Yiddish (ייִדיש yidish or אידיש idish, literally: "Jewish") is a non-territorial Germanic language, spoken throughout the world and written with the Hebrew alphabet. It originated in the Ashkenazi culture that developed from about the 10th century in the Rhineland, and then spread to central and eastern Europe, and eventually to other continents. In the earliest surviving references to it, the language is called לשון ־ אַשכּנז (loshn-ashkenaz = "language of Ashkenaz") and טײַטש (taytsh, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for the language otherwise spoken in the region of origin, now called Middle High German; compare the modern New High German or Deutsch). In common usage, the language is called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn, literally "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from biblical Hebrew and Aramaic which are collectively termed לשון־קודש (loshn-koydesh, "holy tongue"). The term Yiddish did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature of the language until the 18th century. For a significant portion of its history it was the primary spoken language of the Ashkenazi Jews and once spanned a broad dialect continuum from "Western Yiddish" to three major groups within "Eastern Yiddish". Eastern and Western Yiddish are most markedly distinguished by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin in the Eastern dialects. While Western Yiddish has few remaining speakers, Eastern dialects remain in wide use. Yiddish is written and spoken as a living language in many Orthodox Jewish communities around the world. It is most notably used as a first language in most Hasidic communities, where it is the first language learned in childhood and used in home, schooling and many social settings. A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... For other uses, see Indo-European. ... The West Germanic languages constitute the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages and include languages such as German, English and Frisian, as well as Dutch and Afrikaans. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Writing systems of the world today. ... // Orthography Description and development The Yiddish language is written with the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet. ... , Capital Birobidzhan Area - total - % water Ranked 61st - 36,000 km² - no data Population - Total - Density Ranked 80th - est. ... Look up De jure in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Motto: Je Maintiendrai (Dutch: Ik zal handhaven, English: I Shall Uphold) Anthem: Wilhelmus van Nassouwe Capital Amsterdam1 Largest city Amsterdam Official language(s) Dutch2 Government Parliamentary democracy Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Beatrix  - Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende Independence Eighty Years War   - Declared July 26, 1581   - Recognised January 30, 1648 (by Spain... YIVO, (Yiddish: ייִוואָ), founded in 1925 as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Yiddish: ייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט), or Yiddish Scientific Institute, is the most authoritative source for orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to the Yiddish language. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... The Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... Language(s) Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, English Religion(s) Judaism Related ethnic groups Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and other Jewish ethnic divisions Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (Standard Hebrew: sing. ... As a means of recording the passage of time, the 10th century was that century which lasted from 901 to 1000. ... The Rhineland (Rheinland in German) is the general name for the land on both sides of the river Rhine in the west of Germany. ... Central Europe is the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. ... Eastern Europe is a concept that lacks one precise definition. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... Middle High German (MHG, German Mittelhochdeutsch) is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. ... New High German (NHG) is the term used for the most recent period in the history of the German language. ... Hebrew redirects here. ... Aramaic is a group of Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Language(s) Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, English Religion(s) Judaism Related ethnic groups Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and other Jewish ethnic divisions Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (Standard Hebrew: sing. ... A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. ... Western Yiddish is a dialect of Yiddish spoken by hardly any people at all, predominantly Ashkenazic Jews. ... // Yiddish has two main branches: Western and Eastern. ...  Countries where a West Slavic language is the national language  Countries where an East Slavic language is the national language  Countries where a South Slavic language is the national language The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος) is a variant, or variety, of a language spoken in a certain geographical area. ... Western Yiddish is a dialect of Yiddish spoken by hardly any people at all, predominantly Ashkenazic Jews. ... Orthodox Judaism is the formulation of Judaism that adheres to a relatively strict interpretation and application of the laws and ethics first canonised in the Talmudic texts (Oral Torah) and as subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and Acharonim. ... This article is about the Hasidic movement originating in Poland and Russia. ...

The general history and status of the Yiddish language are discussed below, with further detail provided in a series of separate articles on:

• Yiddish dialects—as spoken in different regions of Europe
• Yiddish morphology—the structural detail of the language
• Yiddish orthography—the written representation of the language
• Yiddish phonology—the elements of the spoken language

Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense to designate attributes of Ashkenazic culture (for example, Yiddish cooking and Yiddish music). // Regional variation Yiddish has two main branches: Western and Eastern. ... Yiddish morphology is the morphology of the Yiddish language. ... // Orthography Description and development The Yiddish language is written with the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet. ... There is significant phonological variation among the various dialects of the Yiddish language. ... See also & External Links Hechsher Kashrut Kosher foods Seder Shtetl: Kitchen English to Yiddish Dictionary Wikibooks Cookbook has more about this subject: Kosher Categories: Stub | Jewish foods | Cuisine ... Klezmer (from Yiddish כּלי־זמיר, etymologically from Hebrew kli zemer כלי זמר, musical instrument) is a musical tradition which parallels Hasidic and Ashkenazic Judaism. ...

