page first. --Doric Loon 09:36, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the section "A German dialect?" looks to me like pretty good NPOV summary of a question relevant to the article. I'd keep it. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:44, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Rather than deleting the section, why not just propose additions to it here? BTW, what do you think of Wexler's thesis (a re-lexified Slavic language)? Jayjg (talk) 18:08, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not Marnen, but my answer is that I don't think the notion of "relexified Slavic language" is meaningful. We classify non-creole languages by the origin of their lexicon, regardless of what changes have happened to the grammar; and if it's lexically a Germanic language it's a Germanic language. AJD 05:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Actually, it's mostly the other way around. As I say, read the article on comparative method; we classify languages not according to either lexis or grammar but according to a continuous tradition of development. However, obviously where there is such a tradition, there will also be grammatical and lexical evidence of it, and when the tradition is not otherwise documented, these provide the evidence which fills the gap. Of these two, grammar is more important. The grammar of any language is subject to sporadic changes in the course of history, but in so far as the grammar reflects a relationship with another language, it is reflecting its origins, because grammatical structures are very rarely passed sideways from one language to another. This applies especially to morphology - similarities in syntax can be co-incidence. So for example if two languages have a parallel paradigm of verb inflections, that is an almost infallible sign of original relationship. In the case of lexis, on the other hand, "loan words" are very common, so lexical similarities are a less safe criterion for judging language relatedness. Nonetheless, a broad range of lexical similarities is very useful, and in particular, there are some classes of words which are rarely borrowed (personal pronouns, numerals, prepositions, the verb "to be"), and in these cases, if two languages share most of their lexis, they are certainly related. So, the criteria in order of importance are: 1. the continuous tradition if it can be documented; 2. any structural or morphological similarities which are too precise be co-incidence; 3. any lexical similarities which are too precise to be co-incidence and are unlikely to be borrowings. In the case of Yiddish, though, its development out of Middle High German is recorded in black and white from the very beginning, so no hypothetical work with the other two criteria is required. But if we didn't have historical records, we could use first morphology and second the most basic lexis to prove easily that Yiddish is more closely related to German than to any other language. It would be hard to find a case anywhere in the field of comparative linguistics where the evidence is clearer. But as I say, there is an entirely understandable post-1945 anti-Germanism among many Yiddish speakers which make them want to believe that Yiddish is related to something - ANYTHING - other than German. So we get the silly Slavic thesis and the silly French thesis, and if it absolutely has to be Germanic then we get wild parallels drawn with Swedish... (I once spoke to a Ukranian who tried to convince me Ukranian is a Romance language most closely related to French. ANYTHING but Russian! This is a world-wide phenomenon among "beer-garden linguists".) I don't know what you do with people who get these things into their head, but whatever it is, it ain't linguistics. --Doric Loon 14:24, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, the reason that whole section actually appeared in the first place was because some German speakers kept insisting that Yiddish was nothing but a German dialect (not a language in its own right), and that speakers of modern German could easily understand it. Since that is not a typical view, sources were brought which contradicted it - I believe this may be the exact opposite of the reason you thought it was there. In any event, you sound quite knowledgable in the field, and your contributions would of course be welcome, and I'm sure vastly improve the article. Please keep in mind, though, that sources for theories and views should be cited, otherwise we run the risk of putting original research into the article. Jayjg (talk) 02:34, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Eh, woops! Sorry, looks like I misunderstood where this argument was coming from. (I've had this debate before, and possibly I jumped to a conclusion - mea culpa!) Nonetheless, the possibility of Slavic origins and Swedish connections are implied in the article and do need to be debunked if they can't be quietly ignored. BTW, what do you think of the idea that Yiddish is descended from Basque? I just found this: [[4]]. Can't make up my mind if the author is a joker or a headbanger.
But coming back to your point, Jayjg, there are usually two criteria for saying that dialects have separated far enough to be separate languages. One is when the communication barrier becomes too difficult for the average person, even after they've spent a little time atuning. And the second is the presence of institutions which use the language as a written norm. Either one will do. In the case of Yiddish, most Germans certainly can't read it, and usually they are struggling to understand the klezmer songs which have become so popular in Germany since the '80s. More importantly, there is the long tradition of serious publishing in Yiddish which indicates a literary standard. Read the article on dialect though - which suggests that the whole thing is so subjective that in the end we use what the respective group wants (PC principle) - so how do Yiddish speakers feel about it?
I should declare myself: my interest is medieval languages/lit. I cover Yiddish to the 16th century. I guess that fills a gap here, so I'll pose as an expert on that, but not on the modern language.
I'm getting a message that this page is too long. Which is probably mostly my fault. Should we do something about it?--Doric Loon 19:46, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think all the information you're presenting is great and belongs in the article; however, I must strongly emphasize that everything you state should be cited. Regardless of how strongly you know something to be true, based on your professional training, you need to cite the sources of your contentions. WP:NPOV is another policy that should be helpful here. And regarding the length of the page, I wouldn't worry about it yet. You can just edit this specific section here, titled "Political baggage and linguistic method", rather than the whole page, using the little "edit" button that shows up on the right hand side of the page beside every section header. After the discussion here dies down, I'll archive some of the older discussion. Jayjg (talk) 03:51, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Two issues

