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Yiddish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| zhiguli Senior Member Canada Joined 6440 days ago 176 posts - 221 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 41 of 48 14 August 2009 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
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My father is one of the old European native-speakers. He didn't teach me the language and will not speak it to me for various reasons (oddly, he has no problems speaking Hungarian or German, even though these are the languages of the "enemy")
I think it's safe to say that this Yiddish, the medium of secular Jewish culture in Eastern Europe of the early 20th century, is on its way out. The native speakers are dying off and the language is not being passed on. There are two forms of Yiddish that survive: -The Yiddish of the orthodox communities. This is the same as my father's Yiddish more or less, but more limited in scope. As I understand it, the Orthodox do not read the classic authors because they're "blasphemous" and don't even write in it themselves that much. So it's mainly a spoken language, one that readily absorbs English (or other) words and doesn't pay any mind to notions of "purity". -"College" Yiddish. As the name implies this is the kind you'll learn in a classroom, a kind of artificial, standardised form that doesn't sound (or look, thanks to YIVO orthography) anything like what a native speaker would actually use. This is the one that the revivalists are banking on, but one that native speakers generally don't approve of. Given this, (and barring a sudden change of heart from my father, who's not getting any younger) I doubt I will be learning Yiddish. At most I'll learn to read it passively. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ilmari Tetraglot Newbie Australia Joined 5509 days ago 23 posts - 47 votes Speaks: French*, Modern Hebrew, English, Japanese Studies: Korean, Finnish, Yiddish, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto | Message 42 of 48 22 December 2009 at 4:40am | IP Logged |
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Yivo has just released a pdf asnwer key to the standard Yiddish textbook "College Yiddish"
It can be freely downloaded from here: Answer Key to College Yiddish Edited by ilmari on 22 December 2009 at 4:44am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Risch Groupie United States Joined 5588 days ago 49 posts - 71 votes Speaks: English* | Message 43 of 48 22 December 2009 at 6:59am | IP Logged |
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This is probably grossly off topic, but this thread brought to mind something I've
thought about recently. I haven't been exposed to too much Yiddish, but as I wish to someday learn both German and Hebrew I can see myself stuyding a bit of it at some point. What is interesting to me is that there a good number of words in American English which are descended from Yiddish. Among the general populace they are often considered humorous slang words and in many cases the meaning has changed a bit from its orignal definition. I'm thinking of words like: schlep (carry/drag something heavy), klutz (clumsy person), schmuck (jerk), chutzpah (audacity), maven (expert), schmooze (socializing for personal gain), chotchke (collected trinket), and glitch (malfunction of technology), among others. I imagine in the New York area there are many more Yiddish words that have gone mainstream. Until I developed an interest in linguistics, it had never occured to me that words like these came from a language of the Jewish diaspora. It causes me to wonder how long words like these have circulated in American English. An interesting fact I learned recently (thanks to the interwebs) pertains to the first Jewish community in North America. Apparently, it was established in the 1650s in New Amsterdam by Dutch Jewish colonizers from Brazil who had been forced out by Portugal's reclamation of their lost territory. New York's Jewish community, then, is nearly as old as the city itself. I am curious to know if other varients of English (or any language) have adopted Yiddishisms and if so, how did they enter the lexicon? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stryozyk Newbie United States Joined 5469 days ago 39 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 44 of 48 22 December 2009 at 10:01am | IP Logged |
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I don't know. Though it certainly seems on the surface that Yiddish is moribund, there are many people
learning it in university and of course the Hasidic populations grow quickly. We may never have the classic Yiddish of Sholom Aleichem et al again, but hey, Hebrew in its original form died out as a spoken language two thousand years ago and is now spoken - evolved but more or less intact - by seven million Israelis. Perhaps our or a future generation can have its "modern Yiddish". I certainly hope so, as Yiddish is about the funnest language to speak and learn I know. It's important to note that Yiddish is not merely a pidgin German with some Hebrew and Russian thrown in. It developed separately from German but they share a common ancestor. One would not say, for example, that English is a pidgin Dutch with a lot of French thrown in - though of course the level of mutual intelligibility between German and Yiddish is high. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Morak99 Newbie United States Joined 5484 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 45 of 48 24 December 2009 at 4:41am | IP Logged |
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Another loanword to English word that absolutely can’t be forgotten- Bagel!
There's a fair number of Jews in my area, and almost all of them who are 55 years old or more can speak some basic Yiddish. It's actually pretty easy to find local classes or Tudors for Yiddish. In the 2000 census, about 178,000 people reported speaking Yiddish at home in the United States- not bad for a so called "dying" language. I don't know any Yiddish myself, but a lot of my fellow Jewish friends do. Most of them go or went to Jewish schooling institutions instead of public schools though, and only picked it up after learning Hebrew and German. Also, as for Ladino- this is a language of Sephardic Jews, and a mix between Hebrew and Spanish. Yiddish is an Ashkenazi Jew language. Edited by Morak99 on 24 December 2009 at 10:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Nocturne Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 6147 days ago 67 posts - 70 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishB2 Studies: Korean, Swedish | Message 47 of 48 30 December 2009 at 4:56am | IP Logged |
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As a learner of Hebrew, I've recently acquired a fascination for Yiddish and I've decided to learn some when time permits, so I bought myself a nice little gift for Christmas in the form of "College Yiddish" by Uriel Weinrich. I've read some pretty good reviews about it, let's hope it's really as good as they say! And thanks ilmari for posting the link to the answer key, it'll definitely prove useful.
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| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5480 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 48 of 48 30 December 2009 at 9:00pm | IP Logged |
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Being of Jewish descent and an observant conservative Jew to this day I must say that I have had some contact with Yiddish. First of all, it was almost like a "lingua franca" amongst Jews from different countries (Poland, Germany, Russia, etc.). It was a language that was used in Jewish communities INSTEAD of the vernacular, because of it's links to Judaism. It is still somewhat true amongst the more Orthodox communities. They used Yiddish instead of Hebrew as the Jewish vernacular because Hebrew was considered the holy tongue, and swearing or talking about everyday things was NOT for the holy tongue. However, it still wasn't (or isn't) uncommon for some communities to speak Hebrew though, DESPITE that statement. Nowadays, some communities have switched completely to the vernacular, but Yiddish has been kept alive for a while, and I don't think it's going anywhere soon.
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