History

The Ashkenazic culture that took root in 10th-century Central Europe derived its name from Ashkenaz (Genesis 10:3), the medieval Hebrew name for the territory centered on what is now designated as Germany. Central Europe is the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. ... Ashkenazi (אַשְׁכֲּנָזִי, Standard Hebrew Aškanazi, Tiberian Hebrew ʾAškănāzî) Jews or Ashkenazic Jews, also called Ashkenazim (אַשְׁכֲּנָזִים, Standard Hebrew Aškanazim, Tiberian Hebrew ʾAškănāzîm), are Jews who are descendants of Jews from Germany, Poland, Austria and Eastern Europe. ... For other uses, see Genesis (disambiguation). ...

Its geographic extent did not coincide with the German Christian principalities, and Ashkenaz included Northern France. It also bordered on the area inhabited by the Sephardim, or Spanish Jews, which ranged into southern France. Later, the Ashkenazic culture would spread into Eastern Europe as well. For other uses, see Christian (disambiguation). ... In the strictest sense, a Sephardi (ספרדי, Standard Hebrew Səfardi, Tiberian Hebrew Səp̄ardî; plural Sephardim: ספרדים, Standard Hebrew Səfardim, Tiberian Hebrew Səp̄ardîm) is a Jew original to the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal: ספרד, Standard Hebrew Səfárad, Tiberian Hebrew Səp̄áraḏ / Səp̄āraḏ), or whose ancestors were among the Jews expelled from... Eastern Europe is a concept that lacks one precise definition. ...

Nothing is known about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. It is generally accepted that it was likely to have contained elements from other languages of the Near East and Europe absorbed through dispersion. Look up Vernacular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Since many settlers came 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, and the personal name Anshl, cognate to Angel, Angelo. Western Yiddish includes additional words of Latin derivation (but still very few), for example orn (to pray), cf. Latin 'orare'.

Liuboml, near Kovel, Volhynia, around 1900. A bilingual German/Yiddish sign reads "Volks-Küche/Folks-kikh" (People's Kitchen).

The first language of European Jews may have been Aramaic (Katz 2004), the vernacular of the Jews in Roman era Palestine, 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. Image File history File links According to User:Magister, this picture is shtetl Lyuboml(Liuboml) near Kovel, Volhynia, around 1900. ... Image File history File links According to User:Magister, this picture is shtetl Lyuboml(Liuboml) near Kovel, Volhynia, around 1900. ... Liuboml (Ukrainian: , translit. ... Coat of Arms, circa 1993 Kovel (In Ukrainian and in Russian: Ковель, in Polish: Kowel) is a town now situated in western Ukraine in the Volyn oblast. ... Volhynia (Ukrainian: , Polish: , Russian: ; also called Volynia) comprises the historic region in western Ukraine located between the rivers Prypiat and Western Bug -- to the north of Galicia and of Podolia. ... Äž: For the film, see: 1900 (film). ... Aramaic is a Semitic language with a four-thousand year history. ... A 2003 satellite image of the region. ... Mesopotamia was a cradle of civilization geographically located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq. ...

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). Much work needs to be done though, to fully analyze the contributions of those languages to Yiddish.

Members of the young Ashkenazi community would have encountered the myriad dialects from which standard German was destined to emerge many centuries later. They would soon have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into the region. These dialects would have adapted to the needs of the burgeoning Ashkenazi culture and may, as characterizes many such developments, have included the deliberate cultivation of linguistic differences to assert cultural autonomy. The term minority rights embodies two separate concepts: first, normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious or sexual minorities, and second, collective rights accorded to minority groups. ...

The Ashkenazi community also had its own geography, with a pattern of relationships among settlements that was somewhat independent of its non-Jewish neighbors. This led to the consolidation of Yiddish dialects, the borders of which did not coincide with the borders of German dialects.

