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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ajd (talk | contribs) at 03:00, 14 March 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Talk:Yiddish language/Archive 1

tatysch or dyatsch?

Ajd and Olve, you seem to disagree on this, which is it? Also, the second "yod" in Yiddish looked like question marks for me before, but Olve's edit fixed that. Was there a reason you changed it back, Ajd? Jayjg | (Talk) 22:27, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Yiddish word for 'German' is daytsh, not taytsh—that's why I changed that back (though if I can be convinced that it was taytsh at the time in question, I'll accept it). The yod was a mistake; I'll fix that. AJD 22:58, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, you missed the same problem in the word "daytsch". Jayjg | (Talk) 23:14, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The traditional form used in connection with Yiddish is the T form. In connection with (mainly non-Jewish) German, D is often used, but then normally in the form daytshish (-er, -e). In older Western Yiddish, the pronunciation would often be tâtsch (with un-rounding, opening, first-component lengthening and subsequent monophthongisation of the historic diphthong), and the word would often be written as טאטש. Yiddish "tsu taytshn" (also with a Tet rather than Daled) comes from the same root and means to translate into Yiddish.

The reason I changed the ay digraph into two Yods was that the explicit ay digraph is a de facto deprecated form which is not displayed properly in most generally available Hebrew fonts.

(By the way: My qualifications for writing about Yiddish include a university degree in linguistics (including dialectography) and ethnomusicology in addition to years of studying comparative linguistics (with an emphasis on Germanic languages) on my own. An example of my work with Yiddish may be seen here: http://utne.nvg.org/j/jiddisch/ ) -- Olve 23:08, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Taitsh is the definite traditional form in Yiddish — and glyphs above the normal range for Hebrew are not supported by most Hebrew fonts. I am going to wait a little bit for additional input, and then go ahead with my edits unless someone can show compelling evidence countering those of my contributions which were removed by Ajd. -- Olve 23:26, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK — I have checked Weinreich's Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English dictionary, and here is a summary of what it says:

  • דיַיטשיש = דיַיטש German
  • טיַיטש־חומש a Yiddish version of the Pentateuch
  • טיַיטשן interpret

It is clear from this that the distinction between daytsh- meaning German and taytsh- meaning Yiddish is still valid. I will therefore change the Yiddish back to yidish-taytsh. -- Olve 00:06, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't make anything clear at all. If daytsh means 'German', why shouldn't the form meaning 'Jewish German' be yidish daytsh? That is, daytsh means the language, and taytsh is a related word that means 'translation' or something like that. So shouldn't yidish taytsh be 'Jewish translation', not 'Jewish German'?
Also, if most Hebrew fonts can't show a pasekh-tsvey-yudn, I'd say the fault is with them, not with us for using it, but.... AJD 03:38, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I do not think it should be that unclear: The inherited Yiddish form is taytsh. The newer concept of German nationality is denoted by the loanword daytsh — a lightly Yiddishised form of German Deutsch. This word is also frequently found in the form daytshish. That taytsh and daytsh have different meanings is not any different from hotel and hospital having different meanings. The fact that Yiddish daytsh means specifically German as opposed to Yiddish can be illustrated by the word דייַטשמעריש daytshmerish — a word which means 'too much like German (said of modern words or phrases sporadically used in Yid. but not accepted by cultivated stylists'. (Weinreich 1968, p. 657) You ask: "If daytsh means 'German', why shouldn't the form meaning 'Jewish German' be yidish daytsh?" The answer to that is: It isn't -- and part of the reason is that "Jewish German" is not exactly what the term means... It would be great if someone could come up with a better translation. As for the form "Yidish Daytsh" with a "Daled", part of its problem is in fact that it is to daytshmerish...
Coming to think of it, Ladino is an interesting parallel: Ladino in its classical Judeo-Spanish, Spanish and Portuguese form denotes the translation of Hebrew and Aramaic into a Romance language — and thus means something quite different from "Latin". I guess one could say that "taytsh" denotes "Germanic as opposed to Semitic" rather than "of the German language or culture/nation" the same way that "ladino" denotes "Romance" (particularly Iberian) as opposed to Semitic" rather than "of the Latin language or culture/nation".
The cognate "*theud-" is widely used in the Germanic languages with other meanings than "German". Thus, the English term Dutch means "from the Netherlands"; the Old Norse <thorn>jó<eth> means 'people'; the Norwegian dialect otjø and standard Norwegian utyske (lit. "un-folk" or "un-person") means monster; the Norwegian tyde, German deuten and Yiddish daytn means 'make understandable to people', etc. -- Olve 06:16, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Scandinavian language closer than Yiddish/German?

