Talk:Yiddish/Archive 1

message: 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)
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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.
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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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  old comments 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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 upaphoristically, indeedthe 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)

text: Thanks.Jmabel | Talk 04:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Weinreich aphorism" demoted to a link

message: 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)
replies: text: I removed Swedish, and reduced German to a "comparison". I think that makes more sense. AJD 21:52, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  jiddisch or judisk? 

message: 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)
thread_title: Slavonic in history section

message: 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)
replies: text: 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 , cached version:, ).  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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)

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

message: 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)
thread_title: Yiddish verbs

message: 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)
thread_title:  YIVO as regulating authority 

message: 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, 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)
replies: text: I'm willing to participate. I am a native speaker of Yiddish. Daykart 20:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yiddish Wikipedia 

message: The article is getting quite lengthy10kb 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)
thread_title:  Splitting off morphology section 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Cut: vague 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Citation 

message: In the external links: 	
*Yiddish Videos at www.Israel-Media.com 	
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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  No response, so I'm removing.Jmabel | Talk 07:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does anyone want to make a case for this link? 

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