Prior to World War II, Yiddish was spoken by approximately 11 million people. Today, the Yiddish language is spoken by about three million people, mostly Jews. People who speak Yiddish can be found all over the world, particularly in Israel, Argentina, Canada, France, Mexico, Romania, and the United States. Many organizations devoted to preserving Yiddish have recently become active.
Yiddish developed from a blend of German dialects spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews in Germany. It eventually came to be spoken by Jews not only in Germany but also in many other central and eastern European countries. However, many Yiddish-speaking communities were devastated during the Holocaust, leading to the steep decline in the number of speakers and the spread of the Yiddish language to other countries as its remaining speakers scattered to new homes.
Since the 13th century, written Yiddish has used a variation of the Hebrew alphabet that has been adapted to the sounds of Yiddish. Some letters which are consonants in Hebrew are used as vowels in Yiddish. Other vowels are indicated by using diacritic marks with base characters that can serve as either vowels or consonants.
The Yiddish alphabet has 22 letters. Yiddish is written from right to left, the opposite of English. There are no capital and lowercase letters in Yiddish.
The Yiddish pronunciation of certain letters and words can vary noticeably from one dialect to the next.
Although Yiddish grammar is largely based on Medieval German, its vocabulary has come from many sources, including German, Hebrew, various Slavic languages and, recently, English. Many words of Yiddish origin have also entered English vocabulary, ranging from
chutzpah and
schmooze to
kibitz and
bagel.
Yiddish nouns are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Nouns ending in
-izm, -l, -n, -em, and
-er are usually masculine. Nouns ending in
-ut, -ay, and
-kit are usually feminine. Nouns ending in
-g and
-tum are usually neuter. Although Yiddish nouns do not generally change form for different cases, Yiddish pronouns, Yiddish articles, and Yiddish adjectives do. Yiddish verbs are conjugated to show person and tense. The conjugation tends to be very regular, with few exceptions to the normal pattern of verb endings.
Practice is important to learn to speak Yiddish well. That's why good
Yiddish software programs can be so useful. It's easier than ever to learn Yiddish and to begin to speak Yiddish with the language resources and Yiddish language software from Transparent Language, such as
Languages of the World. We wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to learn Yiddish!