(which are largely resolved 21:10, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC))

  1. The 4-million-speakers figure is (a) great (b) in all probability too high. What is the source for the claim, and how recent is it?(Pedantic addendum: as most language censuses I've seen don't register the ethnicity or religion of all speakers of a language, perhaps that should be changed to "x million people", anyhow, where x is the correct number (x=4 a few decades ago, presumably).)
    • I don't have a formal source for this, but if there were 10 million Yiddish speakers at the start of World War II, it seems relatively safe to say that there would still have been 4 million at the end.-- Jmabel | Talk 02:04, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
      • ... the majority of whom would have died by now. Hasdrubal 19:29, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • I'm sorry, I didn't see the context for that. Yes, I agree, that is almost certainly an overestimate. (In other contexts, I've used that as an approximate minimum for 1945, thought I'd done so here, and thought that was what was being referred to.) I'll look for a citable number. – Jmabel | Talk 20:18, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
          • Remarkably, it's not a lot lower. Ethnologue estimates 3 million [5] in 1991. – Jmabel | Talk 20:24, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
            • I suspect it is somewhat lower now, but its hard to tell; on the one hand, the old Yiddish speaking generation is dying off at an increasingly high rate. On the other hand, the Yiddish speaking haredi communities have a ferociously high birth rate. Jayjg (talk) 20:36, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
              • I'll take a look at Ethnologue's source when I have the chance. While the birth rate of haredim and hassidim is very high,

Yiddish is not being transmitted to the new generation in many communities. For instance, relatively few Hassidic families in Montreal are raising their children as Yiddish speakers (completely unscientific personal observation). Of those few, at most a small minority seem to be at all interested in using the Yiddish literature collections at the local library, but that is another matter... Hasdrubal 22:46, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  1. Regarding the section "Is Yiddish a German dialect?" - it is my impression that most linguists nowadays see the difference between dialect and language as purely political, and not truly helpful. Perhaps the section should be omitted or shifted until later in the text? It is the sort of thing that would have been important to emphasize a generation ago, but now it may be besides the point. Also, the theory on Yiddish's being a "relexified Slavic language" is generally considered to be on the border of crankish. Far more relevant is the ongoing discussion as to whether Yiddish had its main origins in medieval high German or medieval Bavarian. Hasdrubal 00:54, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm with you on this one. The Slavic theory seems absurd to me (though I'm not a professional linguist). The language vs. dialect theory usually comes down to "a dialect is a language with a flag and a navy." – Jmabel | Talk 02:04, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
      • "An army and a navy", actually. Usually I wouldn't be so pedantic but this saying actually originated in Yiddish (or so I'm told): "A shprakh is a dialekt mit an armey un a flot." (Max Weinreich.) AJD 03:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • Interesting. I never knew the origin of that. I would say that if we are going to take up to topic at all in the article that quote belongs here, if we can get a decent citation on it. – Jmabel | Talk 04:57, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Largely resolved:

  1. The current statement on number of speakers at a reasonably recent date (1991) now has a citation. If someone has something more recent and citable, great.
  2. I've added the Weinrich quotation (found the citation for it, too). I think the article's current dismissive mention of the Slavicist theory is fine, but if someone wants to make it even more dismissive, I wouldn't object. – Jmabel | Talk 21:10, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Remaining issues:

  1. The question of which parts of Germany contributed in what degree to Yiddish should be taken up; I don't know enough to write it.
  2. If someone wants to move the section on dialogue vs. language farther down, as Hasdrubal suggests, I certainly wouldn't object. – Jmabel | Talk 21:10, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Um, OK, folks, I've begun reading the article, and was struck by an apparent inconsistency. Thinking perhaps it had been discussed on the Talk page, I came here, where I read everything, and yes...it certainly has been hashed to death here, yet no resolution seems forthcoming. The whole argument over whether Yiddish is a language or a dialect of German will no doubt drag on at least as long as the argument over whether or not German is one language or 20. That notwithstanding, it seems rather silly that the two statements:

  • Yiddish and German share a large portion of their respective vocabularies, and have reasonably similar grammars.
  • Much of the grammar of Yiddish differs substantially from that of German, some of it having been influenced by contact with other (e.g. Slavic) languages

should appear in the article, especially in such close proximity (in the pathetically-named "A German Dialect?" section). How can their grammars be "reasonably similar" while simultaneously "differ[ing] substantially"?! Am I the only one who thinks this is doublespeak? I haven't looked at the history to verify it, but it sounds like these two statements were written by two different authors, one of whom didn't bother to make their statements jive very well with the remainder of the section... Any volunteers to either fix this or to explain how this is not inconsistent? kol tov. TShilo12 22:58, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We recently added some content pointing out that the language/dialect distinction is rather arbitrary. As for the specific degree of similarity and difference:

  1. Someone who knows Yiddish far better than I should write a section summarizing the nature and degree of difference from Hochdeutsch (or perhaps from Mittelhochdeutsch).
  2. Any remarks like "reasonably similar", etc., should probably have attribution. This is a controversial matter, and authorities should be cited. – Jmabel | Talk 00:39, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)
I've asked User:Doric Loon to return, since he/she seemed to know what he/she was talking about. Users Olve and AJD seems knowledgeable as well. Perhaps they can help fix it up. Jayjg (talk) 00:43, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the vote of confidence. Since I last visited here (I'm not a very regular user) Jmabel has added some of the material I thought was missing, but at your prompting I am glad to expand it. (Jmabel has also written a new and welcome article on the Bovo Bukh; I started one a week or so ago on the Dukus Horant - so gradually we're getting there!) As I said before, my knowledge is that of a medievalist, and given the close scrutiny of movements on this page, I wouldn't dare expound much about the modern language. But I hope the historical starting point is now properly documented. Incidentally, I deleted that silly stuff about Jews in Germany going back to the second temple - sounds almost masonic! Let's stick with what is recorded - there's enough history there without inventing what might have been. I'm glad to see that TShilo12 agrees with me about the dialect section sounding rather pathetic - it's not so much the content as the tone, which feels whinging somehow. I've moved it down and have refocussed the presentation, though the content is the same. But I think quite a bit of that section is redundant. That's all I have time for tonight. Feel free to revert everything I have done if you have strong feelings - I will only sulk a little!--Doric Loon 21:10, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm concerned about this paragraph:

The status of Yiddish as a Germanic language is occasionally challenged from two opposing perspectives. On the one hand, there are those who suggest it is merely a dialect of German, not different enought to be classed as a separate language; at the other extreme there are those who suggest that Yiddish is unrelated to German, that it is in essence Semitic, Slavonic, Romance or even a derivitive of Basque. The former view may be a matter of opinion, but the usual consensus is that Yiddish is far more than just a dialect. The latter view, though propounded frequently and and enthusiastically, is simply wrong, as a cursory study of either the historical records or the linguistic structures makes clear.

As written, it makes a number of assertions which are not cited in any way. Any statement that something is "simply wrong" almost inevitably violates the NPOV rule. Can you think of a way of re-wording this that simply lists the claims, and counter-arguments, citing sources for both? Jayjg (talk) 21:47, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

True. Needs rephrasing. But I think the whole thing ought to be dealt with briefly, and without a lot of fuss. Well, you see what I was trying to do. I will alter those two words, and you are welcome to alter it more. --Doric Loon 21:59, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Eh, Jayjg, I think we both tried to save changes in the article at the same moment and something went askew. Just check that whatever you did didn't get deleted.--Doric Loon 21:50, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I made some minor changes. Some cites would still be extremely helpful (e.g. who thinks its Basque, who insists it is its own language). I'm not adding them because I don't know what they are. Jayjg (talk) 22:15, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In the course of these generally good edits, the following was deleted without comment:

  • The oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish is a manuscript consisting of four epic poems on biblical and haggadic themes, dating from about 1382, found in Egypt and edited in 1957 by I. Fuks.

