8 ms·

I cannot but note how the author (who lives in Berlin, studying a Germanic language) denotes for some reason the „German component“ in Yiddish to the vocabulary

I cannot but note how the author (who lives in Berlin, studying a Germanic language) denotes for some reason the „German component“ in Yiddish to the vocabulary. That’s a bit strange because, well, the vocabulary only makes for one part of a language. It completely leaves out things like phonetics or most importantly grammar. If Yiddish isn’t written in Hebrew letters most Germans can read it. And hearing Yiddish (if you still can) is usually closer to modern high German attuned ears than say Suisse German. What also feels construed is the part about the diminutives: The Yiddish Hershele example is exactly how people form diminutives in south west Germany till this day, exactly the area where Yiddish originated. Yiddish diminutives are such a direct pointer towards their German origin, that most non-southwest Germans that don’t use these diminutives would read the Yiddish ones and think a Swabian/Hessian/Palatine/Badisn wrote them. The same holds true with regards the „Yiddish Slavic syntax“: Unlike what the author claims multiple negation is still used in south west Germany (where Yiddish comes from) as well as Bavaria. It’s either intent (bad, but normal as the field of linguistics is often highly politicized - is it a coincidence that Chomsky studied this?) or just lack of looking at the „German component“ because it is less exciting than exploring the „Polish component“ (understandable).