Written evidence

The oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish is a blessing in a Hebrew prayer book from 1272 (described extensively in Frakes 2004 and Baumgarten/Frakes 2005):

This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in a purely Hebrew text (a reproduction of which is in Katz 2004). Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German into which Hebrew words — makhazor (prayer book for the High Holy Days) and beis hakneses (synagogue) — had been included. The pointing appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately. The mahzor (machzor in Hebrew, pl. ... This article refers to the Jewish holidays. ... The synagogue Scolanova Trani in Italy. ... In Hebrew orthography, Niqqud or Nikkud (Hebrew: , Standard  Tiberian  ; dots) is the system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. ...

Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and also macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in the late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the geniza of a Cairo synagogue in 1896, and also contains a collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah. This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ... (14th century - 15th century - 16th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 15th century was that century which lasted from 1401 to 1500. ... Macaronic refers to text spoken or written using a mixture of languages. ... Dukus Horant is a 14th-century narrative poem in Judeo-German (Proto-Yiddish). ... The Cairo Geniza is an accumulation of Jewish manuscripts written from about 870 to as late as 1880 CE, that were found in the geniza of the synagogue of Fustat (Old Cairo), Egypt (built 882), the Busatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that were... This article is about the term Hebrew Bible. For the Jewish scriptures see Tanakh. ... Haggadah for Passover, 14th century Haggadah in Hebrew means Telling. ...

Apart from the obvious use of Hebrew words for specifically Jewish artifacts, it is very difficult to determine how much 15th-century written Yiddish differed from the German of that period. This is highly dependent on the phonetic properties that the alphabet is assumed to have had, particularly the vowels. There is a rough consensus that by this period, Yiddish would have sounded distinctive to the average German ear even when restricted to the Germanic component of its vocabulary.

Printing

The advent of the printing press resulted in an increase in the amount of material produced and surviving from the 16th century and onwards. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita's Bovo-Bukh, composed 1507–1508 and printed in at least forty editions beginning in 1541. Levita, the earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written Pariz un Viene (Paris and Vienna). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, 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. Another significant writer is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557. The printing press is a mechanical device for printing many copies of a text on rectangular sheets of paper. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... Elia Levita (1469–1549), also known as Eliahu Bakhur (Eliahu the Bachelor) was the author of the Bovo-Bukh (written in 1507–1508), the most popular chivalric romance in the Yiddish language, which, according to Sol Liptzin, is generally regarded as the most outstanding poetic work in Old Yiddish. [Liptzin... The Bovo-Bukh (Bovo book; a. ... Events The first official translation of the entire Bible in Swedish February 12 - Pedro de Valdivia founds Santiago de Chile. ... The Book of Job (איוב) is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. ... Events Spain is effectively bankrupt. ...

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 Tseno Ureno and the Tkhines. One of the best known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln, whose memoirs are still in print. The Tseno Ureno, sometimes called the Womens Bible, was a 1616 Yiddish-language prose work whose structure parallels the weekly portions of the Pentateuch and Haftorahs used in Jewish worship services. ... Tkhines were Yiddish-language prayer booklets, intended mainly for use by Jewish women who, unlike the men of the time, typically could not read Hebrew. ... Glückel of Hameln (also spelled Gluckel or Gluckl of Hamelin) (1647, Hamburg - September 17, 1727, Metz) was a Jewish businesswoman and diarist, whose account of her life provides scholars with an intimate picture of Jewish life in Germany in the late-seventeenth-early eighteenth century. ...

A page from the Shemot Devarim, a Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German dictionary and thesaurus, published by Elia Levita in 1542

The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read mame-loshn but not 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 מאַשייט Masheyt). Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (432x622, 132 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Yiddish language Elia Levita ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (432x622, 132 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Yiddish language Elia Levita ... Events War resumes between Francis I of France and Emperor Charles V. This time Henry VIII of England is allied to the Emperor, while James V of Scotland and Sultan Suleiman I are allied to the French. ... “Font” redirects here. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...

An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish both appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script from the name of the most renowned early author whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sefardi counterpart to Yiddish, Ladino, is printed in Hebrew script.) Rashi (1040-1105) (Artists imagination) Rashi רשי is a Hebrew acronym for רבי שלמה יצחקי (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi), (February 22, 1040 – July 17, 1105), a rabbi in France, famed as the author of the first comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and Tanakh. ... Not to be confused with Ladin. ...

Secularization

The Western Yiddish dialect began to decline in the 18th century, as The Enlightenment and the Haskalah led to the German view that Yiddish was a corrupt dialect. Owing to both assimilation to German and the incipient creation of Modern Hebrew, Western Yiddish only survived as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups" (Liptzin 1972). Farther east, where Jews were denied such emancipation, Yiddish was the cohesive force in a secular culture based on, and termed, ייִדישקייט (yidishkeyt = "Jewishness"). (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... ... Haskalah (Hebrew: השכלה; enlightenment, education from sekhel intellect, mind ), the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the late 18th century that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew, and Jewish history. ... Hebrew redirects here. ... This article concerns secularity, that is, being secular, in various senses. ... Yiddishkeit (Yidishkayt in standard transcription) literally means Judaism or Jewishness in the Yiddish language. ...