First of all, the bit about Danish and Swedish being closer than German and Yiddish must clearly be a mistake. My first language is Swedish, and I've studied German for almost seven years. When I watch a movie with Yiddish spoken (like the tenth episode of season four of The West Wing), I can understand everything except a few words with the help of the German I speak. When I watch a Danish movie (like Idioterne), I can hardly understand anything but a few words here and there.

But even having just "Swedish and Norwegian are far more closely related to each other than Yiddish and German" sounds very POV in my mind. Is there a reliable linguistic source on this statement first made by Jayjg? As far as I can tell, in lexical correspondence, grammar and orthography, I would say that it's the other way aroound. —Gabbe 20:02, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

"Swedish is closely related to, and usually mutually intelligible with, Danish and Norwegian." according to Swedish language. "Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are linguistically very closely related and are generally mutually intelligible. This is due to the way the national boundaries have been in flux throughout Scandinavian history. Norway and Denmark were a single country for four centuries, until 1814. And after they split apart, Norway was under the rule of the Swedish crown until 1905. The movement for the recognition of a Norwegian language separate from Danish and Swedish led to the consequent formation of nynorsk." [1] As for the specific statement, it is "Languages like Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are far more closely related to each other than Yiddish and German." This is clearly the case, since Yiddish and German separated over 1,000 years ago, and 30% of Yiddish's vocabularly comes from two completely unrelated language groups, the Semitic and Slavic groups. On the other hand, Norwegian formed as recently 200 years ago, after a conscious effort to separate it from Danish. How much Yiddish was spoken in those movies and television episodes? Jayjg | (Talk) 20:18, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Hej Gabbe, It is true that spoken Danish and spoken non-Skåne Swedish are significantly different from each other phonologically and to a smaller degree also grammatically. It is also true that Swedes have a tendency to understand less of the other Scandinavian languages than the other way around for mostly sociological reasons. However, Swedish and Norwegian are close enough that I can say (as a linguist who write and speak Norwegian (Nynorsk, Bokmål), Swedish, German and Yiddish reasonably well) that the differences between Norwegian and Swedish are smaller than those between German (Bühnesprache) and most forms of Yiddish. If you are talking about dialects of German and dialects of Yidish, this may of course vary a great deal -- just like it does between dialects of Norwegian and Swedish (and, to a smaller degree, Danish). As Jay points out, the significant component of loan words from Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavonic languages in Yiddish makes communication beyond the very basic level difficult between Yiddish and German. But what Jay writes about Norwegian is not quite precise: Norwegian was of course around for several centuries before the two Norwegian written languages developed as official norms in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Shabbat shalom / God hälg! -- Olve 22:34, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Alright, I might be mistaken. The examples I cited aren't really scholarly "proofs" of anything, I agree. It might very well be that Norwegian and Swedish are closer than Yiddish and German. But regardless, there's just something about "Danish, Swedish and Norwegian [...] are almost completely mutually intelligible" that really strikes me. I cannot accept that statement as an undeniable fact. And saying that they are "far more closely related to each other than [...]" is a needless peacock word. I think the pro-Yiddish-is-a-language part of the "A German dialect?"-section deserves more easily-verifiable statements of fact in its favour, such as for example:
While it might still be argued that the European Union and the United States are wrong from a linguistical standpoint, to me these two examples "throws more weight around" so to speak. It is easy to verify the objective truth of the two statements above, but it is hard to look up in a chart or table of language groupings and compare the values for Norwegian/Swedish versus Yiddish/German and see which pair is closer. It's a bit like trying to measure which of Goethe or Schopenhauer had most impact on 19th century Germany, isn't it? I know it might strike a nerve with some to remove the mention of the Scandianvian languages entirely, and there's certainly a point in mentioning them, but the analogy is too murky and subjective to really convince anyone. Am I making sense? What I'm trying to say is that the analogy currently in the article has an inconspicuous veracity, it might almost be called POV.
Oh, and by the way, a trevlig helg to you too. :) —Gabbe 22:26, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)


My 2 cents:

Whether you understand Yiddish depends on where in Germany/German speaking countries you come from. I would argue that Southern/South Western and Western Germans (i.e. Rhineland) tend to understand Yiddish, since our dialects have a lot in common with spoken Yiddish, in structure, pronounciation and word choice. My hometown is Stuttgart in the South Western German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and my "First" native language is not Standard German (which I didn't learn until I attended school) but Schwaebisch. My grandmother is Alsatian, so I am rather familiar with that German (Alemmanic)dialect too. Yiddish sounds a lot like Alsatian with quite a few words/expressions of Hebrew, Slavic etc. origin added (25 -30%). I also listened to the Yiddish Boston Radio and understood about 90%, without ever having studied Yiddish formally. I had a North German friend listen to the same programm and she barely understood what they were talking about. There is not "one" German - but many German dialects and a national standard, that functions as a lingua franca throughout the German speaking world.

