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Differences between German and Yiddish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6261 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes  Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 9 22 May 2010 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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To my great astonishment, I've seen that Assimil has produced a Yiddish course! That said, as I love Jewish cuture and want to learn German, Yiddish is a like a must for me.
What interests me is this, how exactly different are German and Yiddish? Apart the obvious different script, choice of words borrowed from Hebrew and Slavic languages, are the two languages mutually intelligible? Is the grammar and the structure the same? Can a standard Yiddish speaker make a conversation with a standard German speaker with no serious problem (the two having never studied the other language)? Could you say that if one masters Yiddish, to speak German he'd only need to switch some words later on (and viceversa)? Disclaimer: with Yiddish, standard Yiddish etc. I mean Eastern Yiddish, the one mostly spoken nowadays. Edited by Fazla on 22 May 2010 at 8:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| indiana83 Groupie United States ipracticecanto.wordp Joined 5489 days ago 92 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese, Italian | Message 2 of 9 23 May 2010 at 1:22am | IP Logged | ||
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If you know neither language, then they do sound very similar. Five years ago, I studied German for one year. A month ago, I listened to a speech in Yiddish, and I understood many of the words. However I could hear plenty of differences too.
I looked for some audio samples online (youtube has plenty). Some sound identical to German, others have a very different pronunciation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6261 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 3 of 9 23 May 2010 at 2:16am | IP Logged | ||
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It's not much about pronounciation, what interests me the most is to know if the structure of the language itself is identical, if the great great majority of words are identical or not. Basically, I want to know if it makes sense to learn Yiddish TO learn German with little effort later on(I know it sounds stupid, but as I have my reasons for liking more Yiddish thus putting more effort into it instead of German, I want to know if this is affordable). If people here tell me they are similiar like Italian and Spanish or even more, I think what I'm saying would make sense. Edited by Fazla on 23 May 2010 at 2:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| urubu Pentaglot Groupie Germany Joined 6605 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: German*, Dutch, Portuguese, Indonesian, English | Message 4 of 9 23 May 2010 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
For me as a German speaker, the degree to which Yiddish is transparent ranges wildly (i.e. from 100% to 0%), depending upon the number of Slavonic & Semitic words, and unfamiliar Germanic cognates. Let's take this example (from: Salzia Landmann, Jiddisch): "A gevesene mark-yidene emigrirt keyn Yisroel un farkoyft in Tel-Aviv epl. Zi zitst lebn ir koysh un farbet die koynem mit a nign: "Tapukhim, lemakoyr, lekhamoyr". The first sentence is completely transparent, as this literal translation shows: "Eine gewesene Marktjüdin emigriert gen Israel und verkauft Äpfel in Tel-Aviv" (Normal German: Eine ehemalige (jüdische) Marktverkäuferin emigriert nach Israel und verkauft in Tel-Aviv Äpfel/English: A former (Jewish) marketwoman emigrates to Israel and sells apples in Tel Aviv.) In the second sentence only the beginning is clear: 'Zi zitst...' (DE: Sie sitzt/EN: She sits) The following four words are incomprehensible: lebn (looks like DE 'Leben'/EN 'life', but that does not make sense, it actually means DE 'neben'/EN 'next to') koysh (DE: Korb/EN: basket) farbet (DE: ruft herbei (literally: verbittet)/EN: beckons) koynem (DE: Kunden/EN: customers) The end of the second sentence seems to be transparent, but is actually misleading. 'mit a nign' looks like 'mit einem Nicken' (EN: with a nod) but it actually means 'chanting melodically'. Edited by urubu on 23 May 2010 at 2:47pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 5 of 9 23 May 2010 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yiddish includes a large number of Hebrew words absent from German. It also has a fairly large Slavic element in its vocabulary. And some verb usages in Yiddish are apparently influenced by verbal aspect of the kind used in most Slavic languages. German does not have this influence.
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| MichaelM204351 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5443 days ago 151 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 6 of 9 24 May 2010 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||
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They tend to be very similar, in my opinion. As an intermediate level speaker in both German and Hebrew, I can open up a college level Yiddish textbook (Weinreich's "College Yiddish") and read most of the Yiddish literary passages. My German professor said she could understand Yiddish pretty easily...
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| NativeLanguage Octoglot Groupie United States nativlang.com Joined 5337 days ago 52 posts - 110 votes Speaks: French, Spanish, English*, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek, Portuguese, Catalan Studies: Japanese, Mayan languages, Irish | Message 7 of 9 24 May 2010 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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As someone who has studied a bit of Yiddish and considerably more Modern Standard German "from the outside", I can offer a perspective here. Every piece of Yiddish grammar easily relates to MSGerman, and even most exceptions have an analogue in some German dialect (such as the replacement of the genitive case with Yid. fun + possessor = Germ. von + possessor).
The biggest differences apart from the writing system, are lexical and phonological (and these even vary between dialects of Yiddish). Hebrew supplies mostly "content" words, esp. nouns and verbs, but there are notable exceptions. I am less aware of Slavic influences on Yiddish but, if pushed to venture a guess, they're likely more evident in lexis and phonology (words and sounds) than the structure of the language. As for learning German and converting it to Yiddish, I strongly suggest that this is more than a "code-switching" situation - Yiddish has evolved on its own, and is not simply Modern Standard German peppered with Hebrew words. Still, Modern German is likely the best available starting point, and Yiddish is no further from MSGerman than many local German dialects. I am even more familiar with a similar situation between Ladino (the traditional Sephardic language) and Standard Spanish. I speak & read Spanish, and can decipher writings in Ladino. Seems a Ladino non-(standard) Spanish speaker and a Spanish speaker can't communicate perfectly, but there's enough common ground for strong mutual intelligibility. Yiddish and German shared a similar relationship over the same period of time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mspen1018 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5330 days ago 36 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English, German, Sign Language Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 8 of 9 24 May 2010 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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ich kann Deutsch... and I was a cosmetologist for a few years after high school and was hired to do Bat Mitzvahs (I
think it is what it is called, had to do the same updo on 20 girls) and the older women spoke Yiddish and to me it seemed like the Jewish German version of what Americans call "Ebonics" among the black community ( i.e. "I'm not gonna ax you again"). I don't know much about the Aleph bet though, except that the Hebrew Aleph bet (alphabet) has numeric values associated with it. But to me that is what it sounded like. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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