The period of the late 19th and early 20th century is widely considered the Golden Age of secular Yiddish literature. This coincides with the development of Modern Hebrew as a spoken and literary language, from which some words were also absorbed into Yiddish. The three authors generally regarded as the founders of the modern Yiddish literary genre were born in the 19th century, but their work and significance continued to grow into the 20th. The first was Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim. The second was 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. The third was Isaac Leib Peretz. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Categories: People stubs | Jewish history-related stubs | Yiddish writers | Russian Jews ... This article is about the writer. ... Tevye is the protagonist of several of Sholom Aleichems stories, originally written in Yiddish and first published in 1894, most famously the fictional memoir Tevye and his Daughters, about a pious Jewish milkman in Tzarist Russia, and the troubles he has with his daughters (Tevye has six daughters — in... For the film, see Fiddler on the Roof (film). ... Isaac Leib Peretz (May 18, 1852–1915), a. ...

The 20th century

In the early 20th century, Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theater and Yiddish film were booming, and it even achieved status as one of the official languages of the Belorussian and the short-lived Galician SSR. 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, later YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Yiddish emerged as the national language of a large Jewish community in Eastern Europe that rejected Zionism and sought to obtain Jewish cultural autonomy in Europe. It also contended with Modern Hebrew as a literary language among Zionists. Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Eastern European Ashkenazaic Jewish community. ... The National Center for Jewish Film, located at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts is dedicated to preserving the Jewish heritage, through its collection of over 12,000 reels of film. ... State motto: Пралетарыі ўсіх краін, яднайцеся! Belarusian: Workers of the world, unite! Official language None. ... Galician Soviet Socialist Republic (Galician SSR) existed from July 8, 1920 to September 21, 1920 during the Polish-Soviet War within the area of the South-Western front of the Red Army. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... Year 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... YIVO, (Yiddish: ייִוואָ), founded in 1925 as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Yiddish: ייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט), or Yiddish Scientific Institute, is the most authoritative source for orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to the Yiddish language. ... This article is about Zionism as a movement, not the History of Israel. ...

On the eve of World War II, there were between 11 and 13 million Yiddish speakers (Jacobs 2005). The Holocaust, however, led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. Although millions of Yiddish speakers survived the war (including nearly all Yiddish speakers in the Americas), further assimilation in countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union, along with the strictly monolingual stance of the Zionist movement, led to a decline in the use of Eastern Yiddish similar to the earlier decline in Western Yiddish. However, the number of speakers within the widely dispersed Orthodox (mainly Hasidic) communities has recently increased. Although used in various countries, Yiddish has attained official recognition as a minority language only in Moldova, The Netherlands and Sweden. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... “Shoah” redirects here. ... A bilingual poster in Romanian and Hungarian promoting a film about Jewish settlement in Palestine, 1930s. ... Motto: Je Maintiendrai (Dutch: Ik zal handhaven, English: I Shall Uphold) Anthem: Wilhelmus van Nassouwe Capital Amsterdam1 Largest city Amsterdam Official language(s) Dutch2 Government Parliamentary democracy Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Beatrix  - Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende Independence Eighty Years War   - Declared July 26, 1581   - Recognised January 30, 1648 (by Spain...

Reports of the number of current Yiddish speakers vary significantly. Ethnologue estimates that in 2005 there were three million speakers of Eastern Yiddish,^[1] of which over one-third lived in the United States. In contrast, the Modern Language Association reports fewer than 200,000 in the United States.^[2] Western Yiddish, which had "several tens of thousands of speakers" on the eve of the Holocaust, is reported by Ethnologue to have had an "ethnic population" of slightly below 50,000 in 2000.^[3] Intermediate estimates are also given, for example, of a worldwide Yiddish-speaking population of about two million in 1996 in a report by the Council of Europe.^[4] Further demographic information about the recent status of what is treated as an Eastern-Western dialect continuum is provided in the YIVO Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ). Numbers of native speakers from the latest available national censuses and other estimates are as follows: Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Fifth Edition The Modern Language Association of America (MLA) is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of literature and literary criticism. ... “Shoah” redirects here. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... Anthem Ode to Joy (orchestral)  ten founding members joined subsequently observer at the Parliamentary Assembly observer at the Committee of Ministers  official candidate Seat Strasbourg, France Membership 47 European states 5 observers (Council) 3 observers (Assembly) Leaders  -  Secretary General Terry Davis  -  President of the Parliamentary Assembly Rene van der Linden... Demographics refers to selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. ... A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. ... Quotation marks, also called quotes or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase. ...