blisterpeanuts 6y ago
I've heard it said before that Yiddish sounds like Bavarian. Are you a native German speaker? If you hear spoken Yiddish, can you identify it as such, or does it just sound like some weird Bavarian dialect?
- canjobear 6y ago
  I’ve only heard Yiddish in movies and TV. To my ears, it does have a Bavarian flavor, but also lots of surprising stuff that you wouldn’t have in Bavarian. For example the vowel that would be long /o:/ in most German dialects comes out in Yiddish as /oi/.
  - Hublium 6y ago
    I'm being a bit of a smartass here, but in some areas of Upper Austria (part of the Bavarian language area), the MHG long "o" is pronounced as "oi". https://media04.meinbezirk.at/article/2013/01/14/7/5943487_XXL.jpg?1561467254 https://media04.meinbezirk.at/article/2013/01/14/7/5943487_X...
    - canjobear 6y ago
      Haha, I was expecting someone would tell me that it does happen somewhere deep in Austria. Cool map!
- microtherion 6y ago
  As a Swiss German, Yiddish sounds a lot like Swiss German to me, though it's certainly easily distinguished (and I couldn't speak it easily).
bradleyjg 6y ago
> And hearing Yiddish (if you still can) is usually closer to modern high German attuned ears than say Suisse German. There’s Yiddish as a first language kids to this day in haradi (ultra-orthodox) communities. I’m told that it’s a slightly different variant then the version my secular grandparents spoke, but it’s still out there.
- nine_k 6y ago
  I still see lots of orthodox Jewish speakers of Yiddish here in Brooklyn, NY; I even sometimes see their small kids speaking Yiddish, though pretty rarely. The language is definitely not dead yet. I am not Jewish in any way, so my exposure is random encounters on the street / in parks, unlikely an overestimation.
  - ido 6y ago
    "not dead yet" is a good summery. The trajectory is very clear.
    - nanna 6y ago
      Nah this isn't true. Among Haredi Jewish communities it's still very often the mame loshn (mother tongue), and they're growing in number. Secular Yiddish has been having a revival for a couple of decades, but to me it seems like more of an academic object of study than a living language, like it is for the Haredim.
      - bradleyjg 6y ago
        On the secular Yiddish side, I don’t know anyone of my generation (holocaust +2) that speaks it even haltingly. Just maybe a few words and phases more than the average goyishe New Yorker. The prior generation is a mixed bag but I have no relatives that had it as a first language. I have an uncle that’s fluent enough to listen to podcasts and the like, but he’s in his mid 70s. Fluency was near universal in the generation before that (i.e. people alive during the holocaust), but from what I understand even in Europe before the war it was common by then to also know another language—-German, Russian, Polish, Etc.
yaacov 6y ago
Yeah, my German Jewish friend told me that spoken Yiddish sounds like medieval peasant German, and reading Yiddish written in Hebrew script makes him feel like he’s having a stroke.
- akavel 6y ago
  This seems to align with what the article says in: "[...] it is estimated that the Germanic element makes up some 70 to 75% of the overall lexicon [...]" and: "[...] note that early Yiddish developed from Middle High German dialects [...]"
ajuc 6y ago
> What also feels construed is the part about the diminutives I don't think they meant to say -el/-ele were slavic influence. They just mentioned them and then went on to obviously slavic ones like -chki,-chik,-yu and -nyu. > multiple negation is still used in south west Germany I don't think it works the same way though? In south German dialects it puts "no" at the end: "Das macht KEINEN Spaß NICHT". In Polish (and in Yiddish AFAIU) it puts "no" before the verb: "To NIE sprawia ŻADNEJ frajdy" is a little more natural but "To ŻADNEJ frajdy NIE sprawia" is perfectly fine as well. I don't know Yiddish well enough to translate that but I think it would be closer to the Polish sentence in word order.
kolinko 6y ago
Culture.pl is a Polish site - hence their focus on the Polish connections. No maliciousness there I think :)
akavel 6y ago
But why do you claim the article "leaves out" German grammar, if the mention of it is clearly there, as an explicitly called out base, in the very first sentences of the article? "With its German grammatical structure and the bulk of its vocabulary coming from German, Yiddish is usually classified as a Germanic tongue. [...]" Given this unambiguous note at the beginning, I find it easy to understand that the author of the article wants to focus on an aspect of the language that he sees as less blatantly obvious, and thus potentially more interesting to a reader. Would you find an article explaining that "the Sun is bright" more interesting than exploring some nuances of it, e.g. how the Sun can become less bright during a rare event of an eclipse? Now this makes me confused if there's some "intent" behind your comment, given that it takes a demonstrably incorrect claim and builds a vague accusation on it; not to mention that even if there was any truth to this false claim, a sprinkle of a good will assumption can still lead the reader in a direction of completely benign motive. With that said, given that I prefer to start with an assumption of good will, I hope and suspect you probably just skipped or forgotten the first paragraphs of the article; I just wish you made sure to re-read them before jumping to accusations. edit: looking into the history of your comments, I would recommend reconsidering if a more constructive and less trolling/inflammatory approach could make your contributions to the community & discussions a better long-term strategy.

blisterpeanuts 6y ago

I've heard it said before that Yiddish sounds like Bavarian. Are you a native German speaker? If you hear spoken Yiddish, can you identify it as such, or does it just sound like some weird Bavarian dialect?

canjobear 6y ago
I’ve only heard Yiddish in movies and TV. To my ears, it does have a Bavarian flavor, but also lots of surprising stuff that you wouldn’t have in Bavarian. For example the vowel that would be long /o:/ in most German dialects comes out in Yiddish as /oi/.
- Hublium 6y ago
  I'm being a bit of a smartass here, but in some areas of Upper Austria (part of the Bavarian language area), the MHG long "o" is pronounced as "oi". https://media04.meinbezirk.at/article/2013/01/14/7/5943487_XXL.jpg?1561467254 https://media04.meinbezirk.at/article/2013/01/14/7/5943487_X...
  - canjobear 6y ago
    Haha, I was expecting someone would tell me that it does happen somewhere deep in Austria. Cool map!
microtherion 6y ago
As a Swiss German, Yiddish sounds a lot like Swiss German to me, though it's certainly easily distinguished (and I couldn't speak it easily).