IMHO Yiddish is clearly a Germanic language in its structure and the majority of its terminology. Whether you want to call it a dialect or a language doesn t matter. The line between language and dialect is blurred i.e. the issue of Standard Dutch/Dutch and German dialects in the German/Netherlands border region, Standard German or the question whether the different versions of Chinese are dialects or languages.

Luke Pacific Grove, CA

Political baggage and linguistic method

Reading all of the above (I come to this for ths first time) makes my hair stand on end. I think we need to come clean here and say outright: the relationship between Germans and Jews is so heavily weighed down by the baggage of 20th century history that the idea of German linguistic origins is upsetting for some Jews. I have a lot of sympathy for that, but we can't let that affect the results of linguistic science. Read the article on comparative method if you want to know how we judge what languages are related. In the case of Yiddish, though, there is not a lot of hypothetical comparative methodology necessary, because the whole history is documented. We have a continuous tradition of Jewish writings going back to the 13th century. If you read the early texts (14th-century Dukus Horant, for example) you will see that this is Middle High German in Hebrew characters with a slight vowel shift (possibly, depending on how you interpret the Hebrew characters), with about one Hebrew lexem per page (see the statistical analysis by Jim Marchand) and no significant unique grammatical features. That is why we call it Judeo-German in this early phase: it is German with a Jewish colouring. In the next two centuries, Judeo-German becomes Yiddish, i.e. the dialect develops into a language in its own right. It borrows a lot from Slavic (but of COURSE it does not become a Slavic language) and develops a rich tradition of idiom all of its own. Modern Yiddish is not longer a German dialect because communication across this boundary is difficult (not impossible) and it has its own institutions (newspapers etc.) using its own norms. Yiddish is a language in its own right, and like English it is a Germanic language with a large proportion of borrowed non-Germanic lexemes. I am not a German. I am not a Jew. I have no axe to grind here. Bit I am a trained linguist who has studied and written about this, and that's just the way it is. The above arguments are mostly just silly. For this reason I would propose deleting the unnecessary paragraph "A German dialect?" (which is accurate enough but sounds more like special pleading than lingusitic scholarship) and instead opening the history paragraph with a note about late-mediaeval Judeo-German and what happened after that. I'll be glad to do it if no-one else does, but not without a consensus on this discussion page first. --Doric Loon 09:36, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the section "A German dialect?" looks to me like pretty good NPOV summary of a question relevant to the article. I'd keep it. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:44, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Rather than deleting the section, why not just propose additions to it here? BTW, what do you think of Wexler's thesis (a re-lexified Slavic language)? Jayjg (talk) 18:08, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not Marnen, but my answer is that I don't think the notion of "relexified Slavic language" is meaningful. We classify non-creole languages by the origin of their lexicon, regardless of what changes have happened to the grammar; and if it's lexically a Germanic language it's a Germanic language. AJD 05:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Actually, it's mostly the other way around. As I say, read the article on comparative method; we classify languages not according to either lexis or grammar but according to a continuous tradition of development. However, obviously where there is such a tradition, there will also be grammatical and lexical evidence of it, and when the tradition is not otherwise documented, these provide the evidence which fills the gap. Of these two, grammar is more important. The grammar of any language is subject to sporadic changes in the course of history, but in so far as the grammar reflects a relationship with another language, it is reflecting its origins, because grammatical structures are very rarely passed sideways from one language to another. This applies especially to morphology - similarities in syntax can be co-incidence. So for example if two languages have a parallel paradigm of verb inflections, that is an almost infallible sign of original relationship. In the case of lexis, on the other hand, "loan words" are very common, so lexical similarities are a less safe criterion for judging language relatedness. Nonetheless, a broad range of lexical similarities is very useful, and in particular, there are some classes of words which are rarely borrowed (personal pronouns, numerals, prepositions, the verb "to be"), and in these cases, if two languages share most of their lexis, they are certainly related. So, the criteria in order of importance are: 1. the continuous tradition if it can be documented; 2. any structural or morphological similarities which are too precise be co-incidence; 3. any lexical similarities which are too precise to be co-incidence and are unlikely to be borrowings. In the case of Yiddish, though, its development out of Middle High German is recorded in black and white from the very beginning, so no hypothetical work with the other two criteria is required. But if we didn't have historical records, we could use first morphology and second the most basic lexis to prove easily that Yiddish is more closely related to German than to any other language. It would be hard to find a case anywhere in the field of comparative linguistics where the evidence is clearer. But as I say, there is an entirely understandable post-1945 anti-Germanism among many Yiddish speakers which make them want to believe that Yiddish is related to something - ANYTHING - other than German. So we get the silly Slavic thesis and the silly French thesis, and if it absolutely has to be Germanic then we get wild parallels drawn with Swedish... (I once spoke to a Ukranian who tried to convince me Ukranian is a Romance language most closely related to French. ANYTHING but Russian! This is a world-wide phenomenon among "beer-garden linguists".) I don't know what you do with people who get these things into their head, but whatever it is, it ain't linguistics. --Doric Loon 14:24, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, the reason that whole section actually appeared in the first place was because some German speakers kept insisting that Yiddish was nothing but a German dialect (not a language in its own right), and that speakers of modern German could easily understand it. Since that is not a typical view, sources were brought which contradicted it - I believe this may be the exact opposite of the reason you thought it was there. In any event, you sound quite knowledgable in the field, and your contributions would of course be welcome, and I'm sure vastly improve the article. Please keep in mind, though, that sources for theories and views should be cited, otherwise we run the risk of putting original research into the article. Jayjg (talk) 02:34, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Eh, woops! Sorry, looks like I misunderstood where this argument was coming from. (I've had this debate before, and possibly I jumped to a conclusion - mea culpa!) Nonetheless, the possibility of Slavic origins and Swedish connections are implied in the article and do need to be debunked if they can't be quietly ignored. BTW, what do you think of the idea that Yiddish is descended from Basque? I just found this: [[3]]. Can't make up my mind if the author is a joker or a headbanger.
But coming back to your point, Jayjg, there are usually two criteria for saying that dialects have separated far enough to be separate languages. One is when the communication barrier becomes too difficult for the average person, even after they've spent a little time atuning. And the second is the presence of institutions which use the language as a written norm. Either one will do. In the case of Yiddish, most Germans certainly can't read it, and usually they are struggling to understand the klezmer songs which have become so popular in Germany since the '80s. More importantly, there is the long tradition of serious publishing in Yiddish which indicates a literary standard. Read the article on dialect though - which suggests that the whole thing is so subjective that in the end we use what the respective group wants (PC principle) - so how do Yiddish speakers feel about it?
I should declare myself: my interest is medieval languages/lit. I cover Yiddish to the 16th century. I guess that fills a gap here, so I'll pose as an expert on that, but not on the modern language.
I'm getting a message that this page is too long. Which is probably mostly my fault. Should we do something about it?--Doric Loon 19:46, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think all the information you're presenting is great and belongs in the article; however, I must strongly emphasize that everything you state should be cited. Regardless of how strongly you know something to be true, based on your professional training, you need to cite the sources of your contentions. WP:NPOV is another policy that should be helpful here. And regarding the length of the page, I wouldn't worry about it yet. You can just edit this specific section here, titled "Political baggage and linguistic method", rather than the whole page, using the little "edit" button that shows up on the right hand side of the page beside every section header. After the discussion here dies down, I'll archive some of the older discussion. Jayjg (talk) 03:51, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Two issues