• Israel: 215,000, or 6% of the total Jewish population, as estimated by Ethnologue (1986)
• Argentina: 200,000 (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Argentina/Languages)
• USA: 178,945, or 2.8% of the total Jewish population (2000)
• Former Soviet Union:

• Russia: 29,998, or 13% of the total Jewish population (2002)
• Moldova: 17,000, or 26% of the total Jewish population (1989)
• Ukraine: 3,213, or 3.1% of the total Jewish population (2001)
• Belarus: 1,979, or 7.1% of the total Jewish population (1999)

• Canada: 19,295, or 5.5% of the total Jewish population (2001)
• Romania: 951, or 16.4% of the total Jewish population
• Latvia: 825, or 7.9% of the total Jewish population
• Lithuania: 570, or 14.2% of the total Jewish population
• Estonia: 124, or 5.8% of the total Jewish population

There has been frequent debate about the extent of the linguistic independence of Yiddish from the languages that it absorbed. Some commentary dismisses Yiddish as mere jargon, although that precise term, in Yiddish, is also used as a colloquial designation for the language (without a pejorative connotation). There has been periodic assertion that Yiddish is a German dialect and, even when recognized as an autonomous language, it has sometimes been referred to as Judeo-German. A widely-cited summary of attitudes in the 1930s was published by Max Weinreich, quoting a remark by an auditor of one of his lectures: אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט (a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot — "A language is a dialect with an army and navy", facsimile excerpt at [2], discussed in detail in a separate article). More recently, Prof. Paul Wexler, of Tel Aviv University in Israel, has proposed that Eastern Yiddish should be classified as a Slavic language, formed by the relexification of Judeo-Slavic dialects by Judeo-German. For the glossary of hacker slang, see Jargon File. ... The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression, also known as the [[. In East Asia, the rise of militarism occurred. ... Max Weinreich (1893/94 Goldingen(Kuldiga), Courland (Latvia) - 1969 New York) was a Yiddish linguist. ... A language is a dialect with an army and navy is one of the most frequently used aphorisms in the discussion of the distinction between dialect and language. ... Relexification is a term from linguistics used in pidgin and creole studies for the mechanism by which one language changes its lexicon to that of another language. ...

Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that the most prominent Yiddish writers of the time — the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries — revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms."^[5] The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulties in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries.

Israel

The national language of Israel is Modern Hebrew. The rejection of Yiddish as an alternative reflected the conflict between religious and secular forces. Many in the larger, secular group wanted a new national language to foster a cohesive identity, while traditionally religious Jews desired that Hebrew be respected as a holy language reserved for prayer and religious study. In the early twentieth century, Zionist immigrants in Palestine tried to eradicate the use of Yiddish amongst their own population, and make its use socially unacceptable. The Modern Hebrew language is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. ... A bilingual poster in Romanian and Hungarian promoting a film about Jewish settlement in Palestine, 1930s. ... A 2003 satellite image of the region. ...

This conflict also reflected the opposing views among secular Jews worldwide, one side seeing Hebrew (and Zionism) and the other Yiddish (and Internationalism) as the means of defining emerging Jewish nationalism. Finally, the large post-1948 influx of Sephardic (including Mizrachi) Jewish refugees (to whom Yiddish was entirely foreign, but who already were familiar with Hebrew) effectively made Hebrew the only practical option for a state language. Still, state authorities in the young Israel of the 1950s went to the extent of using censorship laws inherited from British rule in order to prohibit or extremely limit Yiddish theater in Israel.^{[6][not in citation given]} This article is about Zionism as a movement, not the History of Israel. ... Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation between nations for the benefit of all. ... Language(s) Hebrew, Ladino, Judæo-Portuguese, Catalanic, Shuadit, local languages Religion(s) Judaism Related ethnic groups Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions, Arabs, Spaniards, Portuguese. ... Languages Hebrew, Dzhidi, Judæo-Arabic, Gruzinic, Bukhori, Judeo-Berber, Juhuri and Judæo-Aramaic Religions Judaism Related ethnic groups Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions and Arabs. ...

