Yiddish - ײדיש

[Quevenois]

Sounds a bit like German, except many Yiddish speakers trill the r's, so it sounds nicer.

About the number of Yiddish speakers, there are still many, and there are places, even in the USA, where Yiddish is the main language of some communities. I remember I read on Wikipedia that there's a town in the USA where most inhabitants use Yiddish as their everyday language.

[Ennys]

Hey quevenois, you here?

Sounds a lot like German and a bit like Dutch...I can understand it a bit when I listen very attentively.

I heard no thrilled r's however..maybe it is a question of dialect; there are German dialects that thrill the r, and there are dialects that don't.

[0stsee]

Besides, ppl also study Latin and Ancient Greek and other long-dead languages, so there should be no problem with Yiddish....

That's what I meant. You don't conduct a "normal" conversation in Latin. And that seems to be the future of Yiddish.

The only possibility of it being revived is if there is a country or territory where its use is encouraged (and official).

I have nothing against Yiddish. I'm just depicting the situation today.
A language can be revived after hundreds of years of "death". And yet is Yiddish not dead. It's just dying.

Hope you get what I mean.

[Lazar Taxon]

There are places like the ultra-Orthodox community of Kiryas Joel in New York State, where most of the population uses Yiddish. (And then of course there's the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, where Yiddish is official but nobody uses it.)

[Ennys]

How many people are still speaking Yiddish, approximately? If there are whole towns using it as an everyday lamguage, the future cannot be so sombre...

[Lazar Taxon]

I think most of the native Yiddish speakers today are Haredim (very conservative Orthodox Jews). Wikipedia gives various sources estimating the number of Yiddish speakers as 215 000 in Israel, 179 000 in the US, 30 000 in Russia, 19 000 in Canada, 17 0000 in Moldova, 3 000 in Ukraine and 2 000 in Belarus.

Before World War 2, Yiddish served as a vibrant language of Jewish expression throughout Eastern Europe, and there were 11 to 13 million native speakers. But several million of them were killed in the Holocaust, and in the following decades the remaining speakers largely assimilated to national languages like English, Russian and Hebrew.

[Babelfish]

Besides, ppl also study Latin and Ancient Greek and other long-dead languages, so there should be no problem with Yiddish....

That's what I meant. You don't conduct a "normal" conversation in Latin. And that seems to be the future of Yiddish.

The only possibility of it being revived is if there is a country or territory where its use is encouraged (and official).

I have nothing against Yiddish. I'm just depicting the situation today.
A language can be revived after hundreds of years of "death". And yet is Yiddish not dead. It's just dying.

Hope you get what I mean.

Well, we might've taken it too hard... It's just a bit odd that someone would bother to enter a thread where people express their interest in a certain language, and remark that it's dying. Like I said, people have interest even in long-dead languages. Personally I might even be able to train its use with my mother and uncle, who still have some knowledge of it... (although right now I'm not getting into it). Just recently I've read an article about growing interest in Israel in Yiddish, along with other ancient languages such as Aramaic, and while there is no official support for it, films and plays have recently been composed in it. Its similarity to German is also an advantage, we might yet see a comeback

[zhiguli]

indeed, there's no need to state the patently obvious (especially for those of us who actually have relatives who speak this language).

Its similarity to German is also an advantage, we might yet see a comeback

considering that there are dialects of german that are a lot more divergent from hochdeutsch than yiddish it's quite possible to study it as just another dialect.

[Timpul]

Does anyone is interested in this beautiful language? I've just recently started to learn it from one of the Polish handbooks and this language seems to be really nice and easy, especially for those who know a bit of German. The only barrier is the alphabet, but I have no problem - it took my about 3-4 days to learn it perfectly, cause it's almost totally regular.

Does anyone here know some Yiddish?

Ähmm, sorry for being a bit blunt, but AFAIK, Yiddish is a dying language. Most of the descendants of Yiddish speakers grow up speaking another language, which mean they may have a passive knowledge of Yiddish, yet they don't use it actively. Previous posts showed this.
In that case, whom are you going to practice it with actively?
Unless you are trying to have only a passive knowledge of the language. That would be a different story.


Greetz

I don't see connection between our posts

[Alejo]

Sounds a bit like German, except many Yiddish speakers trill the r's, so it sounds nicer.

About the number of Yiddish speakers, there are still many, and there are places, even in the USA, where Yiddish is the main language of some communities. I remember I read on Wikipedia that there's a town in the USA where most inhabitants use Yiddish as their everyday language.

That town is called the senior communities of Florida.

