Yidiş - Yiddish Language

Yidiş (Yidiş ייִדיש yidiş / אידיש idiş "yahudi") Avrupa, Amerika ve Asya’da 3.5 milyon’dan fazla Aşkenaz Yahudisi tarafından konuşulan, Cermen kökenli dil. Diğer birçok Musevi dili gibi İbrani Alfabesi ile yazılır. Zaman zaman Almanca ağzı olarak görülür.

I. Dünya Savaşı sırasında ABD Food Administration'un düzenlediği "Gıda Muhafaza Kampanyası" nı teşvik etmek amacıyla Yidiş ile yazılan poster, Gıda savaşı kazanacak - Buraya özgürlük uğruna geldiniz, şimdi onu korumaya yardım etmelisiniz. Buğdaya müttefiklerin ihtiyacı var - ziyan etme."Şfiz vot gveynen di krayt. İhr kumt ahir tzu gifenen prayhayt. Yetzt must ihr helpen zi tzu başeytzen. Mir mizen di alaylis farzorgen mayt vitz. Lazet kayn zah nit geyn in nivetz." (renkli litograf, Charles Edward Chambers, 1917)

Yidiş dili: ABD'de (1.250.000)^[3], Rusya'da (701.000)^[4], İsrail'de (215.000)^[5], Ukrayna'da (634.000)^[6], Beyaz Rusya'da (231.000)^[7], Almanya'da (49.210)^[8], Kanada'da (49.890)^[9], Letonya'da (40.000)^[10],Romanya'da (1.100)^[11], Estonya'da (570)^[12], Arjantin'de^[13], Polonya'da^[14], Macaristan'da^[15], Hollanda'da^[16], Moldova'da^[17] ve birçok ülkede Musevi azınlıklarca toplam 3.200.000’den fazla kişi tarafından konuşulur.
Hint Avrupa dilleri'nin Cermen dilleri kolunun, Batı Almanca-Batı Grubu, Yüksek Almanca bölümünde bulunan Yidiş, her ne kadar farklı bir alfabe ile yazılsa da bu dili bilmeyen insanlarca duyulduğunda Almanca olduğu zannedilebilir. Almanca bilen bir kişi bu dili %60 - %70 oranında anlayabilir. Ancak Yidiş diline İbranice, Aramice ve Slav kökenli dillerden giren ek ve kelimeler bulunduğundan tam anlama mümkün olmaz.
Batı ve Doğu lehçesi olmak üzere iki lehçesi vardır, Doğu Avrupa ve Asya’da konuşulan Doğu lehçesi Slav dillerinden etkilenmişken, batı lehçesi daha çok Batı Avrupa dilleri ve özellikle İngilizce’den etkilenmiştir.

Üstünde İngilizce ve Yidiş dilinde "Çocuk Köleliğini Durdurun" sloganı yazılı olan bant taşıyan iki kız. Büyük olasılıkla1 Mayıs 1909 'daki New York işçi yürüyüşünde çekilmiş bir fotoğraf.

Bugün dünya üzerinde Yidiş dili ile basılmakta olan 100’den fazla, gazete ve dergi bulunmaktadır. Yidiş dili zengin bir edebiyat dili olduğundan bu dil ile verilmiş eserlerin sayısı bilinmemektedir. Yine dünya üzerinde birçok ülkede Yidiş tiyatrolar ve sinemalar olduğu gibi internet üzerinde de birçok site Yidiş dili ile oluşturulmuştur.

Yiddish (ייִדיש yidish or אידיש idish, literally "Jewish") is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages.^[2][3] It is written in the Hebrew alphabet.

The language 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-ashknez = "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 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.

A page from the Shemot Devarim(Literally Names of Things), a Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German dictionary and thesaurus, published by Elia Levita in 1542

For a significant portion of its history, Yiddish 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, namely Litvish, Poylish and Ukrainish. 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 in Orthodox Jewish communities around the world. It is a home language in most Hasidic communities, where it is the first language learned in childhood, used in schools and in many social settings.

The general history and status of Yiddish are discussed below, with further detail provided in 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).^[4]

Yiddish גוּט טַק אִים בְּטַגְֿא שְ וַיר דִּיש מַחֲזֹור אִין בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ טְרַגְֿא 

Transliterated gut tak im betage se vaer dis makhazor in beis hakneses trage

Translated May a good day come to him who carries this prayer book into the synagogue.


The Ashkenazi 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 Germany. Its geographic extent did not coincide with the German Christian principalities; Ashkenaz included northern France. It also bordered on the area inhabited by the Sephardim, or Spanish Jews, which ranged into Southern France. Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe.

The first language of European Jews may have been Aramaic,^[5] 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. 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.

A typical poster-hung wall in Jewish Brooklyn, New York

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. 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 or Angelo.^{[citation needed]} Western Yiddish includes additional words of Latin derivation (but still very few): for example, orn (to pray), cf. Latin "orare."

A 2008 Election poster in front of a store in Village of New Square, Town of Ramapo, New York entirely in Yiddish. The candidate names are transliterated into 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 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.

Apart from the obvious use of Hebrew words for specifically Jewish artifacts, it is very difficult to determine the extent to which the Yiddish spoken in any earlier period differed from the contemporary German. There is a rough consensus that by the 15th century Yiddish would have sounded distinctive to the average German ear, even when restricted to the Germanic component of its vocabulary.

A road sign in Yiddish (except for the word "sidewalk") at an official construction site in the Monsey hamlet, a community with thousands of Yiddish speakers, in the Town of Ramapo, New York.

Numbers of speakers

On the eve of World War II, there were 11 to 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. Around 5 million, or 85%, of the victims of the Holocaust, were speakers of Yiddish.^[10] 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. However, the number of speakers within the widely dispersed Orthodox (mainly Hasidic) communities is now increasing. Although used in various countries, Yiddish has attained official recognition as a minority language only in Moldova, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Reports of the number of current Yiddish speakers vary significantly. Ethnologue estimated in 2009 there were 1,762,320 speakers of Eastern Yiddish,^[1] of which over one-third lived in the United States. In contrast, the Modern Language Associationreports fewer than 200,000 in the United States.^[11] 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.^[12] Other 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.^[13] 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:

• Israel: 215,000, or 3% of the total Jewish population, as estimated by Ethnologue (1986)
• USA: 178,945, or 2.8% of the total Jewish population (2000)
• Russia: 29,998, or 13% of the total Jewish population (2002)
• Belgium: 20,000 or 45% of the total Jewish population
• 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

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