In religious circles, it is the Ashkenazi Haredi Jews, particularly the Hasidic Jews and the mitnagdim of the Lithuanian yeshiva world, who continue to teach, speak and use Yiddish, making it a language used regularly by hundreds of thousands of Haredi Jews today. The largest of these centers are in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem. Haredi or chareidi Judaism is the most theologically conservative form of Orthodox Judaism. ... This article is about the Hasidic movement originating in Poland and Russia. ... Mitnagdim or misnagdim is a Hebrew word (מתנגדים) meaning opponents; this term was used to refer to European religious Jews who opposed Hasidic Judaism. ... This article is about the Jewish male educational system. ... Mentioned as one of the cities in the portion of the Tribe of Dan (Yehoshua 19:45), Bnei Brak is famous in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 32b) as the seat of Rabbi Akivas court, and in the Pesach Haggada as the site of the all-night Pesach Seder of Rabbi... For other uses, see Jerusalem (disambiguation). ...

There is a growing revival of interest in Yiddish culture among secular Israelis, with Yiddish theater now flourishing (usually with simultaneous translation to Hebrew and Russian) and young people are taking university courses in Yiddish, some achieving considerable fluency (albeit with an accent that would seem very strange to native speakers).^[7] Secular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the culture of secular communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews, or even those of religious Jews working in cultural areas not generally considered to be connected... Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Eastern European Ashkenazaic Jewish community. ...

Former Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union during the 1920s, Yiddish was promoted as the language of the Jewish proletariat. It was one of the official languages of the Byelorussian SSR, as well as several agricultural districts of the Ukrainian SSR. A public educational system entirely based on the Yiddish language was established and comprised kindergartens, schools, and higher educational institutions (technical schools, rabfaks and other university departments). At the same time, Hebrew was considered a bourgeois language and its use was generally discouraged. The vast majority of the Yiddish-language cultural institutions were closed in the late 1930s along with cultural institutions of other ethnic minorities lacking administrative entities of their own. After the Second World War, growing anti-Semitic tendencies in Soviet politics drove Yiddish from most spheres; the last Yiddish-language schools, theaters and publications were closed by the end of 1940s. Yet it continued to be widely used as a spoken medium for decades in the areas with compact Jewish population (primarily in Moldova, Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Belarus). The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually when speaking about the United States. ... The proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. ... State motto: Belarusian: Пралетарыі ўсіх краін, яднайцеся! Translation: Workers of the world, unite! Capital Minsk Official language Belarusian, Russian Established In the USSR:  - Since  - Until January 1, 1919 December 30, 1922 August 25, 1991 Area  - Total  - Water (%) Ranked 6th in the USSR 207,600 km² negligible Population  - Total   - Density Ranked 5th in the USSR... State motto: Ukrainian: Пролетарі всіх країн, єднайтеся! Translation: Workers of the world, unite! Capital Kiev Official language Ukrainian and Russian Established In the USSR:  - Since  - Until December 25, 1917 December 30, 1922 August 24, 1991 Area  - Total  - Water (%) Ranked 3rd in the USSR 603,700 km² negligible Population  - Total   - Density Ranked 2nd in the... A photograph of a «Rabfak» school. ... Bourgeois at the end of the thirteenth century. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ...

In the former Soviet states, presently active Yiddish authors include Yoysef Burg (Chernivtsi, b. 1912), Zisye Veytsman (Samara, b. 1946), and Aleksander Beyderman (b. 1949, Odessa, see German-language Wikipedia article). Publication of an earlier Yiddish periodical (דער פֿרײַנד), was resumed in 2004 with דער נײַער פֿרײַנד (der nayer fraynd; lit. "The New Friend", St. Petersburg). Map of Ukraine (blue) with Chernivtsi highlighted (red). ... This article is about about the city in Russia. ... The ODESSA, which stands for the German phrase Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, which phrase in turn translates as “Organization of Former Members of the SS,” is the name commonly given to an international Nazi network alleged to have been set up towards the end of World War II... Saint Petersburg (Russian: Санкт-Петербу́рг, English transliteration: Sankt-Peterburg), colloquially known as Питер (transliterated Piter), formerly known as Leningrad (Ленингра́д, 1924–1991) and Petrograd (Петрогра́д, 1914–1924), is a city located in Northwestern Russia on the delta of the river Neva at the east end of the Gulf of Finland...

Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Russia

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Russian Federation, where Yiddish is an official language.