2 remarks: (1) In general, when deleting substantive material, one should bring it over to talk and/or explain why it was deleted. (2) In particular, assuming the deletion was intentional, what was wrong here? That this document (although Germanic and written in Hebrew characters) might be too early to be called Yiddish, or what? And even so, wouldn't it still merit mention? – Jmabel | Talk 00:54, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

No, that wasn't deleted, just rephrased. This is the Dukus Horant manuscript, which is still very much in there. But it was not quite the oldest surviving document, and I am unclear where the date 1382 comes from - the MS is assumed to be 14th century, but no-one can be much more precise than that. What did get deleted (accidentally) was the reference to the edition by Fuks. I will put that back in - but perhaps I should put it into the separate Dukus Horant article rather than here. There are other editions too. --Doric Loon 06:51, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Cool. BTW, where it came from was the cited book by Liptzin, A History of Yiddish Literature. I have no claim to a scholar's knowledge of medieval Eastern Europe, I just had a book at hand. – Jmabel | Talk 07:30, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

"Weinreich aphorism" demoted to a link

I see that once again "A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot" has been removed from the article, relegated elsewhere. Is this part of the war against vivid writing? – Jmabel | Talk 23:51, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, that was me. I didn't realise it had been done before or I would have been a little more careful about interfering in a live debate, but no, it was not part of a war against vivid writing - it was part of a war against bad writing. The paragraph in which it stood was badly constructed and added little to the section. You know, when we plead our case with unnecessary length and pathos, we don't strengthen it - we can end up looking weaker, as though we are trying to cover something up. There is a consensus that Yiddish is more than a German dialect. There is no serious opposition to that. So, let's just say that, and then cross-reference to more general articles about the difference between dialects and languages. Putting paragraph after paragraph in here just gives the impression that we secretly suspect our case is not as strong as we are suggesting. After all, Weinrich's aphorism is relevant to all dialect/language questions, not just Yiddish. My 2c. --Doric Loon 10:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Given that as far as can be cited it arose with repect to Yiddish, and that it is commonly quoted in Yiddish, it would seem to me particularly relevant to Yiddish. I don't care about the surrounding prose in the particular paragraph it was in. I care about getting the quotation itself into this article. It sums up – aphoristically, indeed – the basis on which Yiddish was relegated for centuries to the inferior status of a "jargon" or dialect. – Jmabel | Talk 19:54, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, put it back in. --Doric Loon 07:38, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. – Jmabel | Talk 04:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

jiddisch or judisk?

On the page it says 'The name Yiddish itself means "Jewish" (German: Jüdisch, Swedish: Jiddisch)...' I want to point out to the inconsistency that "Jüdisch" is German for "Jewish", while "Jiddisch" is Swedish (and German) for "Yiddish", while "Jewish" in Swedish is "judisk". So, shouldn't it be either "(German: Jüdisch, Swedish: Judisk)" or "(German: Jiddisch, Swedish: Jiddisch)"?

Besides, why do we want to give German and Swedish forms anyway? Let's delete that! --Doric Loon 21:51, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I removed Swedish, and reduced German to a "comparison". I think that makes more sense. AJD 21:52, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So...How many people really speak yiddish?

I see that the article now consistently says throughout that there are an estimated 3M speakers of Yiddish. (Anyone any idea how many of these are first-language speakers? over the age of 50?)

What I was originally going to gripe about is that Yiddish and Ladino are the only two languages in all of Wikipedia which have big religion-oriented tables attached to them. Note: Armenian_language does not have a big table for Armenian_orthodox, Hindi_language doesn't have a big table for Hinduism, and Thai doesn't have a big table for Theravada_Buddhism. I realize that the speakers of Yiddish and Ladino historically are almost all Jewish, and I can appreciate that, but I'm not sure that a big table for Jew belongs as part of any language's description. I've got that off my chest, now to the real issue:

Unfortunately, while the numerical inconsistency has been fixed on this page (3M vs. 4M...although I don't know that following ethnologue's estimate exclusively is sufficient grounds to lop 1/4 of the speakers out of cyberexistence), I was appalled to find that there are really only one million! Doubt it? check it out: Jewish languages. I think this disparity requires actual source research, rather than a consensus that "so-and-so's estimate is good enough for Wikipedia". I'm not talking about original research, I'm talking about somebody going out and actively seeking out reliable estimates and comparing them and coming up with some kind of reliable conclusion as to how many people really speak Yiddish...and whence come these wildly different numbers. Any takers? Sorry...unless someone's got US$2.4k to donate to a poverty-strick college student, I don't have the time this sort of research will require. kol tov. -t TShilo12 08:23, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Úps! I see I lied. Not only do Yiddish and Ladino have the big "Jew" table in their articles, it appears that Hebrew language does as well. While Yiddish and Ladino are/were almost exclusively spoken by Jews, the Hebrew article (incorrectly) states that (hahaha) "all" of Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens speak the language...which leads one to wonder why the "Jew" table is on the page...and all the moreso, why a Hinduism box doesn't appear on the Hindi language page. TShilo12 09:18, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(Answering four months later...) I think there's a difference between Yiddish and Ladino on the one hand hand Armenian, Hindi, and Thai on the other. It's not just that the vast majority of Yiddish and Ladino speakers are Jewish, it's that Yiddish and Ladino only evolved the way they did because they were spoken by Jews. Armenian would still be Armenian even if virtually all Armenians had become Muslims a thousand years ago (there would be differences of course; it would doubtless have lots of loanwords from Arabic, but it would still be Armenian). But if virtually all German Jews had become Christian a thousand years ago, there would be no Yiddish language. And as for Hebrew, if all or virtually Jews had converted to the local religion after the Diaspora two thousand years ago, there would be have been no Mishnaic, Medieval or Modern Hebrew. These languages get the Judaism box because they owe their very existence to Judaism. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 13:15, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, but so much has changed in the past 4 months...we now have Template:Jewish languages instead of Template:Jews and Judaism sidebar in the article.  :) Tomer TALK 17:17, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
So we do. Nevertheless, my argument still holds as a reason why there is no Template:Christian language, Template:Muslim language, or Template:Hindu language. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:53, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
Cautionary tale: My grandparents would speak Yiddish in the car when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about. Nor did they take initiative to teach us. Consequently, I never learned Yiddish. I imagine this is true for many post-Holocaust American Jews and greatly reduced the amount of speakers over all. --Happylobster 16:20, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

The template

picking up a thread from the previous section...

I'm on the fence regarding the Judaism box. As far as the number of speakers goes, I updated the Jewish languages article to match the number here, more or less, but more accurate numbers would definitely help. Jayjg (talk) 17:50, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps links could be given at the bottom of the page to pages on Jewish ethnicity? I'm leaning towards TShilo12's position. Hasdrubal 21:27, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would like to point out that not a lot (certainly less than half) of the {{Jews and Judaism sidebar}} template is about the Jewish religion. Jews constitute a case where it is very hard to separate ethnic and religious definition. The box is intended to tie together the various major topics one might reasonable associate with the Jew article. Yiddish certainly is part of that context. – Jmabel | Talk 23:48, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

This is correct. At the same time, there is plenty of irrelevant material within the template (besides religion), in part due to the fact

that Yiddish is a specifically Ashkenazic language. As I said - could we have a compromise by removing the template and adding such links as refer to Ashkenazic culture and ethnicity to the end? It is not as if the Jew article were hard to reach from the text, anyhow. Hasdrubal 00:59, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind if we dropped the template from this article, keeping only that parts that might be considered to be "at one remove" from this topic. Maybe do a "subst" with the template, then edit out what is not relevant? – Jmabel | Talk 01:11, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)


This sounds like a good idea: abbreviate the table to contain information more relevant to this article. The same should probably be done with the template at Ladino. Does this require a vote? If so, I'd like to call for one. TShilo12 01:31, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No vote needed, but you might be reverted by someone who disagrees. – Jmabel | Talk 05:57, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
In the interest of avoiding a revert war, then, is there some way we can solicit comment from those who might not have been following this conversation thus far, before proceding? -t TShilo12 07:18, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Your suggestion sounds fine to me, though I'd like to see what it will look like. Jayjg (talk) 17:59, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Clearly no one who is closely monitoring this page objects in principle, or they'd have spoken up by now. The way to avoid a "war" is just not to fight one. Make your changes, include the words "see talk" in your edit summary, and if someone reverts you, have a discussion instead of reverting him/her back. – Jmabel | Talk 18:08, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)
Agreed, just do it.--Doric Loon 23:09, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bah. I started to make a new template Jewish_langs and then stopped. I still think it's bad form to have the Template:Jew in there, since the template is non-linguistic in nature. At the same time, it would be foolish to make a new template for Jewish_langs, from the perspective of double-maintenance. I made a couple of alterations to the text as well, to clarify that Yiddish is spoken by c. 3M people, most of whom are Ashkenazi Jews, although Yiddish is still the only language in Wikipedia whose opening description identifies the ethnicity/religion of its speakers. I think there's a lot of baggage that goes along with Yiddish that makes it difficult for people who are familiar with it to distinguish the language from Ashkenazi cultures...and that is still abundantly obvious in the article itself, which contains a lot of Jewish history and associations that really have nothing to do with the language itself. TShilo12 23:43, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, why don't you just remove the template? As you said, the article already has, within its text, plenty of references to many relevant articles (and perhaps even a few irrelevant ones, as you seem to imply, though I haven't been looking for them...). Hasdrubal 19:58, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I took the bull by the horns. Tell me what you think. – Jmabel | Talk 23:35, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)
I like it, but think it should list all the Jewish languages, and leave out everything else. I can think of several more Jewish languages not listed in this template. Jayjg (talk) 00:01, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Go for it! – Jmabel | Talk 02:23, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. Also, perhaps we should leave out "Jewish religion" (that was the original reason for removing the template, no?) and certainly "Who is a Jew?" (what is it doing there?). Hasdrubal 18:01, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
OK, I'll work on it. Jayjg (talk) 18:12, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Great job Jayjg. I really like it. :-) I see that the Jewish languages article still features the Template:Jew. Perhaps it's actually appropriate there, I dunno. That article really needs some work, but I'll take up that discussion on its talk page. TShilo12 03:02, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Slavonic in history section

