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Anyone speak/learning Yiddish here? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5409 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 9 of 15 07 February 2012 at 4:00pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, Yiddish is more closely related to the Alemanic German dialects. I spent some time in Switzerland and found that, sometimes, their version of Standard German sounded a bit like Yiddish. Surely it has something to do with Yiddish being born in the Rhine Valley.
On the "Yiddish is/is not a German dialect"-issue, I wrote that Yiddish was one because it's 70-80% Germanic and share a common ancestor with modern standard German. The fact that (modern) Germans may have a hard time understanding it does not seem (to me) to be the most important point when speaking of language classification (maybe I'm mistaken but I think I read somewhere that the two dialects of Lithuanian are not mutually understandable). To make my point clearer, when I say "German dialect" I do not mean "bastard son of modern standard German" but only that they have the same roots. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 10 of 15 07 February 2012 at 8:29pm | IP Logged |
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I tried. I wasn't motivated enough. This thread makes me wanna try again when I have more time and a couple of Germanic languages under my belt.
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| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5240 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 15 08 February 2012 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
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I've never studied Yiddish, but I did buy Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods, by
Micheal Wex. Funny with lots of examples! And although I'm not Jewish, I've also been tempted by Ladino, with its similarities to Spanish, perhaps like Yiddish is to German. I was so excited when I looked up a Ladino site & I could read much of it thanks to Spanish. Sometimes I have to content myself with just reading ABOUT the languages instead of actually studying them! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5729 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 12 of 15 09 February 2012 at 5:58pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, Ladino sounds fascinating!
I studied Yiddish for some time formally at university. Unfortunately, I don't use it a lot anymore so it slowly fades away. I had German in high school before that so I had a lot of passive vocabulary stored in my head thanks to that. It also took me some time to get used the Yiddish word order, because I would unconsciously use the German word order (verb at the end of the sentence usually). All in all, it was a great experience. It was funny how some words and phrases were just German and Polish put together. A kettle is דער טשײַניק(der tshaynik) which is German article and the exact representation of the word czajnik from Polish. Edited by pesahson on 09 February 2012 at 6:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 13 of 15 13 February 2012 at 7:42pm | IP Logged |
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Not studying it but I find it interesting. I have occasionally heard it spoken, and while in written form it looks "exotic" to an English speaker, in spoken form it sounds to me, anyway, like a somewhat aberrant dialect of German.
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| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6553 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 15 of 15 14 February 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged |
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I have the Assimil box patiently waiting for me (next to some others) and Yiddish is a "stupid" language for me. Why?
Stupid that I didn't learn it as a kid, as my grandmother spoke it around the house. Stupid that I didn't learn it when my uncle and aunts spoke it fluently as their hidden language (along with a few others). Stupid that I never asked my father who speaks it. Stupid that I didn't take advantage of the learning method my aunt published which was for a while THE reference method for teaching children Yiddish. Stupid that I hated it as a little kid, because I somehow blamed it for my grandmother's guttersnipe Spanish (she learned Spanish from Communist bricklayers and other "unsavory" types in Mexico). Stupid kid. So it's a language to which I am in debt for cultural reasons and I will eventually need to pay that debt. Along with a few others, it is standing in line -- Polish, Hebrew, Nahuatl, Basque, Arabic, Romanian and .... well, you get the idea, it is on the list. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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