Birobidzhan's train terminal square

Main articles: Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Birobidzhan, and Jews and Judaism in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast‎

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was formed in 1934 in the Russian Far East, with its capital city in Birobidzhan and Yiddish as its official language. The intention was for the Soviet Jewish population to settle there. Jewish cultural life was revived in Birobidzhan much earlier than elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Yiddish theaters began opening in the 1970s. The newspaper דער ביראָבידזשאנער שטערן (der birobidzhaner shtern; lit: "The Birobidzhan Star") includes a Yiddish section. The First Birobidzhan International Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Culture was launched in 2007. [3]. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... , Capital Birobidzhan Area - total - % water Ranked 61st - 36,000 km² - no data Population - Total - Density Ranked 80th - est. ... Birobidzhan (ru: Биробиджа́н, yi: ביראָבידזשאן) is the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia; the name is sometimes also used to refer to the entire oblast. ... Far Eastern Federal District (highlighted in red) Russian Far East (Russian: ; IPA: ) is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i. ... The Birobidzhaner Shtern (Yiddish:  ;Russian: ) is a newspaper published in both Yiddish and Russian in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Russia. ...

Moldova

Yiddish, along with Hebrew, is an officially recognized minority language in Moldova for the purposes of the Jewish community. In the capital city of Chişinău, there is a Yiddish language radio program ייִדיש לעבן (yidish lebn; lit. "Jewish Life"), a television program אויף דער ייִדישער גאַס (oyf der yidisher gas; lit. "On the Jewish Street") and the newspaperאונדזער קול (undzer kol; lit. "Our Voice").^[8] There are 17,000 Yiddish speakers in Moldova. Location of ChiÅŸinău in Moldova Coordinates: , Country Founded 1436 Government  - Mayor Dorin Chirtoacă, since 2007 Area  - City 120 km² (46. ...

Sweden

Banner from the first issue of the Jidische Folkschtime (Yiddish People's Voice), published in Stockholm, 12 January 1917

In June 1999, the Swedish Parliament enacted legislation giving Yiddish legal status^[9] as one of the country's official minority languages (entering into effect in April 2000). The rights thereby conferred are not detailed, but additional legislation was enacted in June 2006 establishing a new governmental agency, The Swedish National Language Council, the mandate of which instructs it to, "collect, preserve, scientifically research, and spread material about the national minority languages", naming them all explicitly, including Yiddish. When announcing this action, the government made an additional statement about "simultaneously commencing completely new initiatives for ... Yiddish [and the other minority languages]". Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 497 pixelsFull resolution‎ (2,209 × 1,371 pixels, file size: 235 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) I digitally photographed this image from a newspaper published in Sweden in 1917 for which no copyright is in effect. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 497 pixelsFull resolution‎ (2,209 × 1,371 pixels, file size: 235 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) I digitally photographed this image from a newspaper published in Sweden in 1917 for which no copyright is in effect. ... is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... In 1999 the Minority Language Committee of Sweden formally declared five minority languages of Sweden: Sami language, Romani, Finnish, Yiddish, and Meänkieli (Tornedal). ...

The Swedish government publishes documents in Yiddish, of which the most recent details the national action plan for human rights.^[10] An earlier one provides general information about national minority language policies.^[11]

On 6 September 2007, it became possible to register Internet domains with Yiddish names in the national top-level domain .SE.^[12] is the 249th day of the year (250th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... .se is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Sweden. ...

United States

Yiddish distribution in the United States.      More than 100,000 speakers      More than 10,000 speakers      More than 5,000 speakers      More than 1,000 speakers      Fewer than 1,000 speakers

In the United States, the Yiddish language bonded Jews from many countries. פֿאָרווערטס (forverts - Yiddish Forward) was one of seven Yiddish daily newspapers in New York City, and other Yiddish newspapers served as a forum for Jews of all European backgrounds. The Yiddish Forward still appears weekly and is available in an online edition.^[13] It remains in wide distribution, together with דער אַלגעמיינער זשורנאַל (der algemeyner zhurnal - Algemeiner Journal; algemeyner = general) which is also published weekly and appears online.^[14] The widest-circulation Yiddish newspapers are probably the two prominent Satmar weekly issues דער בּלאַט (Der Blatt; blat = newspaper) and דער איד (Der Yid). Several additional newspapers and magazines are in regular production, such as the monthly publications דער שטערן (Der Shtern; shtern = star) and דער בליק (Der Blick; blik = view). (The romanized titles cited in this paragraph are in the form given on the masthead of each publication and may be at some variance both with the literal Yiddish title and the transliteration rules otherwise applied in this article.) One large center of Yiddish linguistics in Kiryas Joel, New York. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The Forward is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... Satmar is the largest Hasidic group in existence today. ... Der Blatt (Yiddish: ) is a weekly Yiddish newspaper published in New York by Satmar Hasidim. ... Der Yid (Yiddish: ) is a Yiddish language weekly newspaper. ... // Orthography Description and development The Yiddish language is written with the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet. ... Kiryas Joel (sometimes also pronounced as Kiryas Yoel or Kiryat Joel or KJ) (Hebrew: Town of Joel) is a village located in Orange County, New York, United States. ...