It strikes me that the history section is incomplete. Between the "Judeo-German to Old Yiddish" subsection and the modern bit we need a note about how from the 16th century (was it because of the pogroms?) many Ashkenazi Jews moved East and Yiddish began to borrow Slavonic words. That needs to be in the history section, rather than further down the page. My expertise stops precisely where the Savonic influence starts. Is there someone else out there who can write this up? --Doric Loon 23:09, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Recommendation to split article

Would anyone be opposed to splitting off the Orthography and Grammar sections into independent articles? TShilo12 07:36, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It might make sense; how are other lengthy language articles handled? Jayjg (talk) 14:24, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I just made a cursory "study". English language has separates articles for History of the English language, List of dialects of the English language, a complete set of articles for regional varieties, including Liberian English and Jamaican English, along with about 20 other variants, English grammar, Lists of English words of international origin, English alphabet, and about 30 "See Also" articles, most of which deal exclusively with English. The French language article isn't nearly as detailed, but it has separate articles for French phonology and orthography and French grammar. Spanish language has split off articles on Names given to the Spanish language, the History of the Spanish language, Spanish dialects and varieties, Spanish grammar, Spanish verbs and Spanish phonology, and Russian language has Russian alphabet, Russian orthography, Russian phonetics, Russian grammar, History of Russian language, Reforms of Russian orthography, Russian sayings and Russian proverbs. German language has German grammar, German alphabet, German pronunciation, German spelling reform and German as a Minority Language. Even Hebrew language, which could really use some breaking up itself, has Hebrew alphabet and Romanization of Hebrew. I don't know how to preserve the edit history across the movement of just a section of an article, so I'll leave that in someone else' capable hands. Tomer 02:08, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

I think the two should be made into an orthography/grammar article. They may be split into separate articles sometime in the future, but at this time I think that they are too short on their own. StradivariusTV 01:09, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are you volunteering to take up that task? Tomer TALK 01:13, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
Allow me to clarify...I would long since have done it myself...but as I already stated, I don't know how to preserve the edit history of a section of an article when it's moved...or more specifically, how to move just a section of an article.  :-/ Tomer TALK 01:15, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
As I understand it, we don't really need to deal with preserving the edit history in the same place. The first edit summary should say something like "factored out of Yiddish language"; then the history is here. – Jmabel | Talk 02:04, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
OK. Is any further discussion required on the matter? Should I maybe wait a full week from the original suggestion date and then proceed? Tomer TALK 05:57, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Concern about " can be readily refuted by a study of historical records and linguistic structures." and "Both languages have written standards"