  1. The 4-million-speakers figure is (a) great (b) in all probability too high. What is the source for the claim, and how recent is it?(Pedantic addendum: as most language censuses I've seen don't register the ethnicity or religion of all speakers of a language, perhaps that should be changed to "x million people", anyhow, where x is the correct number (x=4 a few decades ago, presumably).)
    • I don't have a formal source for this, but if there were 10 million Yiddish speakers at the start of World War II, it seems relatively safe to say that there would still have been 4 million at the end.-- Jmabel | Talk 02:04, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
  2. Regarding the section "Is Yiddish a German dialect?" - it is my impression that most linguists nowadays see the difference between dialect and language as purely political, and not truly helpful. Perhaps the section should be omitted or shifted until later in the text? It is the sort of thing that would have been important to emphasize a generation ago, but now it may be besides the point. Also, the theory on Yiddish's being a "relexified Slavic language" is generally considered to be on the border of crankish. Far more relevant is the ongoing discussion as to whether Yiddish had its main origins in medieval high German or medieval Bavarian. Hasdrubal 00:54, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm with you on this one. The Slavic theory seems absurd to me (though I'm not a professional linguist). The language vs. dialect theory usually comes down to "a dialect is a language with a flag and a navy." -- Jmabel | Talk 02:04, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
      • "An army and a navy", actually. Usually I wouldn't be so pedantic but this saying actually originated in Yiddish (or so I'm told): "A shprakh is a dialekt mit an armey un a flot." (Max Weinreich.) AJD 03:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
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