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5 minute tute: Yiddish

How many people speak Yiddish these days?

Today there are far less than a million people who speak Yiddish. Before the Second World War, there were about 11 million Yiddish speakers!
According to some estimates, about 600,000 people speak Yiddish worldwide today. The majority of them are based in the United States and Israel. But at least in the ultra-orthodox Hasidic communities the number of Yiddish speakers is on the rise, as they take the commandment “Thou shalt be fruitful and multiply” very seriously indeed…

 
How long has Yiddish been spoken for, and how has it evolved?

Yiddish has been spoken for approximately 1,100 years. The majority of scholars hold that it started to evolve in the Germanic lands of Central Europe, where Jews from France and Italy settled in the 10th century. Their encounter with the surrounding medieval German dialects resulted in a unique Jewish language that fuses together large elements of medieval German with Hebrew and Aramaic as well as some Romance elements. The earliest extant document in Yiddish dates from 1272 and consists of one line in the Machzor (festival prayer-book) of Worms.
When Jews moved eastwards, the language was further enriched by Slavic elements, mainly from Polish, Ukrainian and Belorussian. The Yiddish spoken today is almost exclusively Eastern Yiddish (in its various dialects), apart from a few remaining Western Yiddish speakers in Alsace.

 
Is there a tradition of Yiddish literature?

There is a vast tradition of Yiddish literature. Old Yiddish literature ranges from epic poems about Jewish knights as Elye Bokher’s Bove-bukh (1541) to collections of tales as the Mayse-bukh (1602) and religious literature popular among women as the Tsenerene (1622), also known as the Ashkenazic “Women’s Bible”.
Although there were both Hasidic and Maskilic works written in Eastern Yiddish in the early 19th century, modern Yiddish literature only evolved in the late 19th century. The three classics of modern Yiddish literature are Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Sh.Y. Abramovitsh), Sholem-Aleykhem and Y.L. Perets. Yiddish literature flourished in the period between the two world wars and had its three main centres in Poland, Soviet Russia and the United States. In 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer was the first Yiddish writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
Today there are still a small number of Yiddish poets and writers in Israel, the US and Eastern and Western Europe.

 
Are there any Yiddish idioms that have come into use in English?

Yiddish words like shlep (dragging – either oneself or heavy loads), kvetsh (complaining), meshuge (crazy) and khutspe, often spelled “chutzpah” (impertinence) are very commonly used among British and American Jews. Sometimes, though, Yiddish words have changed their meaning in English. In Yiddish a shmues is just a friendly conversation. But the English “to shmooze” has taken on the meaning of chatting in a persuasive manner, often in order to obtain favours. Unfortunately, apart from Jewish culinary delights, such as beygelekh (bagels), latkes, kugl, and knishes, it is often Yiddish curses and rude words, which reach the general public.

 

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