I'm concerned about the phrase "can be readily refuted by a study of historical records and linguistic structures." This is a bald claim; can someone provide better support fo it? Also, I'm concerned that the phrase "Both languages have written standards" might be unclear. Jayjg (talk) 14:23, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I changed it because the previous version was klutzy, and similarly presented no basis for its claim. Any POV there was not introduced by me...all I did was reword it. Personally, I'd like someone who has some credentials to redo that whole section. I don't know what's potentially confusing about "Both languages have written standards". Each language has an established academy governing its usage. Despite the fact that the German article does not say it is regulated, it is: by the editors of the Duden dictionary. (see [6], cached version:[7], [8]). The only regulating body I know of for Yiddish is YIVO. I don't know whether or not it was YIVO which strenuously objected to using Hebrew spellings for Hebrew words in Yiddish, advocating instead that they be spelled according to Yiddish spelling rules. Admittely it only ever had jurisdiction over the Yiddish in use in places where the language was official, notably the USSR, although this recommendation is still followed in the CIS. TShilo12 16:12, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I was hoping Doric Loon would come back and provide more information, citations, that sort of thing. Jayjg (talk) 16:49, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it was YIVO, but rather the Soviet government, that prescribed Yiddishized spellings for Hebrew loanwords in Yiddish. The officially atheist Soviet government wanted to emphasize the separation of Yiddish from Hebrew. AJD 18:33, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. For example, the Soviet newspaper Emes spelled "Emes" phonetically, whereas the YIVO kept the Hebrew spelling. As far as I know, YIVO is still

seen as setting the standard for secular publications everywhere; the haredim and hassidim do pretty much their own thing - it would be good if somebody made a detailed comparison. Hasdrubal 22:39, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yiddish verbs

I have been working on a couple of comparative articles on the Germanic verb. Two of these need examples from Yiddish. Is there anyone here who knows how to enter the Hebrew characters (defeats me!) who can add the necessary info to these. One of them is the article Germanic weak verb, where the conjugation of the Yiddish verb needs to be added to the table. I didn't want to copy this over from the "Yiddish language" article because we really want to use the verb cognate with "work/wirken" if possible. The second article is West Germanic strong verb, where Yiddish needs a short entry at the end of the section on each of the seven classes parallel to that given to Dutch (please keep the format consistent). This will require someone to go through the list of Yiddish strong verbs at the end of a dictionary and find in each case which class they belong to - it will always be the same clas as the German cognate! - and list them. I will add any comparative comments required, and will help you if you get into trouble. (By all means use my talk page for sorting out problems!) But this should be done by someone who speaks Modern Yiddish, and as you know, I stop at 1600. --Doric Loon 14:54, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • A couple of ways to enter Hebrew characters: if you are on a Microsoft Windows system, you can use the Character Map tool. Alternately, you can go to an article like Hebrew alphabet, cut the alphabet to a text file, and use copy and paste to move letters around. – Jmabel | Talk 06:26, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
    • Character Map works well for Windows; BabelMap is even better. On Mac OS X, of course there's the Character Palette, and on just about any OS, Hebrew keyboard layouts are available that make the task that much easier. However, there's one issue that you ought to be aware of. The English Wikipedia uses ISO 8859-1 as its native format, rather than Unicode. This means that Hebrew letters get converted into character entities (e.g. א is coded as &#1488;). On Windows XP (in both IE and Mozilla), you don't need to worry about that, as Hebrew letters typed into the edit box get converted to entities automatically. However, on Mac OS X, Safari will not convert Hebrew letters to proper entities, so you'd actually need to type &#1488; to get an alef. (I'm not sure about other Mac browsers; I haven't tested them for this yet.) In other words, you can just directly enter the Hebrew if you're using Windows, but if you're using a Mac (at least with Safari), you need to enter the character entities themselves. I'm not sure why this is the case.--Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 13:18, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • FireFox on Windows, like IE, works fine for this. – Jmabel | Talk 03:23, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

YIVO as regulating authority

Ok, so sorry if I screw up the formatting here a bit, I'm new at this. I noticed that we don't have listed a regulating authority for Yiddish. However, YIVO (http://www.yivoinstitute.org/) is the official authority on klalshpracht, dictionary yiddish. They've published the definitive Yiddish/English Dictionary (by Uriel Weinriech) and the most commonly used textbook, College Yiddish.

Again, sorry if I screwed up the formatting, feel free to fix it! --Pmshef 04:42, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yiddish Wikipedia

Hi all. I just got the meshuganer idea I want to help out the moribund Yiddish Wikipedia, currently languishing at 121 articles, and wondered if anyone here would be interested in collaborating. It's crazy of course because I can't actually speak Yiddish to any reasonable degree, but still I feel an impetus to help open up Yiddish on the web. My idea is to base it on the 12-volume (5 volumes general topics, 7 volumes Jewish topics) Algmeine Encyclopedie in Yiddish published in the 1940s, which seems to be the Yiddish equivalent of the 1911 Britannica both in its unprecedented scope and in that as far as I can tell[9], noone has renewed the copyright in the United States. I can get access to the Algmeine in a library and upload some articles, but I'll need help in editing them. I think with a reasonable basis in the old 12-volume warhorse, we could help build a real collaboratively-edited encyclopedia here for a sometimes undervalued language spoken by millions. So, nu, what do you think?--Pharos 05:00, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