bradleyjg 6y ago

> And hearing Yiddish (if you still can) is usually closer to modern high German attuned ears than say Suisse German. There’s Yiddish as a first language kids to this day in haradi (ultra-orthodox) communities. I’m told that it’s a slightly different variant then the version my secular grandparents spoke, but it’s still out there.

nine_k 6y ago
I still see lots of orthodox Jewish speakers of Yiddish here in Brooklyn, NY; I even sometimes see their small kids speaking Yiddish, though pretty rarely. The language is definitely not dead yet. I am not Jewish in any way, so my exposure is random encounters on the street / in parks, unlikely an overestimation.
- ido 6y ago
  "not dead yet" is a good summery. The trajectory is very clear.
  - nanna 6y ago
    Nah this isn't true. Among Haredi Jewish communities it's still very often the mame loshn (mother tongue), and they're growing in number. Secular Yiddish has been having a revival for a couple of decades, but to me it seems like more of an academic object of study than a living language, like it is for the Haredim.
    - bradleyjg 6y ago
      On the secular Yiddish side, I don’t know anyone of my generation (holocaust +2) that speaks it even haltingly. Just maybe a few words and phases more than the average goyishe New Yorker. The prior generation is a mixed bag but I have no relatives that had it as a first language. I have an uncle that’s fluent enough to listen to podcasts and the like, but he’s in his mid 70s. Fluency was near universal in the generation before that (i.e. people alive during the holocaust), but from what I understand even in Europe before the war it was common by then to also know another language—-German, Russian, Polish, Etc.

yaacov 6y ago

Yeah, my German Jewish friend told me that spoken Yiddish sounds like medieval peasant German, and reading Yiddish written in Hebrew script makes him feel like he’s having a stroke.

akavel 6y ago
This seems to align with what the article says in: "[...] it is estimated that the Germanic element makes up some 70 to 75% of the overall lexicon [...]" and: "[...] note that early Yiddish developed from Middle High German dialects [...]"

ajuc 6y ago

> What also feels construed is the part about the diminutives I don't think they meant to say -el/-ele were slavic influence. They just mentioned them and then went on to obviously slavic ones like -chki,-chik,-yu and -nyu. > multiple negation is still used in south west Germany I don't think it works the same way though? In south German dialects it puts "no" at the end: "Das macht KEINEN Spaß NICHT". In Polish (and in Yiddish AFAIU) it puts "no" before the verb: "To NIE sprawia ŻADNEJ frajdy" is a little more natural but "To ŻADNEJ frajdy NIE sprawia" is perfectly fine as well. I don't know Yiddish well enough to translate that but I think it would be closer to the Polish sentence in word order.

kolinko 6y ago

Culture.pl is a Polish site - hence their focus on the Polish connections. No maliciousness there I think :)

akavel 6y ago

But why do you claim the article "leaves out" German grammar, if the mention of it is clearly there, as an explicitly called out base, in the very first sentences of the article? "With its German grammatical structure and the bulk of its vocabulary coming from German, Yiddish is usually classified as a Germanic tongue. [...]" Given this unambiguous note at the beginning, I find it easy to understand that the author of the article wants to focus on an aspect of the language that he sees as less blatantly obvious, and thus potentially more interesting to a reader. Would you find an article explaining that "the Sun is bright" more interesting than exploring some nuances of it, e.g. how the Sun can become less bright during a rare event of an eclipse? Now this makes me confused if there's some "intent" behind your comment, given that it takes a demonstrably incorrect claim and builds a vague accusation on it; not to mention that even if there was any truth to this false claim, a sprinkle of a good will assumption can still lead the reader in a direction of completely benign motive. With that said, given that I prefer to start with an assumption of good will, I hope and suspect you probably just skipped or forgotten the first paragraphs of the article; I just wish you made sure to re-read them before jumping to accusations. edit: looking into the history of your comments, I would recommend reconsidering if a more constructive and less trolling/inflammatory approach could make your contributions to the community & discussions a better long-term strategy.