I've been there to visit my grandfather quite a few times. He's Jewish, but the only other languages(sides English, naturally) that he speaks are Russian and Spanish. But ALL his friends are Ashkenazim, and he can understand quite a bit of Yiddish. But seriously, where he lives...you would think you're in a ghetto or something.

[ceid donn]

That town is called the senior communities of Florida.

Ah, well, Yiddish is still spoken in pockets here and there across the US, but sadly, it's mostly the older generation. Younger Jewish-American folk tend to know only some words and phrases at most, especially words and phrases that have crossed over into American colloquial English. Most Americans know a few (usually derogatory) Yiddish words, whether they realize they're Yiddish or not. American lawyers or judges may know more than the average Jewish American, since a fair amount of Yiddish has made its way into American jurisprudential jardon and Yiddish words can be accepted as formal legal terms in most US courts when there is no English word that will suffice.

One of my great-grandfathers (my mother's maternal grandfather) was a German-born Jewish-American who spoke English, German and Yiddish, but the tradition of speaking Yiddish in my family died with him, sadly. I've learned no Yiddish from my family - what little I know I have picked up from American culture, my Jewish friends and my German studies. I wish I knew more.

[Babelfish]

...a fair amount of Yiddish has made its way into American jurisprudential jardon and Yiddish words can be accepted as formal legal terms in most US courts when there is no English word that will suffice.

Really? Cool! Do you know any examples?

[Sisyphe]

...a fair amount of Yiddish has made its way into American jurisprudential jardon and Yiddish words can be accepted as formal legal terms in most US courts when there is no English word that will suffice.

Really? Cool! Do you know any examples?

I've never heard anything like this before...and I've gotten a nice head start on getting my pre-law reqs in for college, so it's not as if I have no knowledge of the field of law...I'm interested in examples too...
I do wonder if it's only a Texas thing though, but I'll save my comments about the Texan legal system...

More on topic...I love Yiddish, it's such a versatile language. And I love to hear it sung also...It's definitely a language I'd like to learn...maybe after the Arabic and Hebrew I'm working on now...I have dabbled in it recently, but it's a pity there aren't more resources for it in English though - or maybe the lack is an omen that I dabble too much. Id definitely agree that Americans use a lot more of it than they probably realize too - though I have no idea whatsoever how that came to be.

[Kuba]

I don't know about jurisprudential jargon, but a friend of mine (studying medicine) was working in a hospital in Philadelphia for half a year and he was amazed how Yiddish words were used in the operating room (although he first thought these words were German). E.g. he was once told by a nurse: "Christoph, you have shmuts on your shirt!" The American "gezuntheyt" is also rather a Yiddish than a German loan, I think...

[Timpul]

Does anyone know a resource to a yiddish online keyboard (if there's nothing like that, hebrew would be also appreciated)?

[Babelfish]

If you're using Windows XP, then you should be able to add a Hebrew keyboard layout. I don't know if there's a specific layout for Yiddish.

[neoni]

there was a lot of yiddish in the house when i was growing up. i'm learning german now, and intend to learn hebrew (again ) at some point in the future.

hopefully yiddish will fall into my lap after that? i can read it - albeit very slowly - and it just sounds like what i'd imagine my mother would in german. i'd like to see the language make some kind of comeback, outside the chasidic, extremely orthodox communities.
i read about a yiddishkeit fair somewhere in america (canada, maybe?)

lemme see if i can find a link.

[''']

I don't know, now that Hebrew is becoming evermore the universal jewish language, I doubt Yiddish will ever really be popular. In Israel (I hear <_<) Yiddish is something spoken only by old askenaziim. I will leanr Yiddish though. After I was reading up on skinheads on wiki and I saw the languages box list a language with Hebrew characters but it wasn't hebrew. So I clicked it then found out that I could read some of it, so I was hooked. Alas, my Yiddish is all but non-existant at the moment but it'll be fun to learn., Especially since I REALLY want to do German and well...maybe Polish too 'cos I hate it so.

So far my favourate phrase is:
ס'איז שווער צן זײַן א ייִד

romanised Yiddish: S'iz shver tzu zayn a yid
Germanic transcription: [e]S'iz schwer zu zajn a yid
English: it is hard to be a jew

[Timpul]

Why do you hate Polish? (just curious)

[''']

The sounds. Though I'm re-evaluating it, since I also have some small polish ancestry. But why can't they just use a normal post-alveolar fricative [ʃ]? What's with this Palatalised stuff [ɕ]? And the vowels, they scare me. Still, I see it as a challenge, and I can't let a language get the better of me. Besides, the polski naked mole rap rules.