  • What's the copyright status? 1940s should still be "in copyright": can we get permission to put it out there under GFDL? – Jmabel | Talk 04:16, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
    • Publications between 1923 and 1963 would still be copyrighted, if the copyright had been renewed. I tried searching this link for "Yiddish" and only 54 books came up, not including the encyclopedia or, for that matter, the 1928 edition of the Harkavy dictionary. Apparently CYCO/Der Alveltlekher Yidisher Kultur-Kongres/Congress for Jewish Culture, which published the encyclopedia, is still functioniong, but I couldn't find a web presence. I suppose I should talk to the folks at YIVO to be sure.--Pharos 04:43, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
      • If we publish it, and then a copyright holder turns up and complains, we're screwed. Yes, YIVO is the best bet for someone who might have the status of this (and, even if this one turns out to be off limits, for what else might be worth looking into). – Jmabel | Talk 06:49, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
I'm willing to participate. I am a native speaker of Yiddish. Daykart 20:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Splitting off morphology section

The article is getting quite lengthy – 10kb over the preferred 32kb. It is also quite large in terms of content. I think the morphology should be put in a separate Yiddish morphology. If there are no objections after two weeks I'll go ahead and do it. StradivariusTV 19:57, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Cut: vague

I cut this recent edition because it is so vague as to qualify as little more than rumor: "A recent study of dialects in remote parts of switzerland, found a medieval german language, still spoken, was almost identical to yiddish spoken in the rhine basin." Could be true; it so, a citation (and better wording) would be in order. No problem with material like this in the article if it cites the study (or at least sites a reliable source that cites the study), but useless without that. – Jmabel | Talk 17:07, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like original research to me. Show me something credible and peer-reviewed. Daykart 17:16, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Citation

Futhark, I see you both added and later removed http://www.degruyter.de/journals/ijsl/2001/pdf/150_027.pdf as a reference, removing because it went dead. Is there an equivalent citation?

BTW, this shows the problem with inline URLs as links rather than more verbose forms of linking. With no title, author, etc. given, and (as it happens) with this link not currently (perhaps just not yet) showing up on the Internet Archive, it is almost impossible for anyone but the original author of the passage to try to help find a substitute when the link goes dead. – Jmabel | Talk 02:05, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The deleted URL linked to the full text of a journal article that was available without restriction online when I first added it. The publisher has since changed the access terms to subscription only. The article is the one by Joshua A. Fishman listed at http://www.degruyter.de/journals/ijsl/ijsl15001.html. If I knew of any equivalent text, I would have added a reference to it, as I will also do if my on-going searching for such things leads anywhere useful. --futhark 06:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone want to make a case for this link?

In the external links:

Seems to me like a simply commercial site with nothing about the videos in question except sales hype. But it is sort of on-topic, so I figured I'd give at least 24 hours for someone to make a case for keeping it. Barring that, I'm removing it. – Jmabel | Talk 07:54, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

And perhaps I've been over-generous: same anon linked this at Yiddish theater and Jewish humor and also added a link to the same site at Encyclopaedia Judaica. Looks like straight commercial linkspam, I say remove all of them, but having just said I'd give it 24 hours, I guess I'll hold myself to that. – Jmabel | Talk 07:57, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
No response, so I'm removing. – Jmabel | Talk 07:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew naming conventions

Urgent: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 18:16, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

jidisch

eß leb dajtschland un eß lebn di jidn! mir libn undser hejmland! eß leb der ratn-farband! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.169.211.135 (talk • contribs) 9 Dec 2005

Yeah, and your German is atrocious too. Daykart 17:18, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
It's not German, it's Yiddish spelt inthe German way which can look quite strange. I think it would be "es leb daytshland un es lebn di yidn! mir libn undzer heymland! es leb der ratn-farband!" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.35.52.232 (talk • contribs) 28 Dec 2005
Actually, in German it would be: ich liebe Deutschland und ich liebe die Juden. Wir lieben unser Heimland. Ich liebe den ratn-farban. your german is pretty bad. Engelmann150:58, 28 May 2005 (EST)

Loschen Aschkenas

The other word for Yiddish is "Language of Germany" (Yiddish:Loschen Aschkenas, German: Sprache Deutschlands). Aschkenasim is the Germany in Yiddish for ca 500 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.169.208.183 (talk • contribs) 16 Nov 2005

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