|
An example of the living culture, which was spread among millions of Jews in many parts of the world before the Holocaust: Yiddish |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Yiddish ("jüdisch") is an offshoot of medieval German, with admixtures of other languages (Hebrew, Polish, etc.). Yiddish is (or was) written in Hebrew characters, but it is not a dialect of Hebrew. The grammar is Germanic, and people who can understand German can understand a lot of Yiddish. Speakers of Yiddish and of Hebrew do not understand each other, any more than do speakers of Spanish and of Arabic. Spanish and Yiddish are Indo-Europen languages ( as are English and German). But just as Yiddish incorporates many Hebrew words, so Spanish incorporates many Arabic words, because of the presence and even dominance of Islamis culture in Spain for almost a thousand years, until 1492 (examples: almacén - store; ojala - thank God [Allah], fortunately; algebra, algorithm, and many other scientific terms are also of Arabic origin). Ladino, a language spoken by Mediterranean Jews, is based on Spanish, similarly to how Yiddish is based on German. Yiddish was virtually extinguished in Europe, because of the Holocaust (and, earlier, voluntary assimilation and contempt for un-modern roots); and also in America because of assimilation. Under other circumstances, it could have become the language of the state of Israel, rather than a revived ancient Hebrew. Yiddish has given American English (and sometimes, through it, the world) a number of commonly used words and expressions:
Probably German/Yiddish in origin is the use of English "already" late in the utterance, following German placement and meaning, to suggest impatience or annoyance: "Stop kvetching, I'm coming already!" (German: "Ich komme schon") The same is probably true even of putting an emphatic "Not!" at the end of a sentence that is meant to be a sarcastic negation of what starts out as something apparently complimentary: "He's intelligent - NOT!" Standard German would unsarcastically say, "Er ist nicht intelligent", but also allows a sarcastic word order, "Intelligent ist er nicht", where the late "nicht" drives home the sarcastic point. This feature of English is relatively new (mid-1990s?) and may not survive. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Examples of spoken (and sung!) Yiddish from the Golden Age of Jewish Radio in America | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From the CD "Dave Tarras - Yiddish-American Klezmer" (Yazoo #7001) a song announcement and an ad for a clothing store, with the English equivalent of the ad (not an exact equivalent) at the end of the song (track 5)
From the CD "Music from the Yiddish Radio Project" (Shanachie, 6057) |
||||||||||||||||||||||||