If we want to understand its inception and development, Yiddish should be compared to these spoken dialects, rather than to modern written standard German. Indeed, since the Middle Ages, German, too, has undergone significant changes. German has borrowed extensively from other languages with which it has been in contact, primarily Latin and French, and to a lesser extent Italian and West Slavic.
Important changes in standardized written German followed the publication in of the German translation of the Bible by Martin Luther. The language of this work was in many respects based on a dialect from Eastern Germany. Moreover, its author introduced new spellings for certain words that gradually became standard, and influenced the pronunciation too. Moreover, one can establish a non-interrupted chain between modern Germans and those who spoke not only medieval German, but also earlier stages of the German language, like Old German.
Not so for Jews. At some moment in Jewish history, Jews shifted in their everyday life from their former, non-German language s to those of their German Gentile neighbors.
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Indo-Iranian Branch. Last edited: Dec 18, Now I have a clear idea about the language. I had some confused notions that it was a language from a different group just with similarities to German, probably because of the way it is written.
Ben Jamin Senior Member Norway. When you compare medieval and modern Yiddish you see some co-evolution with German. Obviously, German and Yiddish retained some form of a Sprachbund probably caused by overlapping speaker groups in Poland, e. There was also some Yiddish influence on German manifest in loan words like Schlamassel originally bad luck but now meaning difficult situation or Ganove thief, gangster. Linguistically, the classifications of Yiddish as a German dialect or as a separate languages would be equally justifiable.
It is more a question of cultural identity. Until about years ago, Yiddish speakers generally identified there own language as "Teytsch" "German" ; the Yiddish word for "translating into Yiddish" still is "farteytshen", literally "to germanify". With the introduction of a literary standard in the second half of the 19th century, Yiddish speakers started to view what they spoke as a language in its own right and not as a German dialect, or rather a group of dialects as there substantial variation between regional dialects within Yiddish.
You must log in or register to reply here. The Hebrew course is really bad for that and this one seems to make it easy and is much better organised than the several available on Memrise. Is the sound of the letters and structure of the words very different? The Hebrew course has no training on the alphabet, and doesn't use diacritics either, so sometimes I know the sound of the correct answer but can't write it or read enough to choose the right option, which is frustrating.
The letters are the same between the two languages. But Yiddish has vowels written in the words, and Hebrew does not. May be equivalent to using French to practice reading English - the letters are the same, and some of the sounds are the same, but spelling is really different.
I have found it useful to get a little more used to the hebrew sounds. Since there are so many cognates and 4 lessons teaching letters and sounds in Yiddish, this has improved my understanding of the Hebrew letters tremendously.
If they ever getting around to modifying the Hebrew course which I doubt it should start out something more akin to how the Yiddish course is starting out.
It's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it. The alphabet or abjad if you want to get technical is slightly different between the two. I wouldn't recommend mixing the languages, as they are very different. I tested out of the alphabet part but just for fun I went through it. The Hebrew alphabet was designed for the Hebrew and Aramaic languages and usually vowels were omitted.
Written Yiddish was an attempt to superimpose the Hebrew alphabet on a very different language. When comparing Yiddish sounds to Hebrew, keep in mind the difference in pronunciation between Hebrew as was spoken by Yiddish speakers in Europe and the pronunciation of Israeli Hebrew.
Check out the videos on HebrewPod's YouTube channel -- they'll teach you the alphabet in about 20 minutes. Yiddish falls in the West Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. Yiddish being a germanic language and English also been a germanic language makes them similar, but not so similar like German-Yiddish.
Yiddish is grammatically more similar to German and English is a germanic. Having said that the Yiddish diaspora interacts with the anglophone community heavily and there is some influence. Get started.
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