Yiddish

West Germanic

Elbe Germanic

High German

Yiddish

### Writing system

Hebrew Alphabet (Old Yiddish Orthography and New Yiddish Orthography), Latin Alphabet, Cyrillic Alphabet

**Yiddish** (ייִדיש, יידיש or אידיש, *yidish*/*idish*, lit. "Jewish",  pronounced [ˈjɪdɪʃ] [ˈɪdɪʃ]; in older sources ייִדיש-טײַטש *Yidish-Taitsh*, lit. Judaeo-German)[3] is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a High German-based vernacular fused with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic as well as from Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized version of the Hebrew alphabet.

The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז (*loshn-ashknaz*, "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש (*taytsh*), a variant of *tiutsch*, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון (*mame-loshn*, lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קדש (*loshn koydesh*, "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for *Yidish Taitsh* "Jewish German", did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the more common designation.

Modern Yiddish has two major forms. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian), and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Orthodox Jewish communities worldwide and is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic and some Lithuanian yeshivas.

The term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music": klezmer).

## History

By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe which came to be called אַשכּנזי *Ashkenazi*, "Ashkenazi Jews, from Hebrew: אַשכּנז‎ *Ashkenaz* (Genesis 10:3), the medieval Hebrew name for northern Europe and Germany.[17] Ashkenaz was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer), in what is now the westernmost part of Germany. Its geographic extent did not coincide with the German principalities of the time, and it included northern France. Ashkenaz bordered on the area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews, who ranged into southern France. Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations.

Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. The first language of the Ashkenazim may, as noted above, have been the Aramaic language, the vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia. The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek-speakers, and this is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., *Kalonymus*). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. Much work needs to be done, though, to fully analyze the contributions of those languages to Yiddish.

It is generally accepted that early Yiddish was likely to have contained elements from other languages of the Near East and Europe, absorbed through migrations. Since some settlers may have come via France and Italy, it is also likely that the Romance-based Jewish languages of those regions were represented. Traces remain in the contemporary Yiddish vocabulary: for example, בענטשן (*bentshn*, "to bless"), from the Latin *benedicere*; לייענען (*leyenen*, "to read"), from the Latin *legere*; and the personal names אַנשל *Anshl*, cognate to Angel or Angelo; בונים Bunim (probably from "bon homme"). Western Yiddish includes additional words of Latin derivation (but still very few): for example, אָרן *orn* (to pray), cf. Latin and Italian "orare".

The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the many dialects from which Standard German would emerge a few centuries later. In time, Jewish communities would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into the region. Although not reflected in the spoken language, a main point of difference was the use of the Hebrew alphabet for the recording of the Germanic vernacular, which may have been adopted either because of the community's familiarity with the alphabet or to prevent the non-Jewish population from understanding the correspondence. In addition, there was probably widespread illiteracy in the non-Hebrew script, with the level of illiteracy in the non-Jewish communities being even higher. Another point of difference was the use of Hebrew and Aramaic words. These words and terms were used because of their familiarity, but more so because in most cases there were no equivalent terms in the vernacular which could express the Jewish concepts or describe the objects of cultural significance.

The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita's *Bovo-Bukh* (בָּבָֿא-בּוך), composed around 1507–08 and printed in at least forty editions, beginning in 1518 (Pesaro). Levita, the earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written פּאַריז און װיענע *Pariz un Viene* (Paris and Vienna). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט *Vidvilt* (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as *Kinig Artus Hof*, an adaptation of the Middle High German romance *Wigalois* by Wirnt von Gravenberg.[21] Another significant writer is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557.

Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew, but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the *Bovo-Bukh*, and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה *Tseno Ureno* and the תחנות *Tkhines*. One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln, whose memoirs are still in print.

The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון *mame-loshn* but not לשון־קדש *loshn-koydesh*, and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish was ווײַבערטײַטש (*vaybertaytsh* = "women's *taytsh*," shown in the heading and fourth column in the adjacent illustration), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in *vaybertaytsh* (also termed מעשייט *mesheyt* or מאַשקעט *mashket*—the construction is uncertain)

The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled *Mauscheldeutsch* (i. e. "Moses German") declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and the *Haskalah* led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. A Maskil (from the same root word as Haskalah) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew, Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". (Liptzin 1972).

In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement). Notable Yiddish writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem, whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער (*Tevye der milkhiker*, "Tevye the Dairyman") inspired the Broadway musical and film *Fiddler on the Roof*; and Isaac Leib Peretz.

In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and it for a time achieved status as one of the official languages of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic, and the likewise short-lived Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to the 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO. In Vilnius, there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish.

Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. With the foundation of the Galitsian Worker's Republic and support by the Soviet government, Yiddish was allowed to fully culturally mature. Within Galitsia many Yiddish speakers adopted local phrases in Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish becoming more Slavic in nature. During this period Yiddish orthography was standardized as well as a Latin and Cyrillic writing system was developed for Yiddish. Pre-standardization Yiddish is known as Old Yiddish Orthography and post-standardization Yiddish is known as New Yiddish Orthography. Following the creation of Galitsia and the influx of non-Jewish Yiddish speakers, many non-Jewish Yiddish speakers began referring to Yiddish as Galitsyanish (Yiddish: גאַליציאַניש, *Galitsian*), Taytsh(Yiddish: טײַטש, historical term for *German*) or *Alttaysh* (Yiddish: אַלטטײַטש, historical term for *High German*).