Interest in klezmer music provided another bonding mechanism. Thriving Yiddish theater in New York City and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere kept the language vital. Many "Yiddishisms," like "Italianisms" and "Spanishisms," continued to enter spoken New York City English, often used by Jews and non-Jews alike unaware of the linguistic origin of the phrases (described extensively by Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish). However, native Yiddish speakers tended not to pass the language on to their children, who assimilated and spoke English. Klezmer (from Yiddish כּלי־זמיר, etymologically from Hebrew kli zemer כלי זמר, musical instrument) is a musical tradition which parallels Hasidic and Ashkenazic Judaism. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... The New York dialect of the English language is spoken by most European Americans who were raised in New York City and much of its metropolitan area including the lower Hudson Valley, western Long Island, and in northeastern New Jersey. ... Leo Calvin Rosten (April 11, 1908–February 19, 1997) was born on 11 April 1908 in Lodz, Russian Empire (now Poland) and died on 19 February 1997 in New York. ... The Joys of Yiddish is a lexicon of common words and phrases in the Yiddish language, primarily focusing on those words that had become known to speakers of American English due to the influence of American Jews. ...

In 1978, the Polish-born Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, a resident of the United States, received the Nobel Prize in literature. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... René-François-Armand Prudhomme (1839–1907), a French poet and essayist, was the first person to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1901, in special recognition of his poetic composition, which gives evidence of lofty idealism, artistic perfection and a rare combination of the qualities of both heart...

Most of the Jewish immigrants to the New York metropolitan area during the years of Ellis Island considered Yiddish their native language. For example, Isaac Asimov states in his autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, that Yiddish was his first and sole spoken language and remained so for about two years after he emigrated to the United States as a small child. By contrast, Asimov's younger siblings, born in the United States, never developed any degree of fluency in Yiddish. Also the famous Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind, designer of the reconstruction of Ground Zero in New York considers Yiddish his mother-tongue. For the island in Australia, see Ellis Island, Queensland. ... Isaac Asimov (January 2?, 1920?[1] – April 6, 1992), pronounced , originally Исаак Озимов but now transcribed into Russian as Айзек Азимов [1], was a Russian-born American author and professor of biochemistry, a highly successful writer, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. ... In Memory Yet Green is the first volume of Isaac Asimovs two volume autobiography. ... Daniel Libeskind in front of his extension to the Denver Art Museum. ... Ground zero is the exact location on the ground where any explosion occurs. ... This article is about the state. ...

Present speaker population

In the 2000 census, 178,945 people in the United States reported speaking Yiddish at home. Of these speakers, 113,515 lived in New York (63.43% of American Yiddish speakers), 18,220 in Florida (10.18%), 9,145 in New Jersey (5.11%), and 8,950 in California (5.00%). The remaining states with speaker populations larger than 1,000 are Pennsylvania (5,445), Ohio (1,925), Michigan (1,945), Massachusetts (2,380), Maryland (2,125), Illinois (3,510), Connecticut (1,710), and Arizona (1,055). The population is largely elderly: 72,885 of the speakers were older than 65, 66,815 were between 18 and 64, and only 39,245 were age 17 or lower.^[15] In the six years since the 2000 census, the 2006 American Community Survey reflected an estimated 15 percent decline of people speaking Yiddish at home in the U.S. to 152,515.^[16] 2000 US Census logo The Twenty-Second United States Census, known as Census 2000 and conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13. ... This article is about the state. ... This article is about the U.S. State of Florida. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Official language(s) None (English, de facto) Capital Annapolis Largest city Baltimore Largest metro area Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area Area  Ranked 42nd  - Total 12,407 sq mi (32,133 km²)  - Width 101 miles (145 km)  - Length 249 miles (400 km)  - % water 21  - Latitude 37° 53′ N to 39° 43′ N... This article is about the U.S. State. ... Official language(s) none (de facto English) Demonym Connecticuter or Connecticutian[2] Capital Hartford Largest city Bridgeport[3] Largest metro area Hartford Metro Area[4] Area  Ranked 48th in the US  - Total 5,543[5] sq&n